The Live Love Laugh Project

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Home Sweet Temporary Home

For one year I will be living in Yuchon-dong(neighbourhood) in Daejeon, South Korea...as you all know by this point!
I am currently living in a three bedroom apartment with Ben, Mary (a couple), and Laura.
We are on the 15th floor of Hyundai Apartment No. 111. We have a gorgeous view of Bowmun Mountain, and we can see our school from our balcony.
At the end of June Laura and I will be moving into the other three bedroom apartment owned by our school. The reason for this is that Ben's sister, Sarah, who worked at ECC for 2 years already, will be coming back with her gorgeous 5 month old son Jinu and will be living with Ben and Mary.
So as of right now these pictures are of my current home, but in a couple months time I will have to add pics of my new home...after its been cleaned thoroughly!

Bowmun Mountain, as seen from our 15th floor balcony!

Looking towards my future apartment (no. 117).

Our workplace! ECC SeoDaejeon English Academy. Literally a one minute commute to work!

The landscaping along our apartment.

Beautiful Azaleas and the ECC School Bus!

My bedroom, fully equiped with mattress on the floor and Korean paper on the walls for colour!

The river...a common picnic spot for us only 3km from our door.

Also where I do my running/training for the half marathon!

Cherry Blossoms along the way!

My running track.

The scenery on my 1 minute walk to work.

The big neighbourhood park.

MAGNOLIAS!!!!!!

Say Department Store, where you could find anything you would ever need.

Around Yuchon-Dong.

hahahaha I laughed at this guy for quite sometime!

The Gimbab Lady...right outside the doors of ECC...a sweet sweet Ajumma with even sweeter cooking!

Around my Dong at night...best phrase ever is "my Dong or yours?" used when making plans with people from different Dong's.

Hilarious translation.

White Day (like our Valentines Day)...in Eunandong, the old downtown.

Eunandong.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Naejangsan National Park

Three down, seventeen to go!

This weekend Mary, Ben, Laura, and I made a day trip to Naejangsan National Park. Naejangsan is one of the most popular parks in Korea, and is described as an amphitheatre in every piece of information a person can find on it. Naejangsan is not a particularly high mountain, but it was a hard hike on the old knees, and it was tremendously windy. I'm talking blow me off the mountain windy!

The four of us decided to brave the wind, raise our middle finger at Mother Nature, and hike the ridge of this seemingly never ending circular mountain. We took a bus from Daejeon to Gwangju, and then a local bus to the mountain. It was quite a long walk from the bus stop to the entrance of the park, but we made it in one piece and were on our way.

At the bottom were beautiful cherry blossom trees, hundreds of flowers on display. We approached a temple and head in to have a look at the temple grounds. We were promptly met by an old monk who was really eager to show us "the best view of Naejangsan". He lead us over to a shelter, and instructed us to lie down on the table one at a time and look at the mountain upside down. Wouldn't you know it, the monk was right. It was a stunning view, plain and simple, there are no words to describe its beauty.