Nic Trips

At the end of our beginner Korean class, our teacher introduced to us and offered us the opportunity to go on a free glamping trip! The office of foreign relations (or something like that) at City Hall planned and paid for a trip for everyone that had taken the class (and our foreigner friends) to go on a bus tour of Ulsan to see a few of the "12 Scenic Views of Ulsan" and to spend overnight glamping (glamorous camping). They provided transportation, food, lodging and even blankets, and it was all 100% free. The only thing we had to bring ourselves was clothes and alcohol. We left on Saturday at noon and our first stop was the bamboo forest located to the west of the city on the north side of the river. I was super glad to be able to come here because it had been on my list of things to see for a while at that point. After the bamboo forest, we went to see "Standing Rock", there wasn't as much to do here because t...

As part of a documentation of my life in Korea, I decided to take pictures of my school lunches everyday for about 2 and a half weeks. I can't tell you what each thing is or is called, but I will try to get my co-teacher to help me label them sometime next week. For now, enjoy the pictures! And, know that there is a typical (and expected) order of food on your tray. First, on the bottom left is always the rice. On the bottom right is always the soup. Then from left to right on the top row goes: kimchi, "vegetables", meat.

Since it was Christmas time, we decided we wanted to do some sort of outing that would put us in the Christmas spirit. Originally we wanted to go see a performance of the nutcracker at Ulsan's Cultural Center, but when we tried to buy tickets we were told that the show was directed towards children and we wouldn't enjoy it. Instead, thanks to Andrew's research, we found this opera playing a few nights before. The inside of the Cultural Center was gorgeous and the theater was huge and very fancy. We got seat way near the top because they were less than half the price of the ones below, but it was a plenty good enough spot for us regardless. La Boheme is a love story set at Christmas time and all in Italian (they put Korean subtitles on screens on the side of the stage). With my combination knowledge of Spanish (which is very similar to Italian in many places), Korean (which I'm slow and, but could definitely pick out some words and verbs as the...