Jeju-do!!

I'm baaaack!  Aren't you proud of me?  I know I am!  I had a little vacation from school last Saturday-Wednesday and I took the opportunity to travel to Jeju Island off the Southern coast of Korea.  It's been likened to Hawaii, a paradise, and even Disneyworld.  These are rather inaccurate, BUT it was righteously awesome and quite beautiful.  The night before our morning flight I partied pretty hard til about 5:30 AM.  No one ever looks back on their life and says, "I wish I had gotten more sleep", riiiight?. 

My friend, Jin (whom I met last time I was teaching in Seoul) had always wanted to open a hostel at Jeju, and talked about it often.  Lo-and-behold, HE DID IT!!  How effing cool is that? To have a legit dream, and straight-up accomplish it??  He bought the land, and literally built it himself (with the help of some builders and his hot-ass partner.  More on him later)  This picture is my friend slacklining on part of the roof. Anywho, it was super awesome to have him there because he picked us up at the airport and we stayed at his guesthouse for 4 days and had a damn good time.  I thought the island would be smaller, but it's in fact more than twice the size of Seoul.  Beautiful scenery, beaches, waterfalls, palm trees etc.  All the fixins for a rad trip.  I went with my new friend Alison, who turned out to be a perfect travel partner, since we have very similar laid-back traveling style. It was just laughs adventures and happy hearts all week.  Aaaaaaaaaaand copious amounts of booze.  Derrrrrrr.  Here she is! (I have a bajillion pictures of her since I was the only one with a camera)

Jin has 3 workers at his guesthouse who each work 10 days a month and live there for free instead of getting paid.  It was weird, because even on their days off, they chose to hang out there anyway, so they must really love it.  This place was SPOTLESS, and they washed all the floors and bathrooms daily (sometimes more often!)  No one wears shoes, which I loooooved, and the kitchen is open for anyone to cook anytime.  We made a couple meals to share with the staff, and they shared everytime they had anything as well.  Such a generous and welcoming group of peeps!  THE  BEST PART??  Jin made bagels from scratch every single day for breakfast.  WHAAA??

I feel like if I tell about my whole trip this blog is going to blow up my computer so I'm going to give you my Jeju Island crash course.

Waterfalls and holy freakin humidity! (here's my friend Jin by one)

Amaaaaaaaaazing locals (this guy stayed at the guest house and some chicks were asking for his autograph...Korean singer, I guess?)

<------Bush Maze!  This was where we met a cute couple (Korean guy and Chinese girl) who ended up driving us home and inviting us to their wedding in Seoul.  <3

Health & Sex Museum

Adorable Korean Marine Corps boys (we met them swimming at the beach then went out to eat and noraebanged (karaoke room)



Soju Soju Soju

Hey, it's me!!

This is Jaka.  THE coolest person I have ever met in my entire life.  He was sitting outside his Cafe jamming with his friend on ukulele and the drum.  Little kids were dancing and they were singing beauuutifully.  We randomly started talking to him and he spoke English perfectly (with a British accent, to boot!)  He was recommending a restaurant to go to in another town, and ended up driving us, eating and drinking with us all night and swimming at the beach til the wee hours.  He has traveled the world, worked as a journalist, photographer and lumberjack in the countryside.  He studied from this super wise old Korean man and learned how to make the purest, most natural healing Soju.  His stories never ended!!  There is actually a reality show in Jeju about him and his friend biking, playing music, cooking, meeting people and learning shit  Here is a link, but it's all in Korean...haha http://www.kctvjeju.com/popup/Vod_hd.asp?vodfile=http://www.kctvjeju.com/a/201207/120726bic.asx&num=23135
Words just cannot do this guy justice.  I hope you get the picture a LITTLE bit atleast.

Korean BBQ!

These are the lava tubes underground...sooo cool!

This is Jin's partner, Myong-Woo.  He was a jack of all trades.  This night he walked in with a squid in each of his hands then proceeded to slice them up in the sink while they were still alive (ink spewing everywhere) and serve it to all the guests..NUTS! Sidebar: Alison used the exact same kitchen scissors the next day to chop off all her hair in the hostel shower room.  Epic. The next morning he was outside welding a frickin anchor out of scrap metal with flames flying every which way.  And do you SEE THOSE PANTALOONS??  hot. He seriously rocked them.  He even gave me a pair of his crazy pants because I loved them so much...How kind!!

  I will tell one more story though.  Alison looked up our flight info heading back to Seoul late Wednesday night, so we planned to get to the airport with over an hour to spare.  When we approached the counter they were giving us really weird looks and asked when our flight was.  We told them and they said the last flight out was already boarding.  They had to call the plane and tell them we were there and to wait for our stoopid foreign butts.  TURNS OUT, Alison looked at our arrival time instead of our departure time and we got to the airport only 10 minutes before our flight LEFT!  Amazingly, we made it on the plane and got home that night...ONLY because it happened to be delayed 15 minutes.  Otherwise we would have spent a glorious night in jeju Airport.  Wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world.  There's so much to love about Jeju... 

We had many more shenanigans and adventures, but I just can't do it captain. I don't have the POWER!!  Hope you enjoyed sharing my Jeju journey.  More posts to come, I promise!