100th Post and Dinosaurs.

Our Adventure last Sunday began in Goesung. We traveled about an hour and a half to get there to the city that supposedly has the biggest and coolest Dinosaur Museum, and pretty much every foreigner has to make at least one trip to the spot... and we figured out why only once, It takes FOREVER to get from the Goesung bus station to the actual Dinosaur park. It was fun, but we surely won't be making a return journey.

This is a picture of the cool lion drinking fountain outside the Goesung Bus Terminal. It was not here the last time we came to Goesung. It is kinda neat to see the different colored cups people drink from but we bought bottles of water because it does seem a little unsanitary to drink after others from the same cup...

Also interesting that the Bus station advertises for the Dinosaur Museum but it is not actually in the city which we found out when we had to pay for yet another transfer bus to get to the location.

We got on the bus and not only were we the only foreigners we were also the only people under the age of about 70. It was really neat to see the elderly interacting together. One woman decided to move back to try to talk to us, but hadvery basic English skills, so to get my attention she started rubbing my arm hair... Koreans love to talk about appearance in front of you (sometimes not in a good way, but they are usually just curious) So she was commenting on how white I was, and pretty and soft... well thank you lady!

Joseph and I on the bus he jokingly said "is hopefully going to the Dinosaurs and not the Morgue."

We basically drove through fifty billion wheat fields and about a million rice paddys dropping off each old person at their front door...Good bus Service if you asked me.

After an hour and a half (another one!) we finally made it and took our pictures with as many dinos as possible.

Very violent statues they had, but we had a good time.

The place was in the middle of nowhere, this was the view from the walkway into the museum.

The Museum.

We could not take pictures in the place, so I had to wait until we were outside eating lunch to take my camera out. This is what we had for lunch, Black Bean ramyeon. Very delicious.

Next came the Dinosaurs in the walk through park. This was the most fun.

Joseph and his new friend.

He even found one to share his pepsi with!

It was not too busy that day, lots to see. If you notice in this picture the Koreans are very concerned with skin care so they will walk around with umbrellas and HUGE visors when it gets sunny. Especially the older Ajummas.

Joseph and a dino. It was cool to see the dinosaurs, but they had no signs in English or Korean to tell about the dinosaur you were looking at.

Some were more cute than realistic. They love cute stuff here.

They had this statue of a stegasaurus made out of pipes, it was really neat! Joseph wanted to climb it, but....

We saw the Danger "Do not rise" sign which I can only guess means do not go up or do not climb so he thought better of it.

The Observatory

View from the Observatory.

Next we finished the park part and it was time to see real evidence that Dinosaurs walked the earth, you could walk down to the beach area and see actual fossilized footprints on the ground.

When we arrived to the beach we found a warning sign telling us not to trash the area, dance, sing or perform any shamanistic practices or we could be fined or put in jail. No Problem!

Beautiful Stone Beach.

We also found a cave, and when I asked one of my students to translate the sign (which we assumed meant be careful, because we followed some Koreans into the cave) she informed me that it said not to enter the cave due to the fact it could collapse or have a rock slide...oops... we were living life on the ignorant edge.

The exit.

Joseph cave walking.

We finally got out of the caves and ended up on the beach area, all the rocks were shaped in perfect straight lines. We tried to find rocks that looked like lots of states.

Here is Oklahoma.

Colorado or Wyoming.... :-)

Joseph posing by the sea.

There were little pools of stagnant water that had coral and these cute little flower like animals that would retract if you touched them, but not if you took a picture. The flash reflected in the water, but you can still sort of see the creature.

Me and the cool rocks

The Boardwalk, you were supposed to stay on the walkway, but nobody did.

It was not too long so we walked the whole thing.

Actual Dino footprints in the rock!

At the end of the trail there was a rest stop that sold refreshments, tickets to the nearby camp area and Bonzai Trees, very cute.

We decided we had enough so we left and went to sit in a nearby enclosed bus stop. We knew the last bus away from the park back to Goesung left at 5 and it was already 4:30 so we waited for the bus to come....and it didn't. about 10 after we were finally rescued by a city bus who picked us up. We asked the bus driver if he was heading to the Goesung Bus Terminal, and he said yes, so we got on. About five minutes later we realize he is taking us in the complete wrong direction... not happy about that, and then in the middle of the highway he stopped and told us to get off, apparently he knew the bus schedule really well because not two seconds after we got off he flagged down another bus headed in the right direction to stop and let us on. He was actually going to the Goesung Bus Terminal so we were able to take a bus straight back to the bus station. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.

The bus ride back was long, as expected.

What was unexpected was that the chair in front of Joseph's legs was broken and the woman was leaning on his leg the entire hour and forty minutes home. I thought it was more funny than Joseph did.

We then decided to go out to a nice dinner, we were pooped and I didn't feel like cooking so we went to the Italian place called Pepe Violia and Joseph ordered the big plate of Salmon and mashed potatoes and was kind enough to share.

I had some pasta dish with chicken and broccoli which was divine, and shared with Joseph as well.

We had a long day of travel but the sights we saw were really quite amazing. It was a good trip overall.

Birthdays, Bits and Pieces!

I always feel like I have so much to update, and I can never get around to doing it, so I have many mini blogs about lots of things going on.

But first and most importantly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA KELLY!!! ( My grandma, not Joseph's grandma, though that is quite confusing since his last name is Kelly and mine is Parks.... ) Hope you have a wonderful day, and I miss you!

Next up, Joseph has started a cool new project for his teen times class, they are now penpals with his little sister Caroline back in Raleigh... This is the picture they sent to her... Love the peace signs...very typical of a Korean photo.... they always say Kimchi instead of Cheese when there is a picture being taken... it works though!

Speaking of Cheese, I have been working very hard lately to make healthy meals... here youc an see a salad I made with cucumbers, lettuce, tomato, and yes...cheese. we used the low fat italian dressing though... Along with the salad, I made my own version of the KFC famous bowl. Joseph and I used to get them all the time back home, but the KFC here has no mashed potatoes... yeah, for real, no potatoes, gravy or good biscuits.... what is the world coming too... they are really missing out.

I was so proud of myself, I even made "gravy" from scratch... it was not that great but it did the job. Add in some corn, and you got a great dinner.

Joseph also told me I looked pretty when I cooked ( I think that is his way of making me do it more, but I thankfully actually enjoy it!) But he took a picture, since the sun was out I was having a relatively good hair day!

Yeah for good hair!


I also tried my hand at making stuffed peppers, and they turned out great as well, I didn't have onion like the recipe called for but it still turned out great in my toaster oven. And just because I wanted to add it to the post, we found the coolest but most high cholesterol Hagwon in Korea... "Butter English"...


This is one of the top five so far! Right up there with Pass off English.

And because this was the highlight of my week, we finally managed to do the grow a dinosaur that Joseph's mom sent in our easter package! It was really cute to see the thing come to life.

Day 1, Evening.

Day 2, morning

Day 2, night.

Day three, (I think joseph helped him out of his shell)

Day three! SO CUTE!

Well that is all for now, we took a great trip to Okpo, but it is time for Bed!

Okpo and Goesong.

Last weekend was actually quite eventful despite the rain and cold weather. It was a pretty sight since we had never been that far into Okpo. The Harbor had these huge cement "Jack" shaped barriers to keep back the waves. They were actually really fascinating, and you could walk out on them, so of course we did and we got a few pictures in the process.

Harbor View

You can see the Art Museum, the big partial dome thing towards the left of the photo. We didn't get a chance to go that day, but we will sometime in the future, especially now that we know where to go! It is fairly cheap too, so maybe we will save it for a rainy day one weekend.

More jacks!

Across the bay you could see a small red light house on the other side, there were two, the one on our side was white. People come out here and go fishing since it is so close to the ocean, although the only thing we saw anybody catch was a piece of seaweed.

The white light house on our side.

Another picture of the red Light house from farther back.

And this time with ME!

Joseph had to climb out on the things, so I got one of him with the ocean as the background. I love this picture!

We walked around town a bit, and really the only thing worth taking a picture of was this guy.... You can kinda see the sign on the glass behind him... the place was called Pizza Etang.... I don't know if they meant to say " Pizza Eating"... but Etang is kinda funny.

After a long day of walking and exploring, we went to an Indian/Pakistan restaurant where the head guy who owns it is really nice, plus the food is really good, and a bit different from the Korean spicy that we eat most weeks. It was a nice enjoyable meal of Chicken Sheh Kabab ( Not shisk Kebab, this chicken was ground up and served over onions) with a side of Palek Paneer( spinach with cheese) and really good Indian bread called Non. We have eaten here a few times and the guy remembered us so he gave us a free coke this time! We will certainly go back.

Our next day, Sunday, was supposed to be our outing day since we got a late start and had to go to okpo, since it was raining we figured we would go to a totally different place, just try taking a bus to somewhere cool... So we went to the bus station and paid 5,000 won to go to Goesong... we just wanted to see what was there and if any of it was interesting. We ended up not finding too much, and in the rain it was kinda gross... It was neat to explore though, I just wish there had been more to see!


Goesong is famous for having lots of dinosaur bones, And they have an outdoor Dino Museum, but since it was an outside thing, and it was a freezing dismal day, we decided to just explore and come back to do dino day another time. Here is the Outdoor traditional Market. We always stumble across this.

Walking through the town we saw this garden drying leaves or something, I love being able to see the more traditional side of Korea, rather than the commercial westernized side of it.

The House next to the garden

I wish these steps had led somewhere awesome, as it was there was just a big pile of trash at the top. I cut that out of the picture. I wonder what they used them for, they were so tiny and steep it seems that it would be difficult to use them for anything.

Candid "it's raining" artsy picture of Joseph. ( And by artsy, I mean blurry)

One thing about Korea that does bug me on occasion, is there are no public waste recepticals.... I mean seriously, how hard is it to put a dumpster behind a huge apt building.... We were walking by this pile though, and almost contemplated stealing the white and black sign in hanguel to hang in our apartment, but there was gross stuff stuck to the back, so we let it sit in the garbage pile. Korean people do this often, you will sometimes find entire bedroom sets ( in relatively good condition mind you) just hanging out on the street. Such a waste I think...

This was my artsy Forlorne "can we go home" picture.... the rain was starting to pick up and it was getting colder....

I call this one " Joseph in the rain with bamboo"... we saw some bamboo finally, it took long enough... I thought the stuff grew everywhere, but apparently only behind dirty apt buidlings.

The trucks in korea are very different from the ones in America, Most any truck you see is simply a utility vehicle.... which is odd to me having grown up in Raleigh and in Boone, you see trucks constantly, but this is the closest thing I have seen to a real truck, and it is a pitiful example.

And more with the Dinosaurs.

And More dions.... they were everywhere.... literally.

Rice field.... they are everywhere too!

And just because as soon as I saw it, I realized this was the first fire hydrant I have seen since coming to Korea.

Not too exciting of a trip for us either. We had fun, although we will probably just come back on a sunny warm day to see the dino museum....Not too much else...

We are planning a few trips to Seoul, Maybe Daegu, Back to Busan and to many more places.

As for now, we are going to clean the apartment, and prepare for school tomorrow.