Weekend in Yeongcheon

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I lasted updated my blog and a lot has happened in the last week.

Saturday I went to Yeongcheon with a few friends of mine, Chris and Tamara. Chris, my friend from Australia, teaches at an Elementary school in Busan. He's been in Korea for almost two years. Tamara, his girlfriend, is also an Elementary teacher in Busan. She's from Toronto and has been in Korea for a year and a half. We caught a bus Saturday morning and arrived around noon in Yeongcheon where we met Chris and Tamara's friend Thomas, a middle school teacher from England. Thomas showed us around the small city of about 100,000 people. We went for lunch then caught a taxi to the Yeongcheon dam. Korean taxi drivers are nuts and the one that we had was no exception. He got us to the dam in half the time that it should have taken all the while whipping around corners disregarding any safe road rules. We nearly ran into an oncoming car along the way. He seemed pretty confident with his driving skills, unbuckled and all but we on the other hand were not as enthusiastic and were holding on the dear life.

Anyway, after surviving the taxi ride we arrived at a small lakeside town. Tamara got distracted by a really cute puppy chained in front of a store. We got some drinks and snacks and played with the puppy for a few minutes then were on our way up the mountain. Along the way we walked through a Korean graveyard. Looking around I noticed that they burry the dead under large mounds of earth rather than burying them 6 feet under ground. I believe that the larger the mound is, the more important that person was during his or her lifetime. Each mound had a statue or some kind of marking next to it. It was so peaceful and quiet. Very relaxing.

After our hike we caught a bus back to Yeongcheon. We didn't want to risk loosing ours lives again after our taxi experience. Plus the bus is cheaper. When we arrived we went for Bulgogi (Korean marinated beef bbq) and hung out for a while. Afterward we went to a DVD Room and watched "Head in the Clouds", a world-war 2 buffet of a movie. Compared to the setting the love story felt somewhat insignificant and pointless but the production was very good. Anyway, after the movie we were still hungry so we got some Pizza at a local pizza place. We ordered Hawaiian but it wasn't quite what we expected. The pizza had little pieces of fruit on it that tasted like lychee and the ham wasn't exactly ham, it tasted more like spam. After dinner we went to a pub and had a few drinks then we went to Thomas' place and crashed for the night.

The next day we got up, had some cereal and caught a taxi to an orphanage that Thomas and his friend Mar volunteer at. It was a new experience for me because I had never been to an orphanage before. We played games and ran around with the kids for a while. Their smiles were wonderful to see and it made me happy to know that we brought a little bit of happiness into their lives even for a moment.

After visiting the children at the orphanage we had bibimbop at a local restaurant. They served everything in pottery dishes. All I could think of was my sister who would have been in pottery Heaven. Gleeee!!! After lunch we caught a train back to Busan and had dinner at a restaurant near Chris' apartment. We drank two pitchers of beer that were served in some sort of bong tower then headed home.

It was a fun filled weekend that I'll remember for a long time. If you want a visual, see pictures on my facebook and flickr accounts. Click on the link on the side bar under "Jon's Pictures".

Thanks for reading :)