Adventures in South Korea

2011-09-18T14:34:00.111+09:00

Day 303: So we know its been awhile, and fallen into the trap of becoming lazy bloggers, but we hope the awesomeness that is Bali came make up for all that. Needless to say our Bali vacation, although short, was one of the best vacations we've ever been on. The beaches, the surfing, the people, and an almost endless supply of interesting things to photograph made it a trip we won't ever forget. Lets start at our hotel, Mercure, right on Kuta beach, one of the most happening spots in all of Bali. We were not disappointed...

And a sweet infinity pool over looking the ocean perfect for a good photo opp...

We chose to stay at Kuta beach because we read it had beautiful sunsets, and was a great spot for surfing...

As beautiful as it was, we were amazed at the size of the jellyfish some local kids were pulling out of the water...

Although, that didn't stop me (Brandon) from enjoying the waves...

The first day we decided to walk the entire beach, and we got a chance to interact with some of the colorful locals and see some Balinese culture firsthand...

This guy was playing a card game where the loser puts a clothespin around their neck, I guess he wasn't very good at it...

At one point, while Shay was in the bathroom, this guy was pretty insistent on selling me a woman's beach hat. Luckily for me, my big head wouldn't fit any of the hats, but you gotta love his enthusiasm...

.... and his persistence.

We found it interesting to see these offerings literally everywhere on the island. We were told they are offered three times a day to give back to the Gods what has been given to them. It's based on gratitude for the richness of life, pretty cool concept if you ask me...

After our walk we organized an afternoon trip to a turtle sanctuary on a nearby island...

This turtle was seriously heavy and he kept slapping my hands with his flippers. The trainer said the day before a lady got startled by the slaps and she dropped him, so he gave me fair warning to hold on tight...

He then took us to see this python which was pretty intense. Luckily his mouth was taped shut or I'm not sure I would have volunteered for this one...

Shay held the snake too, but it must've smelled her fear because it quickly tried to wrap itself around her neck. The trainer calmly and quickly removed him and we continued on to the other animals...

We chatted with our guide over some drinks and by then we were ready to go home, so our driver got the boat ready and we headed back to the hotel. Before we left we met this adorable girl having dinner, we don't think she wanted to be interrupted though...

That night we planned our trip to the Bali Safari park, where we read you could interact with a baby orangutang. Now that's not the only reason why Shay wanted to come to Bali, but it was definitely a deciding factor...

This was truly one of the greatest animal experiences we've ever had. We got there early so there were no crowds, and we basically got 15 uninterrupted minutes with this loveable primate...

It's hard to see in the photo, but she was so playful she actually took my Ray Bans and tried to put them on her face. She got bored with them and swiftly broke them in two, luckily fake Ray Bans are like a second currency in Bali so they were easily replaced. We kept the broken ones as keep-sake of this amazing experience. Here's our adoption photo...

After that we saw a pretty funny animal show and we moved on to the safari. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, but we still managed to snap a few good shots...

After that, went we checked out the white tiger exhibit, where Shay nicely captured the intensity of this beautiful animal. Feels like it should have " Focus " or "Vision" underneath it like the ones you see in business offices...

The lovebirds sent us off with a farewell kiss and we were onto our next stop, dreamland beach...

This beach was breathtaking and the surfers were top notch...

We wish we could've stayed longer but we were trying to catch the sunset at Uluwatu, a temple famous for its sunsets and aggressive monkeys...

Our guide warned us to leave our sunglasses in the car, and now we understand why. They had a pretty good system actually. Steal tourists' flip flops, jewelry, sunglasses, etc. and then trade it back to the people running the temple for food. Then the tourists tip the people for getting there stuff back, brilliant!

Our guide kept us safe and we were happy to pay the $5 for peace of mind. He also took our point and shoot and took some great photos so we felt like we got our moneys worth. As the sun went down we see why people come here in big numbers, the view was stunning...

We came back and did some shopping on Poppies Lane at night. We also stumbled across this amazing little Italian restaurant run by a guy straight from Sicily. The food was so good he had a wall of celebrities who had visited this place and sang his praises, after eating it we could see why...

The next day our friend Patrick met us at our hotel real early for a full day adventures which started at a place called Sanur famous for its sunrise...

Then we moved on to a traditional Bali house where a family lived to get a more authentic look at Balinese living.

The family was kind and welcoming, and our driver Kadek translated for us. They had an outdoor kitchen, chickens, 2 large pigs, and even a small temple. The father was pretty sweet with his son, too. We then headed to an organic coffee plantation...

This woman and her family had been growing coffee for a few generations on the island. Their speciality was Kopi Luwak, one of the world's most expensive coffees because it is made from the coffee beans eaten by a civet( a mix of jungle cat and a lemur). Apparently something magical happens in that digestive tract because once they poop it out (and it's cleaned) the coffee can sell for up to $50 a cup in some parts of the world. I had to at least experience it for myself. It was a strong cup of coffee, with an interesting aroma, but it was a little bitter for my liking...

We said our goodbyes and were off to another temple. At this temple we were all given sarongs to wear out of respect.We had good timing I guess because we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves...

By this time we were all getting hungry, so our driver recommended a spot with a nice view he knew. We didn't know we were in for a view of a lifetime. The buffet wasn't half bad either...

It was actually an active volcano with a beautiful lake beside it, and next time we come back, we'd like to explore this area a little more. Our next stop was the famous terraced Bali rice fields that you might remember from Eat, Pray, Love...

The best part may have been meeting these two young boys, about 15 and 12, who offered to be our guides down the slippery and narrow rice fields. On the way down, we talked about life in Bali, and then they asked if we knew Justin Bieber. Amazing, half around the world, and these two kids are singing " Baby, Baby, Baby, Oooohhh", all the way down. We guess Bieber fever has hit Bali too...

They couldn't have been nicer, so as they walked us back to our vans, we said some sincere but cliched words of advice " Stay in school, and do your best ", and gave them a little money for their time. They were super appreciative and we exchanged hugs and high fives before we left. As our day winded down we headed to a market in Ubud, another place that has become a tourist magnet thanks to Eat, Pray, Love. The people there were amazing...

It was just a fun place to do some shopping and mingle with all of the interesting Balinese people...

That night when we got back to Kuta, we took Patrick to the Italian restaurant we mentioned before and we had a feast...

On our last day we decided to just hang out around Kuta beach, lounge by our pool, and do some surfing...

And as always, Shay found an adorable stray puppy and quickly made friends...

After watching the sunset, we got dressed up and went for a nice dinner with Patrick for our last night...

In the morning we had our driver Kadek, take us to check out the sunrise at Sanur for one last hurrah before leaving for the airport...

As we said, this was one of our best vacations, and it felt like a second honeymoon as well. We'll never forget our time in Bali and we hope to be back soon. We hope you all had an amazing summer, and we miss you all.

With Love From South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2011-06-19T13:35:00.000+09:00

Day 210: Hello again. We know we've been somewhat abandoning this blog lately- but now that it's nice outside we've been spending most of our time outdoors rather than inside on our computers. Not something I feel that bad about really. However, we've had a few requests to update the blog, so this is what we are doing :) In the past 50 days since our last post, it has become a lot more pretty around here, which has made our photo walks a lot more enjoyable...

Besides photographing flowers and nature, we do try and find interesting places and events to check out on the weekends. About two weeks ago, we went to a festival for Buddha's birthday. It was a beautiful day to just walk the streets and and talk to different kinds of monks...

We came across a group of monks who were making a gorgeous work of art from tiny grains of colored sand. They would rub these two metal sticks together (as you can see above) and grains of sand would slowly fall out one at a time. It was almost done by the time we came across it, but they must have been at it for hours. Later on in the day, we came across a few performances and a parade that was getting ready to start. Everyone involved seemed truly happy to be there, and they were happy to smile for some photos...

Last week, I took Brandon to one of my favorite places in Korea, the zoo. But, surprisingly I wasn't going to see the animals, I was going for the rose garden. Seoul Grand Park zoo has the most beautiful and gigantic rose/flower garden I have ever seen. It is only open for a few weeks and we came at the perfect time. First we checked out the amazing roses- they have every color and type of rose you can imagine, the garden looked like a rainbow of flowers.

Then to my surprise, we discovered a huge area of poppies. If you ask me, poppies are the most photogenic flowers, the way the light hits them is stunning and I probably took about 2000 photos :)

We just happened to run into one of the friendliest monks we've ever met who was also taking pictures of the poppies, and he was more than happy to let Brandon take some snaps of him...

So as you can see, we've been keeping ourselves pretty busy on the weekends. Luckily for us, we also get off early from school on Tuesdays & Thursdays which gives us a few hours on those days to walk around and shoot...

Clearly, no photo walk is complete without finding adorable puppies to play with. I beg Brandon to buy a puppy each time we come across one (which is very often) and since he never gives in, these pictures are as close as I'm getting to having a pet :( Anyways, that's what we've been up to. Hopefully we can get back to posting regularly but only time will tell. We booked our summer vacation to Bali the other day which we are super stoked for. I will finally get to play with a baby orangutan (and hopefully bring one back with me) so I am very excited! Hope your all enjoying your summer as much as we are.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2011-05-01T14:41:00.000+09:00

Day 165: Well hello there! We hope this post finds you well. Things over here are going good, and it's finally starting to warm up which is always nice. We recently took the kids on a field trip to Everland, which is Korea's version of Wonderland, only bigger.

We spent the day walking around the zoo, watching a sea lion show, and going on a variety of spinning rides. Some kids like Stella loved the rides...

But Jennifer just wanted off...
And who knows what Ray was thinking, he is an adorable but very serious 5 year old...

Even mid-ride, he was still totally deadpan ...

Being able to spend the day outside and having fun with the kids was a nice break from teaching. Who wouldn't have fun with these cutie pies? We really do love them.

We'll be back soon with a more in depth update. We have some small weekend trips planned in the next few weeks which we're looking forward to. So until next time, we love you and miss you.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2011-03-15T20:14:00.032+09:00

Day 120: Hey guys! We thought we'd do a quick post to show you some of our people shots from Japan. We were so sad to hear about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan recently, especially now that we've been there and experienced the kindness of the people and the beauty of the country first hand. The photos below were taken at Shibuya crossing- the world's largest intersection. It was a six way crossing that was constantly filled with about 1,000 people every two minutes. It was amazing to watch the massive amount of people coming and going for hours on end as we watched from an overlooking Starbucks...

The people in Tokyo have such awesome style, it was such a fun place to people watch. We had a lot of fun at an area called Harajuku where all the younger people hang out, I can see why Gwen Stefani loves their style so much...

We still have more random Japan photos of temples, statues and such, so we'll be uploading them later on this week. Our hearts go out to all the people in Japan and we feel very fortunate to have been able to travel there and have such a great experience, it truly is an amazing country and we hope it recovers quickly. We hope everyone is doing well back home - we love you lots!!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2011-03-05T18:05:00.047+09:00

Day 109: Time for part two of our Japanese adventure. These photos are all from Tsukiji fish market which is the biggest wholesale fish market located in central Tokyo. It handles over 2,000 tons of fish a day and is the center of about $5.5 billion dollars of fish trade each year. We were told to go early in the morning to catch all the action and although we missed the 5 a.m. tuna auction, there was still plenty to see once we arrived. Now, it wasn't quite as easy to get there as the Lonely Planet made it seem, but after dodging some aggressive cart loaders, scooters and fish trucks we made it to entrance of the whole sale market.

Once inside we were amazed with the sheer amount of activity happening all around us, colourful fisherman characters quickly going about their business almost oblivious to our presence.

The photo opportunities were everywhere, the trickiest part though was not getting in peoples way. We had to be vigilant not to get in the way of deliveries, pick ups, customers and local fishermen doing their thing.

As we snapped away we got the vague sense that tourists were not looked on too highly by the grizzled fishermen and that we were somewhat of a nuisance. We tried our friendly foreigner approach to gain their acceptance but the fishermen seemed relatively unmoved by our efforts.

However, once we bought some sashimi from one of the stalls, it seemed to change the fishermen's perception of us from tourists to customers. It was also nearing the end of their work day and it showed on their faces...

This younger fisherman was REALLY happy to get off work...

As we were leaving, one of the Japanese fisherman (pictured below) yelled out "Where are you from?" and when we told him Canada, he proceeded to speak to us in French. We must have looked surprised and he quickly noticed that we had no idea what he was saying. He said this was the first time he was able to teach French to Canadians which gave him a good laugh.

We figured it was a good time to leave when we saw them discarding large fish heads and closing up their stalls for the day.

We still have so many photos we want to share from our time in Japan that we'll be doing another post soon. We hope everyone is doing great back home, and we miss you all very much.

With love from South Korea,

Brandon & Shayna xo

2011-02-20T13:47:00.021+09:00

Day 95: Hello everyone! As many of you know, we spent our recent Lunar New Year vacation in Japan. Ever since I (Shayna) heard about these Japanese snow monkeys a few years ago, I had my heart set of visiting them. Thankfully for me, Brandon was excited about a trip based around seeing monkeys and off we went. We spent our first two days sightseeing and people watching in Tokyo which we'll show you soon- but we thought we'd start with these pictures since they're some of our favorites.

We stayed at a small Japanese style hostel named Shimaya hotel that was run by the cutest and most generous couple ever (pictured above) . They drove us to and from the monkeys, as well as anywhere else we wanted to go, no questions asked. Once at the park, we actually had to hike through the Japanese alps (on a pretty small, icy trail) for 40 minutes to get to the location but, as you can see it was well worth it...

The temperature in the mountains can drop as low as -40, and to survive the harsh climate the monkeys spend their days bathing and relaxing in the natural hot springs in the area known as Hell's Valley.

Being in such close proximity to these monkeys was truly amazing. Watching them play, eat and interact with each other with no real concern for the strange people pointing cameras in their faces was unreal. Being that close to hundreds of monkeys is an experience that will stay with us for a lifetime.

We'll be back with a new post as soon as we can. We have tons of photos from Tokyo that we're excited to share with you.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2011-01-24T21:12:00.019+09:00

Day 68: Although this post is long overdue, we figured better late than never, right? So here it goes, the past 33 days in a nutshell. First of course was New Years which we spent with some of our friends in central Seoul with an insane amount of people. It was really cold and crowded, but we had a great night. They even sang Seasons of Love (from RENT) in Korean before the countdown, it was random but we loved it. After the countdown, the celebration really began, as the streets were packed with people firing off endless fireworks. It was definitely a cool experience.

The next day, we decided to go check out the biggest palace in Seoul since we were in the area. It was by far the nicest palace we have seen in Korea and made for some nice photos. We all went out for a nice mexican dinner afterwards and it was a great way to start the New Year.

Besides that, we have been keeping a pretty low profile since the weather has been less than awesome. I know winter is always cold, but it's been REALLY cold and so we haven't been having many weekend adventures. We have however explored Osan, taking photos of strangers, temples, and a random bird we came across at a make shift petting zoo in the middle of a huge Arboretum we visited one day.

The real good news is that in only a couple days we will begin our Lunar New Years vacation. We are heading to Japan to see Tokyo for a couple days and then we are on to Nagano to visit the infamous Snow Monkeys bathing in the hot springs. Hope everyones doing great and we miss you all.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-12-25T16:27:00.011+09:00

Day 35 : Merry Christmas everyone! Yep its that time of year again, so grab your egg nog, hang out under the mistletoe and wear the best christmas sweater you can find! We're excited to be celebrating our first Christmas together as a married couple and we everyone has a very memorable Christmas filled with family and friends. We've been getting the kids at our school excited all week as we got ready for our big Christmas party we had on Friday.

We started the festivities with a little gingerbread cookie making that went about as smoothly as it could go with a room full of 70 kids. We managed to keep the gingerbread related injuries to a minimum, and even without any cookie cutters and a fully functioning oven (Korea doesn't believe in ovens) the whole thing turned out pretty darn well.

After we ate the cookies, Arthur teacher distracted the kids with a rousing game of pin the button on the gingerbread man. The kids loved it! Any excuse to put a silly hat on and spin around in circles I guess...

Next, we turned the lights down and put on the classic Frosty the Snowman cartoon. Its amazing how they can stretch that short Christmas song into a full fledged movie but the kids seemed to like it.

After that we cleaned up and got the kids ready for their real lunch. Then it was show time for Santa, so I ate quickly and prepared myself for my upcoming role. I had been elected Santa that morning and I was excited about the prospect of redeeming myself for the tired looking Santa photos I generated for my school last year. Another teacher Sherry got the kids riled up as she set the tone nicely for Santa's big entry. I did the best Kris Kringle I know how, and Arthur helped hand out the presents as the kids posed for a photo with Santa. I think it was a marked improvement on my part from last year, but I still suffered a few wardrobe malfunctions and heard " you're not the real Santa! " from some trouble makers in the audience. All in all, the kids had an awesome time and it will be a Christmas that they will never forget.

More photos of the kids, our school, and our apartment in the next post. Until then, enjoy the holidays and any time off you may have. We're working Monday and Tuesday but then we're off until January 4th which we're looking forward to.

****P.S. There has been a Christmakkah miracle! ****

This morning, I (Brandon) went to Lotte Mart (kinda like Wal-Mart) to buy our Christmas tree. As things in Korea are always a little strange, they told him that since Christmas was yesterday, I could no longer purchase any of their trees (that were still on display). Knowing that I couldn't come home empty handed I talked to several employees and supervisors about buying one of the sample trees. One after another they said " Sorry, not possible". As I was leaving feeling defeated, a sweet lady behind the cosmetic counter said, "Wait" and began opening a big box. Inside was a big tree, decorations, and even lights. She showed me the stuff and I asked " how much ? ". With a big smile she said something in Korean I didn't understand, then she said "Service" which is Korea's way of saying free. I walked out of there with a giant box of everything I needed which a day ago would have cost me $125, but today it was completely free. Thinking I was leaving with nothing, I couldn't help but feel like I'd just experienced a mini Christmakkah miracle and now our place really feels festive. God I love Korea!

With love from South Korea,

Brandon & Shayna xo

2010-12-06T21:18:00.045+09:00

Day 16 : We're officially back in Korea and we couldn't be more excited.We had an amazing summer and we want to thank all our family and friends for making our time back home so special. That being said, its great to be back doing what we love, traveling, taking photos, and teaching the occasional English class. For any of you concerned about the situation over here don't worry, things seemed to have calmed down and as usual the media makes it seem worse than it is. When we arrived, we wasted little time and our friends here had already planned a road trip adventure for our very first weekend. There were six of us in total so we rented a big van and hit the open and often unpredictable Korean roads.

Luckily we were in the very capable hands of our driver Patrick and he was able to reduce the near death collisions to only a handful. We were heading south to start in a place called Gokong, which is famous for its prehistoric tomb sites called Dolemans, that date back to early Korean civilization. They're scattered all over the country but the main cluster of them lie here.

They're basically massive rocks laid on top of each other that kind of resemble a table. We hiked around the area a little, felt rain, and then got lucky as the sun tried to break through and made for some cool photos.

After we had our fill of Doleman tombs we left for Jeongju an hour away to visit a very interesting Fortress. We made it to the huge walls surrounding the fortress but it seriously looked like it was going to pour. Shay and Patrick decided to not risk it with their expensive cameras and checked out a museum on the grounds. Jenny, Phil, and I thought we'd chance it and see what happened. We got close to the fortress and then the skies opened up and torrential rains came down, but we were able to seek refuge under the main gate.

It didn't last long and we were able to walk around a beautiful fortress garden and check out some traditional housing as it was hundreds of years ago.

On the way out we also scaled the fortress walls and made it to a look out point that gave sweet views of the foggy city below.

We met up with Shayna and Patrick at the museum in the midst of them being serenated by a trained Korean opera singer who had taking a liking to them. By this point we were starving so we grabbed some food. On the way out we saw an advertisement for a traditional Korean music performance that evening close by, so we jumped at the opportunity for some culture and bought tickets. To kill some time we walked around a traditional Korean village right in the middle of town, and they had converted much of it into interesting little shops for visitors and tourists.

We got to the performance and being the only foreigners there got a few looks but mostly went in undisturbed. The performance was a fusion of traditional Korean music, rock n roll, and opera with several very good singers making appearances throughout the performance.

I ( Brandon) really enjoyed it and so did everyone else but some of the group thought is was a little long winded for their taste. All in all everyone was happy to get to experience something unique like that. Being pretty beat from the day, we all checked into the classiest love motel we could find and crashed. The next day we woke up early to visit one of the biggest catholic churches in Korea. The building had really spectacular features, and we hope the people didn't mind us joining their morning mass.

Shay was even able to capture an older women in deep prayer.

Next we went off to a famous temple close by called Toepsa. It was a little bit of a hike to get there but it was worth it. On the way up we ran into some of the cuttest puppies we have ever seen and Shay wasted no time getting the shots.

Most temples in Korea look pretty similar, but this one was special because a monk had spent his whole life stacking rocks on top of each other to form these massive rock pagodas all around the temple. Now that's dedication!

It made for some cool shots and we even got to meet the monk in charge of the place, who was looking out with a megaphone in his hand ready for any temple troublemakers.

After climbing to the top and seeing all that there was to see at the temple, we decided it was time to make our way home, in hopes of beating the dreaded Korean traffic jam. We had a little pit stop at Costco on the way home, where we blew the remainder of our budget on old cheddar cheese and Costco muffins. We got back to our place, and much to our delight our bed had been delivered as promised and our new apartment was already to starting to feel a little more like home. It was a great weekend and a great chance to catch up with old friends we hadn't seen in half a year but none us seem to have missed a step and we all had a awesome time.

It was also our first Korea adventure where we both had good cameras to capture the moments with, so it was nice for me (Brandon) to graduate from equipment manager to full on photographer. Shay's been a great teacher and she's still teaching me more and more so we look forward to more adventures and more stories to share with you! We hope everyone is doing great back home, and we hope you all have an amazing holidays!

With love from South Korea,

Brandon and Shayna xo

2010-06-27T09:38:00.018+09:00

Hey guys!!
I thought it was about time I kept my word and so here is our much overdue Toronto blog post. We've been home for a little over a month now and we have been pretty busy. We are living near the Harbour front which is a gorgeous area close to the water! Needless to say, we take lots of walks and are trying to enjoy our time off as much as possible. There is so much to see and photograph- like this cute little day old swan swimming with her mama, awww....

Not to mention our incredible view from our place, can you say a-m-a-z-i-n-g ! ! ! !

We are of course seeing all of our friends and family and catching up with them whenever we can. It's been a very long time (about 6 years) since we've been in Toronto for more than a week at a time, so it's been really nice. And of course, my camera has been with me most days and my friend Jana and I were able to have a quick photoshoot in the park the other week which was tons of fun- isnt she gorgeous? Look at those eyes ... !!!

We went to my version of "heaven on earth" the other week at Woofstock. Pretty much they closed down a whole bunch of streets near Kensington Market and people brought their dogs to chill for the day. We all know I (Shayna) LOVE doggies and I had the funnest time ever taking photos of all the adorableness, check out these cuties...

We're also trying to continue our strangers project- with a focus on Toronto street performers. Brandon talks music with them and then we snap away, we've only gotten 2 so far but we'll get more as time goes on I'm sure...

Then the other day, we went over to Toronto Island and to get some more shots of the city, we're going to try to get as many as we can while we're here since it really is awesome, don't you think?

Anyways that's it for now, the wedding plans are coming along but we don't have anything to share with you yet. Our Engagement shoot is on July 27th, and any cute ideas for a theme are welcome! As much fun as it is here, we really do miss Korea and we wish you could all be here to celebrate with us. Give big hugs and kisses to the kids for us and tell them we love them! I'll try to be good and blog again soon.

With love from Toronto,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-05-05T19:16:00.007+09:00

Day 334: It was Children's Day here in Korea yesterday, which meant the day off for us :) It wasn't the nicest of days but we knew we didn't want to stay inside. We decided to head to Bucheon park, where we knew most of the kids would be playing with their families. So here's some of the cuteness we came across....

The kids in Korea really are too cute for words! So that's it, just a quick update. We're heading to bed soon. We're getting excited about coming home, can't wait to catch up with all of you in person!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-04-28T21:20:00.026+09:00

Day 326: Well, we've actually been in Korea for one year and two days- and somehow our blog is only on day 326, not sure how that happened...Anyways, we have been terrible bloggers lately and we apologize. Now that we're getting ready to leave, sitting at home and blogging is the last thing on our minds. Having said that, we know you still want updates, so here's the last few weeks in a nutshell.
Two weekends ago, we headed back to the zoo for our final visit since it is one of our favorite places. Seoul Grand park is rated one of the 10 best zoos in the world and it's a beautiful place to spend the day. As always, it was very entertaining and made for awesome photo ops. We made sure to try and watch the feedings since that always ensures the animals will be up and about. These our some of our favorites from the day, especially the 100+ year old turtle eating a banana and the baby giraffe. And check out the crazy ostrich with the huge neck! We heard a really loud alarm sound and realized it was coming from the bird- we didn't know they could do that, it was really strange to see its neck get so huge!

This weekend, we went to an area of Seoul called Insa-dong that is known for its old meets new scenery and shops, with our friend Jenny. It was packed with people and we had a great time looking at art galleries and people watching. The first place we went had this interesting art exhibit by a Korean wood sculptor named Sang Ki Jung who has spent 6 years making all sorts of wooden sculptures by hand. Here's a photo of the artist in front of one of his pieces which we really liked.

We spent the whole day just walking around snapping photos of the people around us and of course some of ourselves as well :) Here's Jenny and I in front of some pretty graffiti we found.

There was a parade that was going through the area as well, not sure what it was for but apparently they have one each weekend...
We also tried to continue getting photos of interesting strangers like this man who Brandon stuck up a conversation with while we were walking. He was very happy to smile for the camera, as you can see, it's amazing to see how friendly some people are ...

As we continued down the main path, we ran into a photo shoot in progress in the middle of the big crowds. This man was covered in colorful paint and posing on a pedestal for a photographer. Without getting too much in their way, we grabbed a few shots of our own...

After that, we were walking around looking for a place to have lunch when I heard Brandon say, "Hey look, there's an escape artist!". So of course, I grab my camera to get a photo only to realize that the woman he saw with a black bag on her head tied up with ropes was not an escape artist at all. After laughing pretty hard, the woman running the event explained to Brandon that she was part of a protest for human rights abuse in North Korea, and there I was with my cameras wondering why it was taking so long for the lady to set her self free from the ropes. Oops!

We ended up having lunch at a Korean BBQ restaurant that did not sit well with me (Shayna). We had a long treck home and right as we got to the steps of our apartment building, I threw up in a coveniently placed pot hole :( I never get sick like that, so we assumed it was the food, but we spent that Sunday just resting and taking it easy since I wasn't feeling 100%.
This weekend, we will be doing some more fun things before we go since we don't have much time left. We're supposed to be getting some gorgeous weather, so we're crossing our fingers. Hope things back home are awesome and we'll be seeing you all soon enough :) And in true Korean fashion, here are some words of wisdom we found on one of our students journals, to get you through your weekend, enjoy:

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-04-08T21:40:00.020+09:00

Day 305: We know it's been a while since we've blogged- there's been lots going on and our internet has been spotty. So before we update you on all of the new things that have been happening- we thought we'd first give you a quick post from my birthday last weekend. Last Friday, Brandon had all of my new kids and all of my old kids throw me a surprise party in the morning. It was so sweet, and I know have about 50 hand written cards and a lot of uneaten birthday cake :) Friday night, the teachers all went our for Korean BBQ to celebrate, which was fun and delicious!
Early the next morning, a bunch of us headed to Jinhae a beautiful city about 5 hours from Bucheon. It is famous for it's cherry blossom festival this time of year and it was a nice change of scenery. Since the festival just started, not all of the trees were in full bloom- but we had amazing weather and it was still very beautiful. It was a great 25th birthday and I'm glad I got to spend it with such awesome friends!

Oh, and I almost forgot the best part of my birthday...Brandon bought me a new 85mm f/1.8 lens, which I have been wanting for quite a while :) Here are some of the beautiful blossoms I was able to capture with it...

We hope you guys are enjoying the beginning of Spring, and we'll be back soon with a more
in depth update. We miss you and love you lots!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-03-07T16:33:00.012+09:00

Day 274: Hey everybody! It's been a few weeks since our epic weekend trip down to Gyeongju but the memories are still pretty fresh in our minds. A big group of us went down there to celebrate our friend Jenny's birthday and it was a nice chance to hop on the train and see some of Korea's beautiful countryside. The city was once the capital of Korea and has a rich thousand-year long history full of King's tombs, temples, and tons of interesting places to see. Our first stop was a very famous temple called Bulguksa. We brought our tripod too, so we could get great group shots without harassing any Koreans or monks to take our photo.After we finished hamming it up for some group shots, we made friends with this really nice monk, who was actually acting as an ambassador and guide for visiting foreigners. He let us sit in on his sunset prayer and chanting, as well as an amazing drumming performance by a whole group of monks. After this it was getting late and we went to look for a motel close by.

We found a place close by and settled in. The girls were beat but me (Brandon), Patrick, Byung Chul, and Kara were still up for a little adventure. We tried to get a Taxi to take us to this place where the kings and royalty used to throw parties and banquets but we couldn't get a taxi in that area. That's when the owner of the motel unexpectedly offered us the keys to his SUV and said we could take it for the night. We were blown away by the kindness and trusting nature of this absolute stranger. We got in the car and headed to the King's party palace pretty pumped up by the turn of events.

The lighting and reflections off the lake were stunning, and it was fun to imagine what it must have been like to party there hundreds of years ago. This was also the first time Shay let me take her camera out alone so the pressure was on, but I think I was able to rise to the occasion :)
The next morning we headed off to a famous Buddhist Grotto and then on to the Tombs of the Kings.This was an ancient astronomical observatory. Total number of slabs used for construction 361, total number of days of a lunar year 361. Coincidence? I think not. In this group shot below, the tomb we are standing in front of was open to the public and had many interesting artifacts from the Silla dynasty.After leaving the tombs we decided to go to an old Confucious school, when we had a chance encounter with this older man in the picture below. We were peaking our head into his front yard because he had all these cool rock sculptures that caught our eyes. He invited us in and showed us his life's work, and it turned out he was a world famous sculptor who has had many exhibitions throughout Asia. He explained that his art work was done in the same spirit of Bonzai and that the beautiful mountains in Korea were his greatest inspiration. It was all very Zen.
He seemed genuinely glad to have met us, and invited us to stay for tea with his wife, but unfortunately we had a bus to catch. We took this photo and he gave us his address so we could mail it to him. It always amazes us the interesting people you meet when you are open to new experiences.

Well that's our trip, we had a blast celebrating Jenny's birthday, and I think we were all glad to get out of Bucheon for the weekend. We just started a new semester, with all new kids, so its been pretty hectic, but both of us are enjoying getting to know a whole new batch of kids. Hope everyone's enjoying the warmer weather, we'll update you again soon.

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2010-02-19T23:35:00.011+09:00

Day 258: Hey everyone! Just a quick post to share our Valentine's day adventure with you. Brandon took me to this beautiful place called the Garden of Morning Calm, two hours from where we live. Luckily for us, it snowed for two days straight before we went which made for beautiful scenery...
Although, it was so oretty during the day, it was even more gorgeous at night when they turned on the lights. We knew they would do this, but we had no idea how amazing it would be- it was so colorful and romantic :) We hope you all had a great Valentine's day weekend and we have tons of fun stuff to post this week. We just got back yesterday from another weekend trip for our friend Jenny's birthday with a bunch of the teachers. We also have some awesome funny stuff from our kids to share, including some funny journal entries and videos :) In a few days we are getting new classes, and new students which should be exciting and we'll have plenty of new funny stories.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-02-05T22:58:00.009+09:00

Day 244: Its Friday again, and we finally have some time for an update. Last weekend was our friend Kristina's birthday, so all the teachers went out to celebrate on Saturday. We had dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant and headed over to the new foreigner bar in Bucheon called The Park. They had a pretty good dj there, and we were having a great time just dancing and playing pool. Our friend Jenny had given Kristina fake mustaches as a silly bday present, so she decided to share them with us so we could join in on the fun. Don't mind my (Shayna) face in these photos, the damn mustache would only stay on if I made this face...gorgeous...I know...

It was a very fun night, and it was nice to have everyone together. So on Sunday we slept in a bit, and then Brandon went to have a guitar jam with Greg and JD and I went to have some coffee with Kara and Jamie.

So now we are just getting ready to start this weekend. We went out to TGIF's last night and had an awesome dinner- its the only place to get a descent bacon cheeseburger in Korea. Oh, and I found out today that Brandon is taking me on a very romantic getaway next weekend for Valentines day, it's going to be so beautiful, I'm very excited! Hope you are all doing well, we miss you and love you lots.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2010-01-17T11:41:00.008+09:00

Day 225: Hiii guys! It's Sunday here, and we're spending the day cleaning and doing some laundry, and updating the blog :) The last 2 weeks since we've been back have been pretty chilly and we've been staying close to home during the weekends and taking it easy. It was a little tough going back to work after spending that week in paradise, but we think we're finally getting into the groove again. We would have never expected Korea to get this cold, and from what our boss tells us, its the coldest its been in a long time. We've had a lot to keep us occupied though. Last week we had Poly's first ever story telling contest for the kindergartens and poetry recital for the pre-kinders and pre-schoolers. Lets just say its hard to keep a room full of children under 5 interested in poetry for over 2 hours so it turned out to be a minor disaster. The story telling contest turned out a little better, and there was some funny moments with kids telling us animated versions of Little Red Riding Hood and lots of other classics. It never ceases to amaze us how darn cute these kids are and how fun it is seeing them grow up. Here are some pics of the kids we thought you might enjoy from the last few weeks.

We hope 2010 has gotten off on the right foot for all of you and we wish everyone all the health and happiness in the world.

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2010-01-04T11:42:00.047+09:00

Day 212: Happy New year guys! We hope you all had an amazing break. We came back from Thailand on Friday night, to a crazy snow storm here in Korea. there is so much snow here, that we actually had a snow day which gave us a chance to download our photos to share with you.
Our trip was wonderful and the weather was perfect the entire time! Our first night there, we walked the beach, explored the hotel and watched an awesome fire show at the beachfront restaurant. Our place was gorgeous and only a one minute walk to Karon beach :) On our second day, we visited Kata beach and did some shopping in the local markets and booked a few day trips that we had planned. We also attracted a cute doggy friend who we nicknamed Straggles who came along for our walk. If Shayna had her way, he would have come home with us :)

On our third day, we went elephant trekking with our friend Jenny which was cool and a little scary at the same time! Our elephant's name Namoon and we had the best elephant trainer with us. After about 10 minutes into the ride, he jumped off Namoon and told us to ride on the elephants head. He grabbed my camera from me, and proceeded to take about 200 pictures for us :) Our elephant was only 30 years old, which is young since they live to be about 100~ He also was VERY hungry and ate everything in sight. When Brandon first got on his head, he walked straight to a tree, and grabbed the top branch and actually pulled the entire tree down on Brandon and I. I think he as testing us :) After that, we got used to each other and even took a bath with him in a little pond. It was by far one of the most memorable parts of the trip.

The next day we headed to the Big Buddha and Chalong temple, the most famous temple in Phuket. The Buddha was huge, but still under construction, and the views were incredible! The temple was beautiful as well, and loaded with tourists.

On the fifth day we spent the day at Patong Beach. It is one of the more popular beaches in Phuket and way more crowded than Karon beach. Although it was fun to people watch, we preferred our more low key and laid back beach. While we walked the beach, we ran into some interesting characters, including a little boy with a net over his head playing in the water :) And at the very end of the beach, where there weren't as many people, we met an awesome man and his three Rottweiler puppies. One of them had a hurt leg and he says he brings them to the beach to rehabilitate it. Of course, Shayna was in heaven playing with the dogs and watching them run on the beach.

On our sixth day, we took a day trip to Phi Phi Island. The trip included visiting the Maya Bay where the movie The Beach was filmed, snorkeling, going to Monkey Beach, and exploring Kai and Phi Phi Islands. But, our boat's engine broke down while we were having lunch and so we got stranded on Phi Phi Ley for about 4 hours. Although we missed some of the activities, we are glad we got to see and chill with the monkeys, which was pretty exciting and totally terrifying since they are totally wild and not afraid to attack! When we got back, our agent refunded 50% of our trip and we took ourselves out for a delicious surf 'n' turf dinner!

Finally, on our last day, we decided to stay on our beach and just relax. Also, since we have always wanted to try para sailing, we did that too! The views from above were gorgeous and when you looked down into the water, all you could see for miles were these huge jellyfish. It was a pretty epic view, although we wouldn't want to get stuck in that part of the water! Afterwards, right before sunset we were swimming in the ocean where we found this beautiful purple starfish which we of course put on our heads for some funny shots.
Finally, it was time to get ready for our New Years dinner and beach party. Our hotel had an amazing buffet and fun performances. We joked that we were at the T.G.I.F's of hotels because of the insane amount of flare they put up for the party. It was an amazing night which ended with us firing up a big paper good luck hot air balloon type thingy and watching an incredible fireworks show on the beach. We wish you all a great 2010, and can't wait to have our wedding in 8 months and 18 days (not that we're counting or anything) :)
With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2009-12-25T13:26:00.002+09:00

Day 202: We wanted to send out a big MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! We hope you all enjoy the holidays and have a happy new year. We're off to Thailand to spend our holiday in the sun :)

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2009-12-13T20:25:00.016+09:00

Day 190: We have survived our gauntlet month of working Saturdays and this was our first weekend where we could have 2 full days to ourselves. It was a beautiful day on Saturday so we decided to make the most of it. We went into Seoul with our friend Jenny to do some exploring and vendor shopping. We also decided that we would begin a photo project that we have wanted to start for some time now. We want to photograph 100 interesting strangers from all over Korea. We had been hesitant before but luckily our friend Jenny is very outgoing and not shy at all and had no problem approaching absolute strangers. After awhile we all warmed up to the process and by the end of the day we were all joining in on the fun. These first 4 photos (top included) were from the subway going into Seoul. We just love how unique each individual is, and with the amount of people here there is no shortage of inspiration.

After we left the subway we went on an epic walk of the Sinchon area trying to find this one area we had been to in the summertime. This area was filled with university students, and it is known for its artistic feel and creative culture. We thought this would be an awesome spot to find people. Unfortunately it was not as easy to find as we remembered but we met and shot a lot of interesting people along the way.

After about 3 hours of exploring we were about to give up trying to find that area when we happened to stumble into Hongik University area, the place we were looking for all along.By then it was getting dark, but the neon lights and packed streets made for colorful backdrops. As you can see we found an eclectic mix of young and old and got some really cool shots.

All in all it ended up being a pretty awesome day. There is something rewarding and exciting about approaching strangers, meeting new people, and pushing ourselves to get out there and start our project we've wanted to do for awhile. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season, we've got our tree up in our apartment, were just looking for a Jewish star so we can fully celebrate Christmakah.

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2009-11-29T15:03:00.012+09:00

Day 176: We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Here in Korea, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving but nonetheless we taught the kids about the holiday on a field trip to Outback Steakhouse. Random we know, especially since we had a four hours to spend there! The kids were crazy excited to go, and we thought we'd show you how it went...
When we arrived there, the kids had to sit and wait patiently while the staff got ready for a bit...
After what felt like FOREVER..it was time for the Outback tour! Now we know what your thinking, it's just a restaurant..what would they show them on a tour? Well, first they walked around and showed them the paintings on the wall, and then actually talked to them about the air ducts, and taught them about boomerangs and kangaroos...but nothing at all about Thanksgiving. Then of course, since we still had 30 minutes to tour (according to the schedule) they proceeded to take the kids through the kitchen. They showed them the ice machine, the dishes, and then they took them inside of the freezer! Here's Louis who was extremely satisfied with the tour, it doesn't take much to make these kids happy...After the tour, they sat them down to have some drinks, while they waited for their steaks...When we had all finished our steaks and ribs, they brought out the turkey.... The kids were pretty excited to get to try turkey, and the trip ended up being a success! Shortly after, we headed back to school to make some hand turkeys, gobble gobble... The kids are so cute on field trips when they are in their jackets and boots, they look so grown up...

So that was our Thanksgiving, a little chaotic but a lot of fun! We are just relaxing this weekend and taking it easy. Less than a month until we are in Thailand, we are so happy about that :) We miss you all and hope you have a great weekend!

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna x0

2009-11-18T21:02:00.030+09:00

Day 165: Hisayo! Well we've had another awesome few weeks here in Korea. Our schedules have been a little nuts lately due to the swine flu. Our school had to shut down for a week about two weeks ago, and so we had a nice welcomed break. Although, now we are working Saturdays to make up the days we lost and it's pretty tiring! Brandon brought his guitar in last Saturday to play for the kids. We've been teaching them fun songs like Twist and Shout and In the Jungle, and hearing them sing with their little Korean accents is hysterical! We play them the Ferris Bueller video for twist and shout and they dance around the room, it's too cute! We are also teaching them Christmas songs- my pre kinders have mastered Walking in a Winter Wonderland. I taught them the Jason Mraz version and they scat and everything, it's amazing how quickly they've caught on to it.
So since we haven't had much free time since our week off, I thought I'd share some photos I took of my friend Jenny. We went to this place we found called Fantastic studios, where they have recreated old Korean movie sets. It only cost $3 to get in and it looks like an old deserted run down town filled with old bars and movie theatres, but it was actually only built in 2008.

We were the only ones there for most of the day and we had so much fun just running around and shooting away...She made my job easy, she's gorgeous!

We had such a good time, and we kept each other laughing all day long! I love her!

As always, we love and miss you all! Oh and we booked our trip to Phuket, Thailand for our winter vacation, which we are super excited about! We have a great hotel and we are planning all sorts of fun excursions :) We can't wait to get to the beach since we are supposed to have our first snow tomorrow! Hugs and Kisses xo

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-11-07T15:16:00.011+09:00

Day 154: Hope you all had a fun Halloween! We celebrated at school with the kids and had tons of fun. Koreans don't celebrate the holiday, so the kids were very excited to be able to dress up, get scared, and to eat candy of course :) For the younger kids, they had a bunch of activities to do like making masks, carving pumpkins, and playing the toilet paper mummy game. We also made a pretty awesome haunted house in the library for the kids to go through. We were both assigned (along with 3 other teachers) to be in the haunted house and try our best to freak their freaks! Brandon wore a pretty scary pumpkin mask and popped out of a grave which made all the kids cry- and gave them a Halloween they will never forget. Here's just some of the cuteness from the little ones...
Oh right, we dressed up too- Brandon was a cowboy and I was an Indian :)
JD and Jamie were vampires! And Jenny was a character from Harry PotterThe older kids were pretty cute in the afternoon, and they had a costume fashion show that was pretty fun- check out our grade 2's below in all their cuteness...awww.....

That's all for our quick update, we'll share more soon. Miss you all!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2009-10-28T21:48:00.015+09:00

Day 144: The last two weeks have been great. Last weekend we went into Seoul with some friends to look for Halloween stuff - Brandon's going to me a cowboy and I'm going to be an Indian. Since Koreans do not really celebrate the holiday, we didn't have much luck, so it looks like we'll be getting creative with the art supplies at school :) We also went to Yongsan with our friend Jenny to do some shopping. Brandon bought a video game called Uncharted 2 and I got a pair of fall/winter boots. We ended our day of shopping with a lunch at a trendy restaurant that overlooked Seoul.
This weekend we had beautiful weather, so we took Jenny to the zoo, since she hasn't been there yet. Plus I love any excuse to go to the zoo...Anyways, we couldn't of asked for nicer weather and the leaves were all such beautiful Fall colors as you can see...
And of course, the animals were beautiful and fun to watch as always. Since we have been to the zoo a few times already, I took Jenny around to the animals while Brandon took a hike through the mountains that surround the zoo. Here are a few of the photos I snapped as we walked around....

We met back up with Brandon just in time to go watch the lion feedings. They have about 9 lions and they are so awesome to watch, especially when they are being fed. We showed up a little early and got to see the four big males all cuddling and relaxing together which was pretty amazing. We watched them jump and fight over raw chickens that were being thrown to them by their trainer. At the end of the feeding, there is one "extra" chicken that gets thrown and they have to fight for it and there was a chase scene which was pretty epic.

Then on Sunday, we got together with our friend Dennis and his new baby girl Iris. He had asked me to take some photos of the baby for him, which I gladly agreed to do. She is so adorable and has the most stunning dark green eyes! I'm still working on the shots, but I'll share them as soon as they are ready. That's all for now, we'll update you again shortly.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2009-10-11T17:45:00.038+09:00

Day 177: Hey guys. So here's our long awaited update- we've been having issues uploading photos on here, so it took us much longer then expected to be able to post. Anywho, since there's so much to catch up on, we figured we'd keep the writing short and sweet...so here's the last month in pictures:

First, we had Pajama Day at school which was fun for the kids and relaxing for the teachers...

Next, Brandon, Jenny and I went to a beautiful palace in Seoul called Chang Deok Gung where we got an awesome English tour with more foreigners than we are usually used to seeing...

After that we celebrated the Korean thanksgiving (called Chuseok) at school and all the kids wore their traditional Korean outfits known as Hanboks, and we spent the day playing traditional Korean games. The kids outfits were so bright and colorful, they looked adorable as you can see...
Then of course we celebrated Brandon's 25th birthday! We had a long weekend (because of the holiday) and amazing weather so Brandon wanted us to check out Bukkhan Mountain. Our friends Jamie and JD came with us for the adventure, and boy was it an adventure! We had decided to climb to the peak of this one mountain and had no idea how long it would take, not to mention how hard it would be. To make a long story short, Brandon was the only one to make it all the way to the top, and after about 2 and a half hours of hiking to the top, the sun was starting to set, and we made the majority of the climb down IN THE DARK! Climbing down really steep rocks without being able to see ahead of you is not the funnest thing ever, but we made it down with only minor injuries, and can laugh about it now :)

Lastly, we had our friend Greg's wedding. He has been in Korea for a few years and married a really nice Korean girl named Kuen Hwaa. The wedding was beautiful and got us even more excited about our own...So that's what has been happening with us, and we hope that life is treating you all well. As always, we miss you and think of you often!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2009-10-03T12:45:00.004+09:00

Day 162: Hi everyone! Sorry we haven't been posting lately, and we promise we'll be updating you soon. It's a long weekend here right now so we'll have plenty of photos to show you in a few days. But until then we figured we'd let you see what's been keeping us so busy at work these past few days. We had a monthly test recently, and of course, we are in charge of marking the essay questions that the kids have to do. Since English is their second language, this is not as straight forward as it seems, here's one our our favorite responses from a girl in grade one:

Question: If you could be anywhere in the world, where would you like to be? Tell why.

Answer: I like Vocab. It is funny.Because it is easy. But vocab is lot of HOMEWORK! But that is
easy. I like easy BOOKS. Because it is easy to HOMEWORK my self. Some thing is hard
But any thing is easy and hard. Some thing is hard and easy. So, I like Vocab. So, I like
to do Vocab. I want to do lot of HOMEWORK. But i get tired Because I have some
school too. have lot of HOMEWORK. Than i like Vocab.

So needless to say, although very entertaining, having 20 or so of these to mark become a little draining. But as we said it's a long weekend right now, so we are going to enjoy our free time and get ready for Brandon birthday on Monday :) So check in soon, updates are on their way!

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2009-09-15T21:24:00.010+09:00

Day 144: I just realized that its been almost two weeks since our last blog post, I guess we just totally forgot about it last week since nothing too exciting happened. So thankfully, this weekend was very busy. On Friday, it was my student's birthday and since the girls always dress like princesses on their birthdays I brought along my camera. As coincidence may have it, our art project for the day was to draw faces on paper bags that the kids could wear on their heads. Put the two together and I give you the ultimate "paper bag princess"...

After school on Friday, all of the teachers went out for our friend Katie's farewell dinner. Here's Katie (on the left) and Abby . We went to a place that served Shabu Shabu which is a type of soup that has tons of meat, vegetables and potatoes in it. Not my (Shayna) favorite thing ever, but we were in good company :)

Here's jenny enjoying her food, and smiling with Sophia who is Brandon's Korean partner teacher. It was nice to have the Korean teacher's come out with us to celebrate Katie's last night.
On Saturday, Jenny and I had a full day of shopping at Myeong Dong which is an awesome area of Seoul. There are well known stores such as Forever 21 and Zara but there are also tons of street vendors selling all types of things, most of which are only $10. Once we were all shopped out, we decided to go see a chick flick. By the time we got to the theatre, the movie we wanted to see had already started so instead we went to "My Sister's Keeper" and we had no idea what we were in for. I knew it was supposed to be a sad story, but man. We cried so hard throughout the whole thing and even a little in the elevator! It's about a little girl whose sister is dying of Cancer and what the family does to try and save her- that's all I can say without giving away too much. It was an amazing movie, and I totally recommend it, as long as you bring a ton of Kleenex with you.
As if the weekend wasn't already so fun, on Sunday night we went to go see R.E.N.T.!!!!! We found out a couple of weeks ago that it was coming to Korea for two weeks only. So, since I've always wanted to take Brandon to see it and Jenny loves R.E.N.T too, the three of us got tickets right away. We took the subway to the island of Yeouido which is like a Manhattan type island in Seoul and as always, had to document the entire trip...

We finally arrived, and had the best time ever! The play was just as good as I remembered it being from the first time I saw it in Toronto almost ten years ago. The two guys who played Mark and Roger in the original production were back for this tour and they put on a great show. It was a very interesting crowd of young artsy Koreans and foreigners. I don't know how they could keep up with the story from reading off big subtitle screens on the side of the stage, but they managed to laugh at all the right parts, so I guess they knew what was going on. Now after years of singing R.E.N.T in our apartment (completely off tune may I add) and dragging him to the movie of the play, which doesn't do it justice- I think Brandon now gets why I love it so much. I'm actually pretty sure that he secretly loves it too and now will sing along when I play the soundtrack on my Ipod :) So that was our weekend, we hope yours was just as fun!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-08-30T19:42:00.029+09:00

Day 128 : As the summer winds down, we thought we'd put together a collection of some of the cool places we've been and amazing animals we've seen over the past little while. As you all know we work pretty long days so we really try to maximize our weekends. These first few shots are from our trip to Everland, which is the Korean equivalent of Disneyland. Our friend Patrick called us at midnight the night before and we went on a whim. It was awesome, the place has all the rides of a sweet amusement park, plus the animals of a kickass zoo. This is us in front of the main garden area, trying not to get wet from the water fountain.
We came across these apes early in the day, and it was good we did because their playful and sometimes hilarious nature really set the tone for a fun day.

This chimp was lost deep in thought, pondering all of life's big questions and probably some we've never thought of.
This golden blue faced monkey didn't even look real. Brandon bought some monkey feed and was able to get them to catch the treats mid air. Our friend Patrick even got to pet one while we were off checking out the orangutans.
This is what the polar bear thought of us, apparently he had enough of us taking his pictures of him. After checking out an animal safari, I (Brandon) went on the worlds biggest wooden roller coaster which was awesome, and we also checked out the bumper cars, and tons of other fun rides. It was a great day!
These pictures are from the zoo in Seoul Grand Park, when we went there with our friends JD and Jamie. We had great weather, and it seemed like we had better timing than the first time as we got to watch a lot of the animals during thier feedings while they were nice and active. The lions were particularly intense, fighting each other for territory and leaping high in the air and devouring raw chicken in one bite. We'll try and post the videos of that later.

Here's we are at T.G.I.F.'s near Bucheon station, celebrating our "1 year till the wedding" anniversary. This is from last weekend when we ventured into Seoul to go to Coex mall. It is a great place to go to spend a rainy afternoon and it even has a huge indoor aquarium. We were really impressed with the huge shark tank that housed some rather large and deadly sharks, and especially impressed with the guy swimming in the tank with them!!
They had some cool lighting in the jely fish tank which made for some cool shots ...

There was a conveniently placed photo opportunity, with a Korean village theme in the middle of the aquarium which we couldn't resist.

This turtle was massive, probably one of the biggest I've ever seen, hanging out in a tank with about a million sardines.It took a couple passes but we finally got a shot that would do him justice.
Besides all that, the second semester of school started today, so things have been pretty hectic. We both have gotten some new kids in our classes and once we get settled we'll make a new post with some more photos of them. Hope you all enjoy what's left of the summer.

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna

2009-08-13T20:57:00.000+09:00

Day 109: As promised, here is part two of our vacation photos. All of these photos are from the second last day of our trip when we went to Seorak Mountain which is one of the 5 national parks in Korea. Luckily for us, the weather was gorgeous that day which made the hiking much more enjoyable. The park was beautiful as you can see from even just the entrance pictured below...
We had gotten there early (8:15 am) to avoid crowds and the first thing we did was take the cable car to the top of one of the peaks. It was a good thing we did that, because when we got back down, the line up was probably 2 hours long! Once we got to the top of the mountain, the views were breath taking as neither of us have ever experienced anything like that before. It was pretty cool being eye level with the clouds looking out at all the mountain had to offer.We got a nice couple to snap this photo for us, as this was a pretty prime backdrop (they was actually a stand taking the exact same angled shots for $20 just out of view). This was about as far as Shayna wanted to get to the edge as the drop was rather large and the safety precautions rather small. It actually surprised us how carefree these Koreans were about any of the dangers that existed at these types of heights. Kids were running around unattended, some women were in sandals, and most people generally had a non chalant attitude about the whole thing. We almost began adopting this attitude, that is until we say a young woman trip as she was walking down and do two full head over heel somersaults down the mountain and by some unforeseen grace hit a rock and stopped. We decided that it was as good a time as any to make our way back down the mountain.

After taking the lift down, we headed to a new area and came across this absolutely massive Buddha statue. Our fellow teacher Greg, tells us this huge black Buddha statue is down right scary in the night time as flames are lit all around him, we'll have to come back and see for ourselves.We followed the path some more until we came to crossroads sign. One way went to a stream, one way went to a cave. We decided to take the road less travelled on go to the cave which was stated to be 0.6 km away, no big deal....or so we thought. This simple turn in the road, turned out to be one of the most physically and mentally gruelling hikes we have ever been on. The incline was intense the whole way through and when we got to the half an hour mark we imagined we must be getting close. As the sweat poured off us, we realized that from a food perspective we were dangerously under prepared for this type of undertaking, as we had not eaten all day. We were too far up to turn back and both of our stubborn natures would not allow it. Yet as we continued, there seem to be no end to this crazy climb. We met a family of fellow climbers who assured us the cave was just ahead, but every time we looked up to see if they had reached it, they just kept on climbing. Finally we reached a small resting place where others were eating (grrr..)thinking we had arrived, only to be told by some French guy that we were about 2/3 the way there. We took in some much needed water and began what turned out to be the most dangerous portion of the hike. Just before the entrance of the cave, there was an insanely steep steel staircase that was a huge pain in the ass to climb. We finally made it and what was supposed to be a cave, turned out to be more like a nook close to the top of the mountain. We were greeted by a monk handing out fresh water directly from a stream that flowed through the cave. By that point Shay was underwhelmed, unimpressed, and down right angry. I believe he exact quote was " Why aren't people more angry than this, this is not a real cave". Brandon made a prayer at the shrine for our safe journey down the mountain and bought a cool bracelet from the monk as a keepsake. As you can see though the views were truly amazing, even if it we had to work for it.
As you can see from the picture, there was little exaggeration on how steep the staircase down actually was. Two hands were required and as much concentration that was humanly possible on an empty stomach was needed. At this point the beautiful weather became bittersweet as sweated our way back down the mountain.
By the time we made it down, we were lucky enough to come across a guy who saw how hungry we looked and gave us an apple to split, as well as some chocolate and other snacks. Despite the intense journey, the feeling of accomplishment was unmistakable, as witnessed in picture below.

We explored the area a little longer, coming across a beautiful stream, but by the point we had almost run out of steam and decided to make our way back to the front to grab some food and head home as it had been a full day.
Hope everyone is enjoying the summer back home, as we're trying to make the most of ours. As always we love and miss you and hope you're doing well.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

2009-08-09T18:18:00.000+09:00

Day 105: We know it's been a while since we've updated you guys, but we're back from summer vacation and we have lots of new photos and stories. We had a ten day vacation about two weeks ago- which we spent in the East coast of South Korea called Gang-wan-do. We had plans to leave the country to somewhere more exotic but our school put restrictions on travelling outside of Korea because of the Swine Flu :(
Anyways, we made the best of it and found a gorgeous hotel right on the beach for 5 days. This area is well known for its beauty. Our hotel was on a hill overlooking Naksan Beach and right beside Naksan temple which was by far the nicest temple we've been to so far.
Here's a shot of our hotel, and of the view from the top of the hill looking down on the beach. We had a couple overcast days- but we still got alot of sunshine, so no complaints!

At the end of the beach was a fishing port, where many people were buying and selling fresh fish.They must not get a lot of foreigners because we got some interesting looks as we walked threw the area.
We had decided to wake up each morning to watch the sunrise, since the view from the temple was said to be amazing. So on our first morning, we were a little disappointed when it was very dark and grey- but eventually the sun came out and we we able to explore the area.
On our way back to the hotel, we met a monk who was making his way up to the temple. he was extremely friendly once he found out that Brandon was not in the army (as he was wearing his army shorts and had a shaved head) **We should probably mention that Brandon decided to get his hair cut two days before we went on vacation. When he told the hairdresser he wanted a number 3 buzz, she gave him just that. Too bad Brandon meant 3 inches and she thought he meant millimeters, lol. The next day when we got to school, all you could hear in the hallways was kids laughing and repeating, "Brandon teacher has no hair!". **
We also came across this rabbit on our way back to get some breakfast. He was having his own breakfast on the side of the path. He was very content eating his grass, and didn't seem the least bit bothered by us getting nice and close for photos. We nicknamed him the Buddha Bunny.
As you can see from these shots, there were some amazing trees all around the area, it reminded us of the bonzai tree paintings you see. The sunrise on the third morning made up for the previous two days. The sky was already awesome colors when we woke up, so we knew it was going to be epic.

We watched the sunrise and met a really nice Korean couple who offered to take some photos of us (because the guy claimed to be an artist...) Unfortunately, none of the photos he took turned out. They were an interesting couple who spoke fluent English who were missionaries and had traveled all around the United States and Canada. They actually had just been to Hamilton for a Faith convention, small world huh? They were so nice that they had offered to drive us to a really nice beach about a hour away, but we declined since we had not spent a day on our own beach yet.

Here's a photo of the huge Kuan Yin statue at the top of the hill (same statue as in the previous photo). This statue was overlooking the sea, and had beautiful mountains in the background, and was a place we enjoyed coming to every morning for sunrise.
These statues seem to have a calming effect on the visitors, and there was lots of people coming here to pray early in the morning as I guess it is well known among Korean Buddhists. The early morning chants by the monks made for an interesting experience as well.This is a shot of us walking down to the end of the peer where the Harbor was. There was lots of people trying their luck at fishing as this spot is well known for its sea food. The food was one of the trickier parts of the trip, as Shayna is a bigger fan of the Korean BBQ then she is of strange fish soups and octopus and squid dinners.We opted for chicken wings, sub-par hotel hamburgers, and vendor potatoes as there was a carnival type set up by the beach. The carnival provided us some entertainment in the evenings, and Shayna turned out to be quite the dart thrower and rifle shooter and won us a stuff penguin who we named " Maxim " from Naksan.

The beach was awesome, and Brandon picked himself up a boogie board so he could ride the waves. There's something about riding waves that makes you feel like a kid again, and Shayna had no shortage of interesting people to take photos of. We also learned a lesson in Korean beach culture. Everyone on the beach swims and enjoys the beach fully clothed. We practically felt like nudists going into the water in our bathing suits. Funny enough Brandon got a slight sunburn on his stomach, and wore a white shirt swimming which helped him blend right in.
Because of the amount of photos we took, we'll be breaking the vacation blog into two parts, as Seorak Mountain was so beautiful it deserves it's own post. Hope you enjoyed the photos, and stayed tune for part 2 of our summer vacation series.

With Love from South Korea
Brandon and Shayna xo

2009-07-20T20:26:00.000+09:00

Day 85: We've been in Korea now for almost 3 months and we still love it! We've had such a good time so far spending our weekends exploring the country and we always like sharing our stories with you. Since it's monsoon season right now, the rain kept us in Bucheon all weekend- so for once, we don't have any photos to share because, well we didn't do a hell of a lot. So instead, here are some pics of the kids that Shayna edited this weekend...Kate is looking very serious on top, Christina and Alex (angel and devil, lol) in the middle, and then Alex again on the bottom- pretty cute eh??
Anyways, back to our weekend...On Friday we came right home after work, made some popcorn and watched Bolt- which sucked! One of the worst animated films we've seen, but not as bad as Egore (if you've never heard of that, trust us you're not missing anything!) So Saturday, it was pouring rain when we woke up, so we waited it out for a couple of hours and then headed to school to meet up with our manager Danny to book our trip. We have summer vacation coming up this weekend, and although we planned on heading to Japan- the damn Swine flue ruined those plans. If we were to leave the country, we'd have to take a week off from work- unpaid of course to make sure we didn't get it. Pretty much, we'd be gaining an extra week off but losing about $800 so it's totally not worth it. So instead, we are going to go to Naksan beach which is said to be one of the nicest beaches in South Korea :) So that will be super fun and relaxing, we can't wait!
Later on Saturday, we met up with our friend Jenny did some shopping, helped her redecorate her place, and then came back to our place and watched Grand Torino, which is a must see! As for Sunday, we took a walk outside, did some grocery shopping, and tried to find a pool hall with pocket tables (with no luck). We spent the rest of the day watching episodes of Supernatural and just hanging out inside. So as we said, nothing too exciting...We hope you all are doing wonderful. We love you and miss you!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-07-15T20:58:00.000+09:00

Day 80: So we've decided to add something to our weekly blog posts. Obviously as teachers, we have a lot of marking to do for our classes- and there is nothing more fun to mark then weekly journals! The things these kids come up with are hilarious, and so we of course it's only logical that we share them with you. This week's entry comes from a girl in grade one who has been in a "relationship" with a certain boy since pre-kinder. We were all under the impression that they both "loved" each other equally, until Brandon got this journal yesterday...enjoy! (Oh, and we should mention that- he is a boy genius (for real) and she is also pretty damn smart herself)...

My best friend is Prince.
He is kind and handsome.
I like him a tiny bit, like this dot (.) *she actually drew a tiny dot, lol
I don't love him.
We both like spaghetti...Mmmm!
We both like to play!
We met someday.
Prince's merit is he carefully listens.
To me His weak parts is not very strong, or strongless, or weak.
Even though Prince has a weak part, he is still my best friend.
See you later.

Poor Prince, he totally has no idea she does not love him :(
Many more funny journals to come, our kids are priceless!
Hope your day is going well.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-07-13T21:10:00.000+09:00

Day 78: Hey guys! Hows it going? Things with us are great, we are still really loving Korea and exploring as much as we can. This Friday, we went to the movies- we saw Transformers 2 which one of us loved (we'll let you guess which one of us that was, lol). Then we went straight home to rest up for our day in Seoul on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, we met up with JD, Jamie, and Jenny for a day of clothes & shoe shopping for the girls and electronic and video game shopping for the boys. First we took the subway to Bupyeoung which is an underground shopping mall type thing. Being the tourists that we are, of course we spent the ride taking photos...

of this girl's awesome sparkly headphones
Jenny (above) and JD and Jamie (below)Once we got there, we dragged the boys around a million shoe stores that all looked the same for about two hours. After finding some super cute flats, a really nice dress for $10 and some flowers and bows for our hair (we're trying to fit in, lol) we agreed to move on to let the boys have their fun. We got back on the subway and headed to Yongsan which is a huge indoor/outdoor electronics market. Here's a shot of the boys trying to figure out how to navigate the place...
After we walked around a bit in the blazing heat, we decided to stop off for some lunch. We went to a food court type of place. Food courts are very different here- instead of going up and ordering your food at the restaurant you want to eat at, you have to go to a main booth in the middle of all of the restaurant and place your order there. You get a number and then when they ring your number you go to the station to pick up your food. They do everything a bit differently here, but we've gotten used to it~
After we ate we headed back outside for the boys to do some more video game shopping (Brandon got the new UFC game), while the girls took some photos...
By the time all was said and done, we were pooped, and we went home. On Sunday it poured all day so we developed some photos and just hung out inside and watched Little Miss Sunshine. It's a good thing we were able to rest Sunday, because the kids are always super crazy on Mondays and today was no exception. We hope you guys all had fabulous weekend!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-07-05T21:31:00.000+09:00

Day 70: Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. We started off our weekend by going out for dinner on Friday with the new teachers, J.D. and Jamie (a couple), and Greg. Greg's been here for a couple of years but it was J.D and Jamie's first time having Korean BBQ and they really seemed to like it. It was nice to hang out outside of school to get to know them better. After dinner, we grabbed some drinks and hung out a little more before calling it a night.
Then on Saturday, we slept in a bit and decided we would head into Seoul to a huge electronics market called Yongsan to check out camera equipment and video games. The selection was insane and because all of the stands are competing, it's a great place to get deals! We didn't buy much yesterday, but we'll for sure go back again to do some bargaining. After that we took the subway to Myeong-dong to make our way up to Namsan mountain. Getting up the mountain can take two hours by foot and since it was crazy hot outside, we opted to ride the cable car :) Besides the convenience, the views were awesome!
Once we got off the cable car, we went up to the tower where there were cute little restaurants and shops overlooking the city. There was a fence surrounding the food court area which was totally covered in locks that people bought there, and wrote on. North Seoul Tower is known as a very romantic spot and the locks have become a tradition for visiting couples. There must have been a million locks covering the fences, it was pretty unique sight. Although we didn't spend $20 to get our own lock, we wrote our names on the tables in the cafe that were covered in love notes.
By that point, it was getting dark out and we went to the main area where there was a 10 minute light show. This wire figure looked awesome all lit up by the lasers, and the tower was lit up in all sorts of colors and even had photos of flames going up and down the side of it.
After the light show, we made our way to the elevators to go to the top of the tower which overlooks the whole city. The line up was sooo long and by the time we got up to the top, we had to hurry to make sure we didn't miss the last subway home. The views were beautiful with all of the city lights~ Unfortunately, the thick foggy glass, made it nearly impossible to get any good photos- but trust us, it was gorgeous! Its good we made sure to hurry since it took us almost an hour to get back down to the cable car because of another huge line up. Luckily, we were able to run and catch the last subway for the night back to Bucheon!
After that long day yesterday, we spent all of today just relaxing in the park, enjoying the sun and taking some photos. As we were walking around the park, a reckless old woman came speeding by on her bike and ran into Shayna! It's hard to yell at someone who doesn't understand your language but we tried to tell her to slow down and watch where she was going as best we could. Thankfully, she held on tight to her camera and it didn't get damaged. That is of course until about an hour later as we were walking across the street and Shayna slipped on a very slippery and slanted part of the sidewalk and sent her camera flying into the crosswalk! Luckily no cars ran over it and someone grabbed the flying lens cap...and by some miracle, the only part that got scratched were the lenscap and the filter. By that point, we decided it was a good time to call it a day and we made it home without any more accidents :) Hope you all had a good Canada Day weekend!

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna

2009-07-01T20:26:00.000+09:00

Day 66: So we are a little late on our posting, we've been pretty busy! This past Friday we had a going away party for two of the teachers- Melinda and Mike at our friend Carissa's apartment. It was a potluck and we brought wine that we had gotten for teacher's day which was still unopened. It was a pretty laid back night, Brandon played his guitar and Mike played the ukulele and we all had fun singing along to some Jack Johnson, Sublime, etc. Carissa brought out these wish papers that she had gotten back home- the idea is to write a wish down on the paper, crumple it up, then uncrumple it and roll it loosely so that it can stand on its own- then light it on fire, and when the fire gets to the bottom of the paper, it flies into the air. The papers kinda looked like tissue paper, they were made specially for this activity by a family friend of hers. A few peoples just burnt out, but Shayna's got some good height and it was alot of fun. Below is a photo of our friend Kristina writing her wish...
We had alot of fun that night, but it was sad to see them go. Since Mike was leaving, he gave his cat to Carissa to take care of, her name is Bella, isn't she beautiful...

On Saturday, we decided to head into Seoul on our own to check out some palaces and Seoul Plaza (which can hold up to 100,000 people) which is right in the downtown part of Seoul. First we walked around the palace grounds which were gorgeous (our pictures don't do the place justice). they had a mixture of Korean and Roman architecture made in the early 1900's.

As we were leaving the palace, we noticed a HUGE amount of police and riot squad groups covering the entire area. It made us a little worried that something bad was about to happen but we were told that they do this every so often and it is normal. Here's a photo of just a small amount of the police guards in front of the palace gates.

We crossed the street to get to Seoul City Hall plaza and there was a huge area with water shooting out of the ground that children could run through. It was an extremely hot day, so there were tons of kids running like crazy through the fountain. We wish we could have joined them!

We walked around down town Seoul for a bit and came across an amazing block of camera equipment stores, that I will have to go back to and do some bargaining! After that, it was getting late and we were exhausted from the heat, so we headed home. Sunday was rainy so we just relaxed, played some scrabble and went for Korean BBQ. We hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying the summer. Monsoon season has just started and so it will be rainy here for the next few weeks :( Anyways, that's all for now, we will leave you with some Happy Canada Day messages from our kids.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

Enjoy!

2009-06-21T21:20:00.000+09:00

Day 56: Hey everyone, hope you all had a good week! We wanted to share some photos with you from our school's field trip this Friday. From what we were told, we were going to a bug museum, and that was all the information we really got. Our instructions were, "make sure no one pees their pants and do not lose any of your kids!" So when the bus pulled onto a dirt road in the country, we didn't exactly know what to expect. After piling out of the buses and watching a very short video on insects, we then proceeded to a small little box filled with dirt and over sized beetle grubs (which our friend Patrick and our director Grace are holding in the photo below).
Each of the kids had to dig through the dirt to find a grub to take home with them in a jar (which we're sure their parents were super happy about, lol). At least the kids liked their grubs!
Above: Henry and Eric Middle: John, Louis and Daniel Bottom: Stella and Lina

Everything up to that point seemed to make sense seeing as we were there to supposedly teach the kids about bugs. However, we were then taken over to a small fenced off area where the kids were put into small groups. The "bug museum" owner then brought over two rabbits and put them in the fenced off area and told the first group of kids to go and chase the rabbits, and whoever caught a rabbit could bring it home. What seemed to be a fairly harmless activity turned into a fairly traumatic thing to watch. These poor rabbits were being attacked by groups of 20 young, wild children at a time, desperately trying to avoid being trampled. So then, once the rabbit (or both rabbits) were caught, the man threw them into the large orange sacks pictured below. This may not sounds as inhumane as it really was. Maybe you had to be there to watch it, but it was total animal cruelty. To get an idea of how horrible it was, after all the classes had their turn tormenting the rabbits, the ones that were caught were dumped out of the bag (with no care at all) into a box for us to take back to the school. A few of the teacher's went over to the box and pointed out that one of the bunnies wasn't really moving. The man came over, pulled it out, told us it had a broken leg (probably from being thrown around so much) and quickly threw a new one into the box as a replacement. So clearly, animal rights are not as important in Korea as they are in Canada! So after a long day in the sun, and having learnt next to nothing about insects, it was time to go. Even though it wasn't quite the learning experience that we expected, the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, which at the end of the day is all that matters.

The rest of the weekend was pretty relaxed. Two of the teachers we work with are leaving at the end of this week, so we all went out for a big dinner, bowling and some Noribong (karoake) on Saturday night. Besides that, we did a little shopping, and a little cleaning and saw Brothers Bloom this afternoon. We hope you guys got some good weather for the weekend :) Happy Father's Day dads!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-06-14T21:49:00.000+09:00

Day 49: Another exciting weekend here in South Korea. On Friday, we went out with the teachers from the school (both English and Korean) to celebrate our friend Melinda's birthday. We went out for Korean BBQ and then to a karaoke place. It was a pretty late night, but we got up early the next morning to take a 4 hour bus south to Gwanju with our friends Patrick and Byung Chul. We left from Sopooong station (pictured below) which took us to a pretty awesome terminal, that had a huge Imax theatre and lots of restaurants and shops.

We then took a local bus to a bamboo park in a nearby town. The place was beautiful, we were surrounded by HUGE bamboo tress all around us. There were tons of photographers and people just hanging out enjoying the nice weather.
By the time we left the bamboo park, it was getting late into the afternnon and we only had time to go to one of the three other locations we were hoping to see. We made a decision to go to a place where we were told had a gorgeous waterfall. It cost $20 by cab to get to the place and we were all pretty excited until we arrived here...
Yup, that's it...that's the amazing waterfall...we were not too impressed! It was very underwhelming to say the least. We made a quick photo opp from it and headed up a massive flight of stairs to a bridge that overlooked the mountains.
The view from the top did not dissapoint, it was awesome up there. We could not have asked for better weather, and the photos don't do justice to how gorgeous it really was! After a long day, it was nice to just sit and enjoy the view :) It was getting late, so we left to grab some dinner and some Coldstone's ice cream at the bus terminal. By that point, we had missed the last bus back home, so we had our first stay at a Korean motel and then headed home early the next morning.
Getting away from the city and heading south was beautiful, we will for sure go back again soon. Anyways, we hope your weekends were as enjoyable as ours. We miss you and love you all!

With love form South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2009-06-09T20:18:00.000+09:00

Day 44: Hi guys! Just a quick update to fill you in on the past week or so. Everything here is really good and we have been super busy. Last Saturday we met up with our recruiter because we had yet to meet him and his business partner. They were two guys in their early 40's. They took us out to Korean BBQ and then we all went for a Starbucks :) It was nice to finally meet them, they are good contacts to keep while we're here especially, if we plan on doing a second year later on. Then on Sunday we went with a few of our friends to go see the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty.

It took us almost 2 hours by train and bus to get there! So we weren't very happy when we got there and they told us we could not go up the hill to the tombs until the next day because the tours were not ready yet! So our Korean friend decided to call the information desk to tell them we had come all the way from Canada and we really wanted to go up and check them out. After going to see the woman who was in charge, she decided she would give us a personal tour of the tombs herself. Her name was Regina and she was the nicest woman ever. Not only did she give us a personal tour, she then invited us back to her office for tea, and when we asked her where else we should go check out in the area, she pulled out her car keys and drove us to a Buddhist temple to show us around. After we walked around the temple, she bought us snacks and took us to the bus so we could get home. It is so nice when you meet people like that, it made the day so much better!

This weekend was more low key. On Saturday we went to Bucheon Station to do some shopping and some people watching. There were a ton of cute shops and restaurants and it's very close to where we live. We had dinner at T.G.I.F's where we had real cheeseburgers (which are very hard to find here in Korea) and then we went to see Night at the Museum 2- which was actually pretty funny.

That night we decided to try our hands at night time photography. Having no real idea what we were doing, we took my tripod and camera and headed to the roof. After a lot of bad shots and frustration, this is the best we came up with. I'm looking into to getting some filters soon that will help with the night time lighting so hopefully we'll end up with some better shots of the city.
Sunday was rainy, and so we went out to buy Scrabble and a DVD player, and spent the day indoors playing games and watching movies. So there you go, you are all caught up on what we've been up to. We hope you guys are all enjoying the summer! We will try and update you more often, we miss you and love you all.

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

2009-05-31T22:54:00.000+09:00

Day 35: Last weekend, as we mentioned in the previous post, we went to Seoul Land Zoo. It is ranked the 5th best zoo in the world! They kept all of the animals out in the open (there was no glass) and you are totally allowed to feed them, which made for some interesting photo opportunities. First we came across these hippos- the baby was so cute, we were so close to them- it was awesome!
The funniest animal by far were the 4 types of bears. As with the hippos, there was no glass and people were finding berries in the bushes and feeding them! After a few minutes, the bears started actually begging for food and posing...
We'd never seen anything like it and we both were able to feed them, which was pretty cool! They seemed to enjoy it as much as we did, look how happy this guy looks...
Next we saw the Red Pandas- we were really looking forward to seeing actual pandas but they didn't have any :( So these were the next best thing, and they were pretty cute.
Nearby were some lemers, which were pretty entertaining to watch, especially the babies!
Next we saw the cougars, and thankfully they were behind glass, because they were eyeing all the little kids pretty intensely...
After that we wandered into the peacock garden that had tons of peacocks just roaming around. They had colorful ones and white ones and they were stunning!!!
After walking around all day and seeing all of the animals, we took a nice relaxing ski lift up the park which had amazing views! It's a beautiful place with breath taking scenery...
Before we left the park for the day, we decided to check out the rose garden which was on the way out. The place was huge! It had rows and rows of all types of flowers and every kind of rose every made. The place was filled with young families and photographers snapping tons of photos.
So that was our Sunday last week, it was a very long but super fun day! It's amazing that it only cost us each $4.00 for the whole day :) We've already made plans to go back in October because the polar bears and gorilla and orangutan areas are all under construction until then. Anyways, hope all is well back home, we miss you!!
With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna

2009-05-26T20:04:00.000+09:00

Day 30: Friday was Poly's Mini Olympics, so we spent the entire morning and early afternoon in the park with all of the pre-kinder and kindergarten kids! It was fun to be outside and we had great weather. It was awesome to spend some time with the kids outside of the classroom and our director asked Shayna to photograph the event...so we finally have photos of our kids to share with you!
In the photos above, Brandon is with his home room class, Rylant (all of the classes are last names of children's authors). Starting on the far right there is Solomon, Ashley, Christina, and Alex is the one hanging on Brandon's neck. Below is another shot of his of those four, since the other kids were off playing and didn't want their photos taken :)

These next two are from Brandon's other kindergarten class, Vincent who he teaches science to. On top we have James,whose a bit of a hand full but has a big heart. On the bottom we have Michael who is really smart and a very sweet kid.

The rest of these shots are of Shayna's kids. First we have my home room class, Blume. To say they are a handful would be a huge understatement. They are extremely cute and very wild! This first photo is of Justin and Esther, they are the best of friends on most days as you can see in this photo :) But, it was only a few days ago that he strangled her against the wall and she cried on my shoulder for 25 minutes, lol.
Next we have Scott, who is so sweet but pretty clueless. This picture captures him perfectly, he kind of looks confused and somewhat lost at all times but never gives me any real trouble. Yesterday, he gave me my first experience with puke! I looked aver and he was covered in it, poor kid :( He just shrugged it off, washed his face and came right back to class- he's a trooper!
Then we have Daniel, who is the complete opposite of Scott. Although I think he is one of the cutest kids I teach, he gives me the most problems. He never pays attention and is constantly hitting anyone that comes near him- so he keeps me on my toes at all times!

Next, this is Louis on the left and Justin on the right- the two class clowns. they are so cute but so crazy. Always making faces at everyone and getting each other to laugh, its hard to get mad when they are really so cute!
This picture of Thomas is my favorite from the whole day! He just finished some type of game where they had to fish gummi worms our of some type of powder and this was taken 5 minutes after the game was over and he was still walking around with it hanging out of his mouth :) As you can see, he gets the cutest little dimple on his cheek when he smiles, that I think is so adorable. He is one of the younger ones in the class, and needs help at all times. He's a handful but I adore him!
Now we have John, who is easily one of the best behaved kids in the class. As you can see, he's a cutie and if only I had 12 John's I'd have a perfect class :)
Finally, we have Nari (left) and June (right). Nari is super cute and super sweet, and June is super cute and a little evil. People always think June is so cute at first glance (this is not her best photo...) and then the more you look at her the more you see the mischief in her eyes. She always lends people things and then two minutes later starts a fight with them because she's decided she wants them back. No matter how much she gets yelled at, she always says she loves me :) She's the one who gave me the mug on Teacher's day that she wrote i love my teacher on, awww. She also dresses in some sort of princess dress on most days which makes it hard to yell at her with a straight face. I do love this class, they make me nuts, but they are good kids at heart.Lastly, here are a few on my second pre-kinder class, Carle. I dont have photos of them all- and I'm also missing some of Blume now that I think of it but I'll find more to post another day. Anyways, starting from the left, we have Henry, Eric, Andy, and Rose. These kids are angels compared to the others, they all love each other and are great friends. Today I actually had to stop class becuase Eric would not stop kissing Jacob (pictured below) :) They really are adorable!
This is Lina, she is the youngest of the pre-kinder kids and I love her. She is so quiet and by far the cutest girl in the class. She is pretty shy and her smaile makes me melt :)
Last but not least, we have the three of my favorite boys- from the left: Jacob, Eric, and Henry. Jacob is so smart and so sweet, he makes my job much easier. Eric has total A.D.D but is his cuteness makes up for his complete lack of focus at all time, lol. Finally there is Henry, who is awesome! He always asks me to stay and eat lunch with him, and gives me a big hug before I leave the room.

So, there you have it, these are (most of) our kids. Sorry for the really long post, but we want you to see who we spend our days with. So we hope you enjoyed it! We went to the Zoo on Sunday, and so expect a big post of zoo photos soon as well...but that is all for tonight.

With Love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna

2009-05-17T22:24:00.000+09:00

Day 21:
Hey guys! Hope you are all enjoying your weekend. today the weather wasn't great, so we stayed in Bucheon and did some more exploring. A co-worker of our had told us about market near our place, and so we decided to try and find it. With a roughly drawn map that she had made for us, to say we had trouble finding the place would be a huge understatement! After walking around for an hour to find a market that was supposedly 15 minutes away, we hopped in a cab which drove us to the market in less than 5 minutes (in the total opposite direction we had been walking). The market was ok I guess, if you're looking for live octopus and poorly made clothing...which we weren't...so we walked through the whole market and headed home.
As we were walking, the weather started to get alot nicer and we took a detour through a huge park near our school. Little did we know, the park was also an outdoor gym! There were tons of machines that are free for anyone to use, which we are planning to make use of tomorrow. As it got warmer, we headed home to pick up the camera and take some shots of all the new flowers that are starting to bloom.

As I was shooting away, Brandon found a Korean volleyball game that caught his attention. The net was lower and and they used only their heads and their feet to hit the ball. It was pretty interesting to watch and Brandon hopes to get in on the action once he learns some more Korean :)
After our walk, we headed to Outback Steakhouse because we were told by a friend that we could use the Hyundai department store gift certificates I got from teacher's day there. Although it didn't seem logical, we decided to give it a try. When we got there, we were told that we couldn't use them, probably since they are two totally unrelated places, lol (thanks Patrick!). Regardless, we sat down to have dinner and our waitress came back with some bread and some sort of pink butter. I asked what it was and she replied " rasberry butter" to which I said, "do you have any regular butter?". She looked a little confused and said " umm...mango butter, chocolate" and then I looked at her in confusion and just smiled and nodded. Brandon had been in the bathroom while all of this was happening, and when he came back I told him that I was pretty sure our waitress was bringing us some sort of chocolate butter. He told me I clearly misunderstood her, and I agreed with him- until of course, she walked over, handed me "mango butter, and chocolate sauce". I tried the mango butter, which made me gag, and I then proceeded to dip the bread in the chocolate...which was actualy pretty good. After a little too much bread and chocolate, we had some delicious steaks with coconut onion rings, which were also really yummy! Anyways, that was our day- hope we didn't bore you with too many details. We miss you and love you all.

P.S. Add us on skype if you have it, you can find us under shaynapitch4@hotmail.com.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-05-16T21:55:00.000+09:00

Day 20:
Another busy week here in Korea! Yesterday was Teacher's Day which means that our kid's parents had the chance to bribe us with gifts, lol. Canada should really adopt this idea because we ended up with some awesome stuff. Since I (Shayna) teach the pre-kinder kids, I got pretty lucky because I guess the parents know what a handful they can be. From a class of 11 kids, I got over $200 dollars in gift certificates to a really nice department store called Hyundai, and from all my other students I got : Bath & Body works and Body Shop lotions, a personalized mug that says I love you teacher written on it from my student named June, a scarf, a Lacoste t-shirt, a few roses and lots of candy! Brandon got awesome stuff to. He got Clinique Happy for men cologne, a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, a bottle of wine, shaving supplies, and some really good cookies :)
Along with the awesome gifts, some of the kids gave us cards which are priceless! One card I got from a grade 3 boy said " You teach us very good. Please teach us many things. Let's be intimate. Thank you." Brandon got one that said, " Thank you for teaching me, you are handsome and kind. I love you." All of the hand written cards are so sweet! Days like that make it all worthwhile :) We'll have to take some shots of the kids soon to show you just how cute they really are. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

2009-05-11T21:57:00.000+09:00

Day 15:
Yesterday we spent the day at the Ichon Ceramic Festival. It was held at a beautiful, large park in the countryside, which was two hours by bus from Bucheon. The picture above is the view from the entrance of the park. There were gorgeous flowers, awesome modern art statues and tons of families taking in the sights. First we went to the actual pottery making exhibit, where Brandon made us a vase. You can see his natural talent for ceramics showcased below :) ......

We then hiked up a mountain trail in the park, which had a beautiful and colorful view of Ichon.

There were also many interesting art sculptures all around the park in including this tree made of bells that you would normally find at temples all over South Korea.
We then went to a very interesting authentic tea ceremony held by the woman below. What was really cool, is that we were with our Korean friend who was able to translate what the woman was telling us and we were able to ask her questions to better appreciate the experience.
After the tea ceremony, we came across a traditional Korean drumming show which was very fun to watch and was filled with highly energetic performers. Shayna was in the front row taking photos, and the guy in the second photo got her to spin his top and throw it back to him in front of the entire audience.
We wound down the day by heading to a beautiful, Korean pond which had amazing flowers ...

and a Korean style terrace looking over the water....we then headed back home after a very long and eventful day.
Hope you all had a great weekend, we miss you and we hope your enjoying following along in our adventures :)

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon