Twy and Greg's Jeju Journey

Today, I took my trusty stead out for a tour. She is way too small, but she is a fixed gear and kind of my dream commuter, minus the size. The local bike shop gave it to me for free, if I bought a new front wheel. It took some scrubbing but she ran like a champion today.  I first biked out to an area called SanBangSan. It is one of the local “mountains/hills. I toured the Buddhist center. Lots of stairs and amazing views. I leaned my bike against a wall and spent the next hour walking around. It is crazy that you do not even lock your bikes in Korea.  After visiting the temple, I rode along the coast to Song-aksan, which is another "mountain/hill" All of these come from ancient volcanic activity. I walked around for a while which is part of the Ole trail. I spent about an hour walking around looking at the ocean and some pretty amazing views.  I then headed home. I ended up riding about 20 miles and started to get the layout of our little part of the island. I am feeli...

My first professional soccer game! Jeju United at the Jeju World Cup Soccer Stadium. Jeju won! I was amazed at the crowd in our area that pretty much cheered, chanted, and sang their way through the entire game. The tangerine is a main crop of the island and has become a symbol of Jeju. We now have official tangerine fans to cool us off and show our island pride.

We made it a point to get a scuba trip in before school started. It was We got a recommendation for a dive shop from a co-worker. Having a dive master that speaks English was very helpful for setting up an appointment and getting a time and a place to be. Diving here had a few quarks that were new to us. We got our 5 mil wetsuits at the dive shop, and after trying them on, I started to take them off, as you normally do not put a wet suit on until you are ready to dive because they are hot. We were told to keep them on. The equipment was not great, but it did work. We used weight belts and the only gauge we were given was an air gauge. I was very happy to have my dive computer. We took a 5-minute drive to the boat and then were told to put our tank and BCDs together. It has been a while since that was not done for me, but it came back to me quickly. The dive boat was actually just a squid boat. We had to put our BCDs (Buoyancy Control Devices) and tanks on before we got on the boat....

  Local walk and greenhouses.  It was a hot day, and we were going to try and get to a Buddhist temple, but the bus ride seemed really long and hard to figure out, so we just decided to head out from our house and start walking towards the ocean. We stayed off the main roads and winded our way through the farmland. The farmland is very interesting here. There are walls made from lava rock everywhere. I think this is necessary due to a pretty consistent wind with regular threat of typhoons.  We have also seen large tracks of land covered with plastic. I guess this is to keep the soil in place, but I look forward to learning more later.  One of the most interesting things we saw is a lot of greenhouses. The island is covered with massive greenhouses. I think most of them house tangerine trees. If you look at Google Earth, you will see these cover the landscape. They are interesting to see as you walk around. On the first map, I circled a few greenhouses on Google Earth...

  The 5-Day Market We are slowly getting to know our surroundings. Our closest town is called Moseulpo, which is only a 20-minute bus ride for us. Each town has a five-day market on different days and for Moseulpo, our market is on the days that end in 1 and 6. Last weekend, we got a bus reprieve and some very kind coworkers volunteered to drive us to the five-day market. It is a place to buy just about everything, but we bought a lot of grains and fruits. They also sell a lot of delicious freshly made food, and even clothes and live chickens. When we were done, we also stopped by the Ole Center and bought our Ole passports, but that is for another blog. Most prices are listed and haggling does not seem to be a thing, which is really nice for us. All of the merchants are very kind and patient. The grocery stores here are very nice (a lot like the U.S.), but the markets are fresher, cheaper, and have a different selection.  Squid (so much squid, and so many squid boats)  F...

 In our little kitchen, I've been starting to try my hand at Korean vegetarian recipes. There are these 5-Day markets here on the island, which happen roughly every 5 days. The one closest to us in Molsepo, which is the closest town south of us on the water and is open on days that end in 1 and 6.  It takes us about 15-20 minutes by bus to get to Molsepo. These markets are covered, open air and have vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, grains, clothes and other textiles. When buying there, it's quite a bit in quantity, so I've had to figure out how to use all of it with just two of us. Here are some of my culinary creations so far: I've made this a few times now. The left dish is a eggplant and mild chili pepper stir fry and the right dish is a Korean BBQ Potato dish. The market had a grain variety of different rice varieties, barley, and millet, which is the back dish. Greg and I have really liked all three. Vegan Kimchi! This is a cabbage, daikon version. Yummy! Sweet Pota...

I'm a little behind on posting. Greg's started teaching this past week and I've been diving into my new online endeavor through my business, Samya Yoga Healing.  Greg and I got our Olle Passports! One of the hiking opportunities here is hiking a series of trails that goes along the coast called the Olle Trails. I'll be posting more about this and the passports later. The another hiking opportunity on the island are on the Oreums which are tree covered the volcanic hills. Wikipedia defines them as "small defunct volcanos."  There are more than 360 of them!   We got a chance to hike our first one, Jeoji, though due to the heat and humidity, we didn't go down into the crater. Next time! It's pretty close to us so I imagine it will be one we do a number of times. We went with a group of staff from SJA (St. Johnbury Academy where Greg teaches) including Aiden (kindergarten) and Liam (Second grade), two kiddos that were rockstar hikers. Part of the trail we ...