Happy Children's Day to us!!

Saturday the 2nd and Sunday the 3rd of May, Katie and I didn't really go anywhere or do anything, so there are no pictures for that weekend. That Saturday we were hoping to see the triathlon because we thought it went right by our apartment, but the closest we came to seeing any of it was when we went up to the rooftop and saw a bunch of bikers going over the bridge and back several times. There was an ESPN MDC (Asian ESPN we guess) helicopter following them the whole time. On Sunday we went to church and just sort've hung around afterwards. Don't worry though. We made up for the lack of excitement of the weekend on Children's Day (Tuesday, May 5th) when we went to Yokjido with our friend Gerard. Yokjido, or Yokji Island, is by far the biggest island within Tonyeong's domain. We were a little afraid that when we got there we wouldn't know the best way to explore such a big island, but we eventually stumbled upon a place where you could rent go-karts and take a guided tour of the island. Between the three of us, we rented two go-karts for two hours for 80,000 won (roughly... $60 - or $10 per person per hour, not bad). Here are some pictures of our excursion:

A random view Katie was able to capture as we whizzed through the countryside

Our tour guide at the front with Gerard close behind. It was so much fun driving those go-karts!! We're actually going there again soon, except this time with several teachers from our school (hopefully).

Our go-karts parked on the side of the road. We stopped at a few locations to take in the scenery.



The three of us. If you look very closely just to the left of my head, you might be able to make out the peak of Dumido in the distance. There was a cloud hovering over it when we got to this turn-off and it looked really cool because you could only see the top of the mountain-island, making the distance to it impossible to judge: it could've been close and small or far away and huuuuuuge! We spent about a half hour here and by the time we were leaving the cloud had left and Dumido looked much less mysterious and much more mundane.

Just a cool picture that my words cannot describe properly.

Katie and me singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads." I was wearing Katie's glasses because our go-kart didn't have a windshield like the others and I was getting hit in the eyes with dust and bugs.

Driving along the oceanside road with another island off in the distance - so awesome

There were beautiful flowers and shrubs all over the island. Apparently rich Koreans own summer homes on Yokjido, similar to beach houses in America, we think. They're big on having nice lawns and gardens.

My hat flew off and my true identity was revealed

Katie with clusters of islands

After our guided tour ended, we found a Buddhist temple and decided to take a closer look. This is the last picture Katie took before our camera died. It's of a pagoda and a statue of Buddha in the background. The monks or priests that lived there were growing all sorts of vegetables around the temple... I wonder if they were completely self-sufficient, that would be cool.

We think we rented our go-karts for the perfect amount of time because one hour wouldn't have been enough time to explore the whole island (we probably would have gone to that first turn-off, spent a few minutes there and gone back) and three or more hours would have been too much time (our guide seemed to be running out of places to take us). At the end of the tour, our guide took us to a floating dock the we assume he owns. While we were walking around looking at the jellyfish floating close to the surface of the water, he was using this long pole to catch a sea urchin crawling along the ocean floor. He brought it over to us and we just watched it for a little bit while he went off again; it was cute walking on its spikes! He came back with a huge butcher knife and sliced it in half before we knew what was happening and promptly spooned out some of its insides for us to eat. The main thing I remember about it was that it tasted... salty. haha.

We had a great time on Yokjido and we're hoping the next visit with our Korean friends will be just as memorable!

Here is the mandatory GEPIK link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qobf1Dnom0M