Our Trip to Daejeon

August 17, 2005

Greetings once again from Korea!! For those of you who are reading this on your email, I just want to let you know that you can access all of our updates at our blog. The address for our blog is www.reesorsinkorea.blogspot.com . All of our updates are at this site, as well as additional posts and pictures!! You can also leave us little notes there too!


This is the last week of summer intensive -- Alleluia! We have only three more days and we are very happy about that. Then we go back to having our mornings together again, and I can't wait. This has actually gone a lot better than I thought it would though, we have really made the best of it and it has gone pretty fast.


Every day Korea is starting to feel more and more like home. We are starting to build routines here and things are more familiar. We have a walk that we do every night through the neighborhood and a nearby park. They have exercise equipment there for adults so we are doing inclined situps and chinups every night. Then we usually go for ice cream... We have earned it by then right?!?! You can get ice cream cones from a place kind of like McDonald's for less than 50 cents Canadian. Or you can get ice cream bars from convenience stores for about 50 cents. Its a great deal!


This past weekend was a long weekend here in Korea. It was independence day from the occupation by the Japanese. It was a very interesting holiday to be a part of. It has only been sixty years since Japanese occupation. Its crazy when the history is so recent. Lots of people would still remember what it was like. Independence day was also interesting because it became a real rallying day for the reunification of the two koreas. They were waving flags with a picture of all of Korea reunited (north and south). They have a long way to go before that could ever happen but they are taking steps every day. A telephone line has just been established between the two Koreas, as well as work on a railway. And on independence day there was opportunity for video conferencing between families on either side who haven't seen each other in many decades. It was very emotional. I imagine it is quite a bit like east and west Berlin.


On the long weekend we took the bus to a city about 2 hours away called Daejeon. We wanted to go there because they have a costco, and we heard that costco has a lot of western food that you can't get anywhere else. While we were driving into Daejeon though, we drove past an amusement park and decided at the spur of the moment to go there. The amusement park was called "Kumdori Land" and it was so much fun!! Daejeon hosted an expo and so they have amazing facilities all in one area. We went on a big rollercoaster (Jon's first big rollercoaster ride!) as well as a bunch of other rides. It was ridiculously hot that day though but we bought some sunscreen and drank lots of water. And if we got to hot we would just go on the water ride to cool off!


After an awesome day at Kumdori land we took a taxi to costco. Costco was like a big party! We were able to get cheese, tortillas, oatmeal, macaroni and cheese etc. It was awesome! Then they had costco hotdogs and pizza just like at home! As we were leaving we were looking for a taxi to take us home and discovered that costco is about half a block from the train station. We walked in to see if we could take a train back to Gwangju and we could. We decided to splurge and take a first class train car! It was awesome! Our seats were so spacious and we got free drinks. The train could travel to up to 300kms an hour. It was definitely the way to go!


There is a blog posting with pictures from our trip if you would like to take a look at them.


We have found an amazing Italian restaurant here. It is a sister restaurant with another restaurant in Rome, Italy. It is absolutely beautiful inside with a loft and a grand piano and big couches that you sit on. The food is also incredible, and not very expensive. It is definitely one of our favorite places here in Gwangju.


Smoothies. I haven't told you about smoothies yet. Everywhere here you can get fresh fruit smoothies for a dollar. They are made right in front of you and they are incredibly delicious. You can get pineapple, strawberry, kiwi, orange, nectarine, melon etc. We get smoothies almost everyday at lunch. We already know we are going to miss the smoothies when we get home.


Anyway, this is really long so I will send it now. I hope that all of you are doing well and we would LOVE to hear from you!


Love, Jon and Emily Reesor