Nic Trips

This is my wonderful town of Hogye-dong, in the Buk-gu district of the city of Ulsan in South Korea. This is where I live and work, about a 35 minute bus ride north of the main downtown area of the city (at least on a good day when the traffic isn't bad). One of these days, I'll hike up onto the mountains in the background and get some better, more elevated pictures, so you can understand just how beautiful it is in this valley I live in. This is the side road that all the buses have to take to get into Hogye, or "Speed Bumb Road" as I've designated it. There's at least 15 speed bumps from start to finish. It was really annoying at first, but I've learned to appreciate it because now I can fall asleep on the bus on my way home without worrying about missing my stop because the bumps will always wake me up just as we're getting to Hogye. This is Hogye from afar, viewed from the crossing of the train tracks and "Speed Bump Ro...

Our last night at orientation started off with the closing ceremony, in which they showed us a music video composed of many of the pictures and videos they had taken over the course of the orientation. It told about everything we did during orientation in order like a story. It was really well done and people cheered everytime they saw someone they knew in a picture (so for every singe one). Post by August 2014 EPIK Orientation, Daejeon . Be sure to click "HD" if you watch it, it's way better! (I'm not in it much except the group photos and way background shots, but if you're curious, you can see me at 1:41, 1:45, 5:17, and 6:28) After the ceremony, we had our farewell dinner. And by dinner, I mean feast. There was more food that anyone could possibly eat and it was all delicious! Our class leaders, Suzie and Jun, went around to all our tables to take one last selfie with us. The following morning we all left Daejeon. For me and ...

Although we had a curfew of midnight (which thankfully actually kept us in check on getting a decent night's sleep), everyone partied hard each night to be sure to experience as much of Korea as possible right from the get go. This is the main downtown area of Daejeon that is full of bars, clubs and noraebang (singing rooms/karaoke). Most of the bars have really funny names in English. Our favorites in Daejeon were "The the the", "Ho Bar", and "Any Beer". For all of which, it was a necessity that they serve soju . It's a Korean liquor that is similar to vodka and is actually the most sold liquor in the entire world, even though it's primarily sold in Korea. (Gives you an idea of how much they drink it here) We were lucky enough to get to try many, many different foods at orientation, some Korean and some not, but I never got a chance to take pictures of them all. The next few pictures are examples are some of the ones ...

After a few days full of classes at orientation, we got the chance to go on a field trip to Jeonju. After giving us a few hours to roam and have free time, they had all sorts of cultural experiences planned for us. This included seeing the first church ever built in Korea, learning the basics of playing the traditional Korean drum, making paper fans and getting our first taste (at least for me) of Korean made bibimbap! Before they released us to wander in our own little groups for our free time, we traveled with out class (class 1) to the meeting point for the day. Jeonju isn't a huge city, and the tourist and sightseeing area that we stuck around was even less the size, but it was nice to have something to base your wanderings around. Jeonju was full of the little things that make me want to take pictures everywhere. As soon as I realized this, I was so sad because I'd forgotten to bring my real camera! Later on ba...