Anyone Wanna Come To Korea?

So tonight we had another first for our adventure: we got to be interviewed over Skype about our experience in Korea. The audience was one of ABU's small groups whose topic of discussion is figuring out what you want to do with your life after university.

Because of the distinctive lag on the skype network (I suspect it has something more to do with the ABU network than with skype, but skype is always an easy target), we were provided with a list of questions in advance and had about 15 minutes to share a little about our experience while answering the questions, leaving time for additional q&a at the end. It was quite fun, and wouldn't you know it but an old friend was in the crowd, too!

We left the group with an open invitation to email us with any questions they might have about Korea, and hopefully we'll get some replies back because we'd love to see more people come over and take part in this wonderful experience with us.

Of course, if any of you have other questions that we might not have answered yet, please feel free to email us or simply post your question(s) in the comments section of this post (with your email address so we can reply directly to you). If a lot of questions come in, then we'll do a Q&A-style post, and put all the anawers in one place.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Aftermath

Well, we successfully made it to Hong Seong, and we're now on our way home, happy to have been able to visit somewhere new and to see Lorie for the first time since we first arrived in Korea.

An unexpected side effect of the bus ride was that Shan got a little motion sick on the way up, so we stopped by the pharmacy on our way back to the bus station to get her an anti-nauseant. We'll see how it works, and hopefully she'll have a more pleasant trip home.

Our day was really exciting, though, as Lorie showed us around her hometown, introduced us to some more new food (and I'm a horrible person for not remembering the name of it), and just generally showing us a great time. Hong Seong is much smaller than Daejeon (at a mere 35,000 or so, compared to Daejeon's 1.5 million), but there was still lots to fill up the afternoon. We went hiking around the mountain near Lorie's place and checked out the temple there, then she took us to the remains of the old Hong Seong fortress (we'll have pictures up on Facebook or Flickr once we're back at a computer and have time to sort through the hundreds that I took). It was really cool to see these buildings that are so old and then see how much of that heritage is in many modern buildings (like the pagoda-style roofs that you see modern iterations of in many places, to name just one example). Now I'm not much of a history buff (I leave such things to Shannon), but I can definitely appreciate being able to see (or more appropriately, 'take pictures of') things that have real historical significance.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day, and I can't wait to go on another adventure like this one where we get to see some of this rich history that exists throughout Asia.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Finally, our first trip out of the city!

And to answer your first question: no, we're not going to Seoul. We're on the bus heading out to a little town called Hong Seong, where our friend Lorie lives. She was so kind as to come and visit us on our first weekend in Korea, so we're off to visit her.

(As a bit of a sidebar, I will admit that blogging on a bus is a little bit more difficult than on the subway, mainly because the bumpy roads make my little iPod bounce around a fair bit.)

We're quite excited to be going on our first inter-city adventure, although we're a little scared that we're on the wrong bus. We bought our tickets assuming we were leaving 20 minutes later, but the girl at the ticket window said there was a bus leaving right away! So we go to the bus that's in the process of pulling out of the lot, tap on the door, and ask the driver, "Hong Seong?" and without a word, he takes our tickets and we get on the bus. So, here's hoping we actually make it to Hong Seong...I guess we'll find out in a couple hours!

(I'll post again with the results of our trip on the way back)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]