Nic Trips

One random Saturday in October, a few of us decided to explore the southern district of Ulsan: Dong-gu. I had come here once for part of a day with my 6th graders on their class field trip the previous week, but had more of a chance to explore without having to be a role model on this one. We started at Ilsan beach. I arrived about an hour earlier than everyone else because I live much closer and so I spent the first bit of time reading in the shade of a life guard stand. Once everyone else arrived, we were able to get some dinner at a British pub that had read, delicious Western food and beer. We found out later that it's because Dong-gu is full of waygook  (foreigners). Almost all of the foreigners that work for Hyundai live in this part of the city and so there is a big market for things that foreigners lover here. The sun was already starting to set by the time we finished dinner so we had to move quickly on our hike around the peninsula. In the p...

When I returned from the 6th grade field trip that Friday, my friends notified my of their sudden plan to take a trip to Gyeong-ju for 2 days that weekend. We left Saturday morning and returned Sunday night. Gyeong-ju is a very old city famous for many different traditional histories and cultural sites in Korea. The first we saw as we were walking from the bus to our hostel: tombs. These giant mound of dirt are actually tombs built for the royal family. As we were arriving, there was some sort of procession or parade going on. We still don't know what exactly was happening, but they seemed very excited to see a group of foreigners watching them and taking pictures. Ashley and I were even given 2 little Korean flags to wave with them. The town is self was packed with all sorts of things and very busy. I think the wires that ran everywhere were a sign of the age of the town, because I haven't seen those many other places in Korea, but it remin...