I was so busy last week that I completely forgot to post my Say WHAT?! photo. I’m not sure what’s worse… that I had it ready a week in advance or that I didn’t realize I forgot until Friday. Oops!
Today’s shirt is definitely too profane for an elementary school student, don’t you think… Continue reading
Namhae is such a great place to escape bustle of the city. Driving along the winding roads wasn’t my favorite thing, but I still really enjoyed the beautiful scenery even though I was a little bit nauseous! If you’re prone to motion sickness like I am, I highly recommend taking some medicine before driving around the island.
We set out to find Darangee Village because they are supposed to be some incredibly beautiful rice terraces there. I learned about the rice terraces from an article by CNN Travel called “50 Beautiful Places to Visit in Korea.” The rice terraces are number 3 on the list and the featured photo is of a group of tourists watching and helping a farmer plant the rice, with the help of a ox. Really cool, right?
We had some difficulty finding the village. Initially, The address listed on the CNN Travel article was missing some information that our navigation system required. Thankfully, there were some signs along the way.
I have a confession to make. We planned a trip to Taipei, Taiwan for the sole purpose of experiencing EVA Air’s Hello Kitty jet. A friend of mine shared an article about it on her Facebook sometime last year and it immediately went onto my bucket list. I can’t say I’m a die hard Hello Kitty fan, but I appreciate cute when I see it and this is cute!
Happy Hangeul Day! October 9th is the day Koreans celebrate their alphabet. It’s one of the best in the world and it’s definitely something to be proud of. Each letter has only one sound so if you really want to learn to read Korean, it only takes a few hours. I learned to read Korean in about 6 months, with practically no studying. I just kind of absorbed it.
I celebrated Hangeul Daywith my awesome Korean tutor. We went to 5 different temples. I learned a lot about the places we visited and a few new Korean words and phrases. One of the highlights of the day was seeing a flock of peacocks at one of the temples. They were so cute and it was such a nice surprise!
I’m writing this from Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea. Dave and I are heading to Taipei, Taiwan for a long weekend and we are about to board one of the world’s cutest planes! It’s a Hello Kitty plane. Even the boarding passes have the cute little Sanrio diva on them.
I can’t wait to see what the inside looks like!
As an elementary school teacher in South Korea, I was often shocked at some of the clothes my students would wear. Curse words or obscenities didn’t bother anyone!
I asked some of my teacher friends if they had any examples of kids wearing messed up stuff to school and my friend Jenny sent me this.
Can you guess what it says?
After our stay at the Hi Class Pension in Namhae, we had breakfast at the Hilton and then set out for some sightseeing. If we hadn’t been going to the Hilton, we might have never noticed the art village, but we are so glad that we stumbled across it.
Can you spot the Hilton in the background?
Namhae Island is a really rural area full of rice and garlic fields. As we pulled out of the Hilton, we spotted a mural of The Simpsons.
I decided I wanted to explore further so we drove up the narrow street through the village.
We went to the mask festival in Andong on Saturday and had a really great time. The festival has a few different sites and it was tough to pick just one. We chose to go to the smaller festival at the Hahoe Folk Village. It’s a village full of Korean traditional homes, called hanok. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Before entering the park, we were greeted by a large group of students that were so excited to practice their English with us.
After buying tickets, we stopped off at the information booth to pick up some information about the festival. The woman spoke really great English and she marked on our map where the festival would take place. It was a 1km walk to the festival site, but we opted to take the free shuttle.
The first thing we noticed after being dropped off by the shuttle was the dried up lotus flowers. This would have been absolutely gorgeous in July!
The Busan International Film Festival started back in 1996 and now it’s one of the best film festivals in the world. Up until 2011 it was called PIFF, but they finally changed it from Pusan to Busan. They also changed the location from PIFF Square in Nampo-dong to the Haeundae area (Centum City/Shensegae). They built the new Busan Cinema Center especially for BIFF. It is really spectacular!
The festival runs every year in October and the opening film sold out in 7 seconds this year! Weekend tickets are also hard to come by. Your best bet might be trying to go to a film during the week. Getting tickets can prove difficult for foreigners so it’s helpful to have a Korean friend buy tickets for you.
At Haeundae Beach in Busan, South Korea there is some wall art that left me amazed and confused. I have to admit, I did think it was a bit ridikiles.
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