Beach Day and Good-byes

One beautiful Saturday in June, a group of us decided to head out to the beach for a barbeque. This was the fourth time we'd planned to do it since May, and none of the times had been successful so far, due to weather conditions (May had this habit of being sunny all week, then raining all weekend), so we were determined to make this work. We thought we would take the us out to the easiest beach to get to, Mallipo, but as it turns out, our friend Alia's mother drove us, and she took us to a special beach, the most beautiful beach we'd seen in Korea. This beach called Gurempo, which is translated as Cloud (or Mist) Beach, because it usually has a mist hanging over one side. It was so beautiful! We just wandered around, enjoying the beauty (unfortunately, we forgot our camera so all of these photos were taken with my cell phone, and they don't really do justice to the beach):




Back in one corner of the beach, there was a little Buddha shrine area, just tucked in among the rocks and trees:


Wandering along the beach, Alia wrote our initials in the sand:


After wandering along the beach, the four of us (our group minus Alia's mom) started to prepare the barbeque. We collected driftwood for the fire, although Brenden was a little shocked by our selections--it was obvious only Brenden had collected firewood before. We didn't have any charcoal, because we thought we'd be going to Mallipo, which has many shops along it, but instead this beach was really isolated, without even a shop. We noticed three or four other people with charcoal, though, so Alia went up to them and asked them and they had brought it with them. Not to be deterred, she noticed there was a small house there and she went and asked them whether there were any small shops nearby. There weren't any, but the woman offered to give us some charcoal. Now with charcoal, we were in business! Unfortunately, the wind kept shifting, so it was hard to get it started, but Brenden made it work, and he was grilling in no time. In the meantime, while we waited for the sausages and veggies to cook, we snacked on gimbap (the quintessential Korean picnic lunch food, they're like very simple sushi rolls) and fruit and sliced French bread into sandwich sizes, then made sausage and veggie sandwiches. Delicious!

After packing up, we were in for another surprise: there was more to see! We piled back in the car, and Alia's mom made three more stops: at one lovely lookout point and two more beaches. All in all, we had a grand time, and it definitely was my top beach experience in Korea. It made me really excited for Thailand and lounging on the islands, too, which is just a few weeks away (at the end of our vacation).

This past weekend was our last weekend in Korea. Heather came down from Incheon, and had a great time hanging out with the friends we've made here in Korea (and with the friends we already have). Now we're busy packing (we're mostly done with our suitcases), although I had a nasty surprise when I tried to take a box to the post office to mail home today: it's only 9 kilos, but it's too large. They won't ship it, so I have to break it up into two smaller boxes. It's annoying because one thing in the box is very thin but tall, and I'm afraid it will be too tall for the smaller boxes. At any rate, we still have a lot to take care of in the next three days, but on Thursday, we'll be flying out to Hong Kong, and the vacation will begin!

This will probably be our last post in Korea (and we probably won't post while we're traveling), so hopefully we'll see most of you reading this before we write again!

- Carissa