Snapshots of Fall and Winter

원주 (Wonju), October, 2011.

I learned how to belay! This is Erin, a girl we met recently who helped me learn. Isn't Korea beautiful in the fall?

THIS is an incredible thing to be able to do together. I can't wait to keep learning and improving at this.

Bukhansan National Park, September 2011.

Mychel, Jared, Stewart. We miss you. Thank you for coming to Korea.

Thanksgiving, 2011.

Last year we went out for Shabu Shabu, which was delicious, but this year we decided to get back to our roots. With Nina around, and feeling a lot more confident about how to find ingredients we'd need here in Korea, it felt really good to try to do Thanksgiving right.

I'm pretty proud of us. For Stephen and me, and for the Jenkinses, it was kind of our first Thanksgiving. As adults, I guess. We made an entire Thanksgiving meal, mostly from scratch, with a little convection oven, a microwave oven, and three burners. There were no major disasters. It was a miracle. Can you see part of the little oven? It's right behind Derek.

Derek and Ashley made the duck! We stuffed it with craisin-apple stuffing. It was so good!

Noodles for chicken noodle soup.

This is Dana, my coteacher from last year. I miss her so much! She's fantastic! It was so fun having her over for Thanksgiving. Some of our other co-teachers came too. Stephen's coteacher said it was her first time to have a traditional American Thanksgiving. It was nice to have a really good tradition to share with our Korean friends. We even asked Dana and her boyfriend to break the wishbone at the end of the night. Dana got to make a wish :)

The duck was seriously perfect. It was a shame that it was a little bit small. Everyone only got a few bites, but we all still ate way too much food.
I had almost nothing to do with these amazing pies. Ashley spent so many hours patiently and perfectly cutting the apples into tiny little pieces, and Stephen cut, baked, and mashed up the pumpkin for the pies and bread, which he made all by himself.

Note: Koreans don't really make pie--Thus, the impossibility of finding a normal pie pan. I did find these little foil plates that Koreans apparently use like paper plates (it kind of makes sense--so much Korean food is really hot. I guess the foil is good for that or something? i don't know), so I was really excited about the baby pies.
Dana Teacher's boyfriend doesn't speak a whole lot of English. Listening to Nina teach him how to play Mancala was really really funny.

Here we go! Duck, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken noodle soup, green bean casserole, corn, dinner rolls. Pumpkin bread and pies. Our coworker and friend, Andrew brought the candles, which was a really nice touch :)

We were really blessed this Thanksgiving. Plenty of food, warmth, and great people. I'm really grateful that we got to do this. Christmas is in two weeks--Maybe we will get a bigger duck :)

By the way, I'm thankful for my Mom, and for Ashley's mom, even though I don't really know Ashley's mom. During this experience, it seems like one way or the other Ashley or I was always drawing on some kind of cooking wisdom that we got from our moms. And everything was really good. So. Thank you moms. We miss you.

Jennifer Teacher's birthday party at a club in Itaewon, November 2011.

I think Nina snagged one of the party hats from the kindergarten. Jennifer was so cute! Clare, on the right, is Ashley's co-teacher. Both of these girls are so much fun :)

This is Chrisy, with Nina. They came to our school at the same time (Chrisy is from Canada), and together they have made our teacher's office such a pleasant place to be. And they are so cute together!

I love Korea! Look at these stairs!

Bukhansan Hike with Nick

This is all I ever want to do:


I loved, loved hanging out with Nick this weekend. We've known each other since the fifth grade, and I just never ever guessed we'd both be living in Korea at age 24.
This is the alleyway which hides his apartment in Hongdae, a really trendy area of Seoul. Nick really picked his location well. Lots of stuff to do, lots of good food. Also, this neighborhood, which I like a lot.

Bukhansan Mountain was breathtaking. It was an incredible, difficult, beautiful hike. Just north of Seoul, it's the most crowded mountain in Korea. I thought this would be a major drawback, but I really, really enjoyed the experience of basically hiking in a queue. The path wasn't rigidly set, so it was easy to kind of wander away from the route most people were taking and sort of create your own adventure hopping around on the rocks. So many people!

This truly did not bother me. I really liked having all these folks around.

Of course, there were a few less-crowded moments. Here we are, beginning our ascent.




There was a lot of clear, perfect, beautiful water on this mountain.



I turned into a big baby once we got close to the peak. It was really really steep, and I think it would have been enormously easy to slip and fall to my death. This was irrational. Everyone else looks pretty relaxed.

I'm giving the cheesy "I conquered my fear and here I am at the top of this crazy mountain" thumbs up. Nick humored me.




Seoul. It looks so nice and tidy.


This is Insubong. It took our Sabonim five hours to master this thing at one time. I'll never attempt it. Can you see all the brave little climbers?

We spent a little while trying to figure out if this guy in the blue was using a rope. For all the ten minutes or so that I watched him, he never took any tension or made a lot of progress. What do you think?

I really like the Korean flag.


Post-hike arcade fun. This place was LOUD. I only stuck around for a little while to take the pictures.

Jeonju Birthday Adventure Weekend

If you notice an unfamiliar voice in this blog, it is because I, Stephen Varner, and not your usual well practiced blogger, am writing this post.

Andrea's birthday was on the 15th and, for some reason, this year she wanted to take a nice trip instead of having a lot to drink and almost getting into a fight at the pool hall. Although that was mostly fun (last year). On this trip we traveled south to Jeolla-do, the southwestern province of Korea.

We packed the night before and woke up ready to ride our bikes to the subway station. We were running a little late and when we got to the station we barely missed the train. We were certain we would not make the 8:10 bus, but we took the next train anyway. We arrived at the terminal sooner than expected so we ran to get tickets. By the time we bought them and ran out to the platform we were just in time to see our bus door closing. We ran at the bus waving our tickets. The driver amazingly sees us and stops to let us on. Whew! We changed buses in a town called Buan after some coffee and doughnuts. Also a timely transfer. The bus ride to the beach was great.

Here's Andy.

When we arrived at Kyeokpo it didn't look like very much...

but we soon found our way to the beach.

Andrea wanted to explore back in this little cave, but then she found bunch of bugs. This is her going, "Ew ew ew ew!"

We were both really happy to be wearing our Chacos.

Those are my feet by the way.

We had a lot of fun climbing around on the rocks and then set off to find lunch. We ran into a really nice park worker who showed us where we could camp for the night. It looked like a nice enough place, but we just weren't content to stay put. We decided to hop another bus over to a city called Jeonju which is famous for its food, especially bibimbop, which is essentially rice with veggies and maybe an over easy egg. It doesn't sound like much, but even the bibimbop in Songdo is delicious, so we had to try it. We grabbed some cheap street food (awesome anywhere) to hold us over and made the bus with two minutes to spare.

The ride to Jeonju took over an hour so we were ready for some great food when we got there. You may have noticed that this trip wasn't entirely "planned" so it took us a little time to figure out what to do, no thanks to the three information centers which had all closed.

We found a nice restaurant in the traditional Hanok village. (Old-timey Korealand)

This place didn't have bibimbop, but it was beautiful and a great meal anyway.

Here's Andrea looking cute.

Scissors are a regular fixture at many Korean meals.

She's also a master with chopsticks by this point.

Here's the beautiful courtyard.

If you look at the photos carefully you might notice that the sun is going down. We had not found a place to camp by this point, so we left feeling full and happy but a bit worried about where we'd sleep. As we struck out for a park we noticed on a map, we crossed bridge with a stream flowing under it. Now, even though there were streets on both sides and it was in the middle of the city, (for the Kansas Cityans think Brush Creek) we saw that there was a bit of grass on either side. Though we had some people stare as they walked by both that night and in the morning and probably even while we were sleeping, we got through the night with out a word said to us about it. Here's me in the morning.

Andrea only looks sleepy cause I caught her with her eyes closed. The weather is great, the village is beautiful, and we're having a great time.

We got up so early, we had to wander around awhile before we could get some coffee.

Nambu Market.

One of those asian goldfish ponds.

There were so many beautiful things; it was funny to see this giant pile of trash right outside the village. At the time, I was confused as to why the picture was being taken.

We found another great restaurant, also beautiful, and finally got to try the bibimbap. It was fantastic, though we failed to photograph it. sorry.

After we were full and happy we decided we were ready to head home. We caught a cab immediately for the bus terminal. Once again we were right on time for the bus. This time once we bought our tickets, we had three minutes to run downstairs and hop on the bus home.

Andrea looking cool.

Back in Incheon.

We made it home with plenty of time to finish the evening with Derek and Ashley. We had cake, pizza, and beer. A great ending to a great weekend.