Water Temple

Saturday, March 9^th, 2013 – Sunday, March 10^th, 2013

I visited Haedong Yonggungsa Water Temple with a couple of friends on Saturday.  This is a temple right on the coast of Busan and I would definitely say has been my favourite temple to see so far in Korea and it might stay as #1throughout my stay! You can explore the temple while breathing in the sea air and hearing the waves crash on the coast.  It has a peaceful and serine setting which added a lot to the experience.

On our way in, they had all of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals line up! 

Year of the Snake!

We went for a little walk along the coast and we embraced the peace and quiet and the salty air!

Exercise stations they have set up in various locatoins

Try to throw a coin in bowl!

Little underground cave

After our exercision, we went to Haeundae beach for the rest of the afternoon.  There, we walked around, stopped for lunch and ran into some people we knew.  We also watched some live entertainment and did some people watching.

Just taking her cat for a walk on the beach!

That night, we picked up some Sushi for a Japanese themed dinner and movie night.  Aimee is a fan of a director named Miyazaki, so we watched one of his animanted films and ate delicious fresh sushi.  I had the spicy tuna, which was made with fresh tuna, not from the can!  My taste buds have really expanded since being here and I am starting to enjoy foods I would have never imagined even trying in the past.

On Sunday, I woke up at 7am to meet with my friend Casey who volunteers once a month at a local orphanage.  The class was from 9am until 11am with six little girls who all chose to take that class on Sunday mornings.  They were all cute, friendly girls and we taught them a bit but mostly played games with them!

For lunch, Aimee and I met again in Haeundae to have lunch with a Korean friend Aimee met in Busan.  We ate spicy chicken and after lunch we invited him along to come to the aquarium for the afternoon.  We had fun exploring the aquarium and watched the sharks getting fed. 

He showed us a little path by the beach and we went on a nice walk after.  The path had trees and flowers along it and continued beside the coast.  I will take advantage of that beautiful walking path again in the future! 

We called it a day after that, it was another busy but great weekend and I was ready to go home!

Spring is in the air!

Saturday, February 23^rd, 2013 – Sunday, February 24^th, 2013

I started the day off right and went to Costco for the 10am opening time.  A group of seven people went!

After dropping off my food, I met Laura to visit the UN Memorial park near the gym where we practice Jujitsu.  This park was build to honour the soldiers from the UN who found in the Korean War. 

We walked to Jujitsu class from there and we had our first official Gi practice and we were also introduced to our new part time teacher, John.  This particular class involved a lot of sparing, which was challenging but useful to better understand the sport.

 Our name in Korean is written on the back!

On Sunday, we went for our first big hike!  We meet at 10am in a famous temple in Busan called Beomeosa Temple.  There were four of us in total, including a new friend who is an experienced hiker.  First we hiked up the mountain, which was the hardest part, especially when we went full speed up for around 45 minutes straight.  At the top we saw some amazing views of the city!  We hiked along the fortress wall and it was beautiful!  We stopped along the top for a quick lunch. 

We reached the East gate and continued down more trails (similar woods style trails like at home) back towards the city and found the nearest subway.  We reached the subway around 2pm. 

The Jeongwol Daeboruem Fire Festival was being held this weekend.  This is an annual festival that is held the first full moon after the Lunar New Year.  We saw Buddhists praying on the beach, there were booths set up with free tea and coffee and rice.  They had an announcer and dancers and the main attraction was the enormous bond fire on the beach! 

It was incredible seeing such a huge fire pit lit on fire!  Something I will never forget!