Our 1st visitor!

We had our first visitor from Chicago last weekend! Wahooo! Soup, Keith's good friend since elementary school, stayed with us from Thursday night 'til Monday morning. Keith also went to Seoul the weekend of New Years to visit him, along with another friend from Chicago who is also teaching in South Korea.

Since Keith wanted to show Soup everything he possibly could in the 3/4 days that he was here, it was an insanely busy and exciting weekend! Thursday night, straight from picking him up at the airport we took him to Rajmahall, a delicious Indian restaurant in ShinJeju, where spinach cheese curry dip with nan bread, and Indian spice chai tea satisfied my taste buds! We were there with about 10 of our friends, and all of us headed to a coffee/tea house afterwards where we played poker. Thursday is always poker night but sometimes we play at different places. This was actually my first time playing, so I had to catch up on the different hands and rules. Keith, Paul and Mike went and exchanged our $5 into coins so it was fun to play with real change.

The next day, after Keith and I taught our winter camps and worked out, Keith showed Soup around our city area....they went to the food market, ate a hallabong and rice cake, went into the underground mall, hiked Sarabong (the small mountain near us). We then took Soup to our favorite Mexican restaurant, Zapatas, and met about 10 other friends there. You can see in the picture the funny Slamma cocktail that Keith ordered. Afterwards, we took him to our favorite Choco Art cafe, where Soop was lucky enough to try the Vientiose (the delicious melted cocoa bar drink...very very rich!). The bars concluded the rest of the night....we took him to all our favorites- The Factory, The Bar, Island Stone to watch the bartender fire show, the Dart Bar, A Magic Show bar, and to our hilarious after-hrs photo shop!

We stayed out til 4 in the morning, so slept in a good amount the next day, but then continued the festivities. Early afternoon a bunch of us went to one of the orums (small mountains) near Mt. Halla to go sledding, so that Soup could say he went sledding on a tropical island! :) At first, we were hesitant because it was pretty warm out and the sun had melted most of the snow. However, near the top of the mountain there was enough snow so we hiked up until we couldn't hike anymore. The slope we found was very steep and slippery...which made our sledding contests down the hill very fast and competitive. It was a fun time! Plus we took some beautiful pics with more orums in the background. Check them out!

On the way home from sledding, we stopped at "Mysterious Road". Keith and I have always wanted to go check this out. When you drive on this steep upwards hill and put your car in neutral, instead of moving back down the hill, you actually roll upwards. It's so strange!! There's supposedly another one of these roads that is even more apparent somewhere on the island...we'll have to check it out soon!

Since we were all pretty cold from sledding and being outside for the afternoon, some of us decided to go to a jijabong, a.k.a. a bathhouse/sauna. Paul, Sunghee, Keith, Soup and I all went and for all of us except Sunghee, it was a new and very cultural experience! It was amazing!! You first go in and are separated from the males and females. Each have their own floor, along with 2 floors for both genders. The jijabong cost $7 and I received a pair of long shorts and a loose top, plus a few small towels. I then followed Sunghee to the female-only floor and at that point I was feeling a little nervous because I had heard so many things about these bathhouses. When you are on this floor, everyone is nude and most likely everyone will be staring at me (the foreigner) because they are not very used to having foreigners here. Well, we were given a key that we used for a locker to put our clothes in and then we changed into our clothes that were given to us because we were gonna meet up with the guys. So, to give you a visual of what this room looked like, it looked like a huge open girl's locker room, except there was a little convenient shop where you could buy snacks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, panties, etc. There were also lockers, showers, mirrors and sinks to clean up and do makeup/hair, and then there were doors that led to the bath room....literally. There were about 8 different bathtubs; some were very hot, some cold, some were green tea tubs, etc. ...and again, everyone was nude.

Well, we went to the floor below us which was the floor for both males and females, and I couldn't believe my eyes. There were so many Koreans in the center of the floor laying down and relaxing (wearing those same clothes that I was given), playing cards, watching movies on big screens, doing homework, sleeping ,etc. Then off to the side there was another little food shop, where you could buy icecream, soup, dried fish snacks, tea, coffee, noodles, etc. And then the most interesting part of this level was all the small little sauna rooms. There were about 7 of them..all of different temperatures. We would have to duck to fit inside the little door which opened up into a bigger room. Some of the rooms were filled with stones on the floor to lay on and had head rests. Other rooms had mats to lay on and no stones. I remember one room being 64 degrees celcius (extremely hot!!) and these rooms went all the way down to 44 (warm) degrees celcius. There was also a very cold room, but because of the winter weather, it was closed. There were stairs that led to an upper level, which had additional TVs, lounge chairs/small couches, singing rooms, called Notabong, and other private rooms for massages. This was all an incredible and relaxing experience to me! I want to go back already! Plus, the great thing is you can stay there overnight...so for only 7,000 won ($7), this makes it an easy way to travel around Korea without having to spend money on hotels. Soup, Keith and Paul also thought it was a relaxing and cool place to hang out. They were all sooo hot though in the hottest saunas, so we tried to mix up the rooms so we wouldn't get overheated.

After a few hours in the saunas, we headed back to the female floor to dip into the different tubs and then shower. I was happy to leave and feel accomplished that I actually felt pretty comfortable with my nudity in the bath room and was able to enjoy the experience:)

The next stop was dinner, to satisfy our hungry bellies. We went to a Hamatong restaurant, which serves all types of seafood in a soup. I was a little grossed out at first, since the octopus was still alive when they brought out the big bowl of soup. However, then they cooked it on a stove in front of us, and added shrimp, scallops, crab, mussels, oysters, and conch. When all the seafood was cooked, the Korean waiter removed the shells and added many vegetables. The soup was very very fresh and delicious! I was happy I took a risk and tried it. Soup also enjoyed the experience and had never had such a variety of fresh seafood before. After dinner, we all took Soup to Love Land...since this is a top place to see on the island!! And a highly educational experience! Sunghee luckily used to be a tour guide on the island, so knew one of the workers, who gave us a huge discount on getting in, which was nice since we've already been there. We gave the worker the bag of tangerines that the waiter from the restaurant had kindly given us. Loveland was hilarious as usual, with many exhibits, sculptures, interactive displays and love shops. Good times! If any of you decide to come visit Jeju, you MUST visit here. I don't think they have this anywhere else in the world, at least not to this extreme.

The final day that Soup was here, Sunday, was another busy and fun-filled day. We woke up pretty early and took him for bibimbop for brunch. Then we rented scooters and rode them all the way to the Trick Art Museum with Magda, and her friend Liz who was also visiting (she teaches in Seoul). This sounded like a great idea and a good way to show Soup the island; however, to me it was FREEEEEEZING!!! Probably won't do this long ride again on scooters in the middle of January, but hey I lived to tell the story. I rode with Keith, while Soup had his own little pink scooter:) I love riding these things; they're so much fun! And I hope to learn how to ride it myself this summer. It took us about an hour to get to the Trick Art Museum, which is on the South Eastern part of the island. The museum was new to all of us, and it really was a lot more interesting and fun that I had imagined! The place was filled with portraits that added funny illusions to make pictures look alive and real. On most portraits, it showed an example picture of how to sneak in the picture to add to the effect. For example, there's a painting below which makes it look as though the frog is jumping right into my arms. Another funny one is the rock climbing with me and Keith. We were actually laying on the floor and Soup had to stand in a certain position in order to make it look as though we are climbing on a real rock! There were so many different funny illusions. I already want to go back to take more pictures and try other funny poses! Keith always had a good face and creative ideas...like the foot next to his head on the table. Check out the pictures below!

After we saw everything at the museum, we made one more stop at Sunrise Peak, another 30 minutes east on our bikes. We took the 30-minute hike up the beautiful mountain, and although we were not there to see the sunrise this time, we took many pretty pictures and relaxed at the top of the mountain where we could see the huge crater (which is a pretty green color in the summer, but looks brown here in the winter), the city, amazing rock formations, the ocean around us, and mountains off in the distance. I think Soup enjoyed this hike and seeing the wonderful views of our island. You could also see Udo Island off in the distance.

It was a dark and cold ride back, but hugging onto Keith and thinking about the adventurous and entertaining weekend we just had, made the time fly by. The night ended with us returning the scooters, and Keith and Soup going to get Black Pork for dinner. I, on the other hand, put my heating pad on high, snuggled under my comforter defrosting my numb fingers and feet, and ordered Pizza Maru with my wonderful neighbor Kristin! I had to teach the next morning so wanted to take it easy and relax after such a busy last few days. I was sooo exhausted!