Last hours in Korea

On Monday, after my class, my housemom and I picked up my friend Meehyang (she has Tuesday off) and we traveled to the East Sea.  Angela (housemom), "drives like a grandma."  She drives slowly, she drifts into other lanes sometimes, and she likes to park in the left lane, despite the speedy cars passing her on the right.  She also likes to leave her blinker on for a long period of time...I think it confuses other drivers, and she pumps the accelerator...so we bobbed back and forth all the way to the beautiful East Sea.

Did you know that 75% of Korea is covered with mountains?  The East Coast is no exception.  It has beautiful mountains and we stopped to take pictures of them.  There was a bit of fog, so the mountains reminded me of the Smokeys.  Because Mathias (house dad) was a veteran, they are able to get very reasonable rates on rooms throughout Korea.  Angela found us a nice two-bedroom condo, right on the water.  It had a kitchen, nice veranda with a view of the water, one bedroom with a bed, one bedroom with just the mats on the floor.  Angela opted to sleep on the floor, as her bed at home is made of jade...she actually sleeps on a rock.  LOL

We roamed around on the beach a bit.  The water is very clear, but the sea looks very deep...no sand bar here.  Adjacent to our condo was a small military outpost.  I guess you could definitely get worse assignments in the Army. Angela made us a delicious dinner of galbi with veggies from her own garden, kimchi that she made, and spicy sauce that she made.  It was a really nice dinner..we shared a nice bottle of barbera. On Tuesday morning after breakfast, we packed up and headed south.  We made several stops, including at a beautiful stretch of beach with white sand, lots of beautiful sea shells, clear water and a sand bar...so the water was pretty warm when we put our toes in it.  It was really tempting to jump in.

We stopped at two national parks, both of which had beautiful (and very old), Buddhist temples.  We also stopped for a lunch of "tooboo" (tofu).  It was really yummy, except for the dish of small anchovies, which I didn't try.  One of our stops for the day was a really old "hanoak" traditional-style Korean house that has recently been restored.  There are many buildings on this property, a water garden, and it was so beautiful!  It was a long drive home and because of noisy neighbors around the condo where we stayed, we all woke up too early. 

Back home, we settled for a bowl of spicy Korean ramen (yummy) and then I got to the job of packing my bags.  I hope they don't exceed the weight limit.  I'm actually carrying an extra tote (I brought along a little fold-up tote) on the airplane with shoes and misc. to take the weight off my largest bag.

John said he's picking me up from the airport when I arrive around 11:30 am on Wednesday.  It will sure be good to see him and be back home.