Goodbye Korea

It is my last day in Korea. I fly out tomorrow afternoon heading for Yemen.  This will be my last post from Korea.  Instead of writing a lot, I have written this whole year about different things in Korea,  I will mainly post some pictures.  First a few more sentences about Korea.  On my last day of work a Korean co-worker told me "that I look like a foreigner but act like a Korean."  When I did hear that it felt good to know that I had become a part of the culture over this year.  Before coming to Korea I had hoped to learn about Korean culture and it seems like I accomplished that goal.  Now it is onto new places where I hope the same thing will happen wherever in the world I may live.  All right, now for the pictures.  These pictures are random pictures that I pulled but hopefully will show some of the highlights of this year.

Being a tourist in Korea

Last week having finished my contract I was on vacation for a short time.  I decided to stay in Korea since I will be leaving here very shortly and plus there were a few more things I wanted to see.  I ended up heading down to an island south of Korea that is known as Jeju-do.  I took a short plane ride from Seoul down to the island.  I planned to stay down there from Sunday through Thursday.

On Sunday after arriving on the island I took a bus down to a town known as Seogwipo.  This town is on the Southern coast of the island and I went down there to explore the bottom half of the island for a couple days.  First night I did get in kind of late and so I walked around the harbor area.  The next day I was able to see a lot of neat things including a smaller island, a couple of waterfalls, and some funny looking sculptures.  The sculptures were all over the place and specifically along the coast line.  The second waterfall was real neat and supposedly is the only waterfall in Asia that falls into the ocean.  Luckily it was low tide so it was easy to take some pictures.

On Tuesday I left Seogwipo and headed to the East coast for another famous island.  After a short ferry ride I was on the island of Udo.  It is this smaller island that has a road that is close to 14 km long in order to go around the whole island.  This island has some great scenery.  Plus this island is also famous for female free divers.  This is actually true for the whole Jeju back in the day but on this island they still do it.  They aren't doing it for sport but instead for food and products to sell.  It was very interesting what they were picking.

What they were diving for that day 

After spending majority of the day biking the island I headed to Jeju-si.  Jeju-si is the biggest city on the island and is on the North coast right next to the airport.  I spent two more days up there but during the day I left the city and went to see more things outside the city.  Jeju is famous for its scenery and beautiful weather and so I spent most of the time outdoors enjoying the nice weather and sites.  A few other things I was able to see was a lava cave, a forest area, a big mountain from a distance, open fields with horses, and lots of coast line.

I flew back into Seoul on Thursday evening and ended up staying in Seoul for the night.  I stayed up there so that way I can go on a DMZ tour on Friday morning.  So Friday I did get up and headed out to see the DMZ area.  For those unfamiliar the DMZ is the "demilitarized zone" that separates North Korea and South Korea.  Technically these two countries are still at war and the DMZ does give an interesting reminder to that situation.  For the tour I was able to see things such as the Freedom Bridge, the 3rd tunnel (was meant to be a way for the North to invade South Korea), Dora Observatory (could see into North Korea), and Dorasan station.  Dorasan station is a train station that is right on the border and I think was the neatest thing out of the whole tour.  This station I think gives hope for a future unification of Korea where they can be one country.  That time won't happen tomorrow but hopefully sometime in the future it will happen.

After the tour I headed back to Boryeong-si.  I have been hanging around here this weekend.  I went out to the beach for the last time yesterday.  Plus I have been saying goodbye to a lot of friends who hopefully in the future I will be able to see again.  It is neat because we are all global travelers and all have an interest in everybody else's adventures.  Plus with the friends I have made whenever I do travel somewhere I could potentially have a local friend in countries all over.  Tomorrow I head up to Seoul for one last time.  Have a few errands to run in the big city and then fly out of Tuesday.  I can't wait for the new places I will be going.  I will write later.