4 Days in the Sun....NOT

Annyong!

Well....our 4 days of sweet freedom didn't turn out exactly the way we had hoped. Everything went smoothly at first. We (Matt, Mel, Cindy and Brett) made it to Busan, a city on the shore, on Friday after work. We got up early the next morning to catch our ferry to Geoje, the island we were to spend the next four days on. We successfully caught the 9am ferry....and then our adventure began. We arrived in Geoje and spent three hours walking around looking for a hotel. Turns out it is a busy place. After a taxi ride to a different city, the boys managed to secure some accommodation for us (something that was to be brought up repeatedly on the rest of the trip...yes boys, you did a great job).

After a half hour of rest and some seriously needed showers, we spent three glorious, wonderful, amazing hours on the beach enjoying the only glimps of the sun we would see for the next few days. The beach was deserted except for the four of us and a few other way-goo-gins (korean for "foreigners") who live there. We didn't get to swim, but the view was beautiful and the sun felt great. We spent the rest of our day relaxing with some drinks and wandering the streets. There is always something interesting to see in Korea.

The next day we booked a ferry to a nearby island known to be very impressive for it's flowers and plants. We didn't intend on going there, but it was the only ferry tour left, so we decided to just go anyway. We were a bit distressed when we realized that our ferry tickets didn't have seat numbers on them. You see, in Korea, you have to be ready to fight for your seat...and that is when you have an assigned seat. Without seat numbers, we knew we would never be able to sit together, and it would be lucky if one of us was not elbowed into the ocean by an aggressive ajuma (Korean for older lady). We were last on the boat (we were too scared to go before everyone else), and had to take the only seats left....but again we were the local celebrities. One man in particular took about two dozen photos of us (especially Matt and Mel).....I guess we must be supermodels.
The island was surprisingly beautiful. We could have easily spent all day there looking at the amazing scenery and beautiful flowers. We really didn't expect the island to be that wonderful . The weather gods completely ignored our sunshine dance and instead it was cloudy and cool, but we still felt lucky to be experiencing something so unique.


The weather really put an end to our plans of relaxing in the sun. Instead we watched a movie (Night at the Museum 2 is not good by the way) and spent some time wandering the streets. We ate at some interesting places, and shared some laughs over drinks and cards.

After two days, Mat and Mel had to return to work. Brett and I went back to Busan for our last couple of days. We spent some time in the little shops off the main street. We found the best ceramics place (which also had the cutest dog on Earth) and took a million photographs of children chasing the pigeons at one of the main temples. Oh- and we also learned that when you go to sleep in a strange hotel, you should lock your door unless you want a 7am wake up call from a Korean man who is in the wrong hotel room. ( Mom, I swear we usually triple check out door locks.) Today we returned to Siji, and realized that we live in the best place we have visited in Korea. How lucky is that!