Busan

Busan was really fun! We flew out Friday night on Jeju Air, a small local airline where all the flight attendants wear orange and beige 70's style garb. From the airport it was an hour bus ride to Hae-un-dae to Hugh and Jung Mi's apartment where we stayed for the weekend. Jason and I were both pretty tired so we relaxed, watched some TV (which is quite a novelty!) and had an early night.

Saturday we went to Nam-po-dong where we started our morning with...Starbucks! I was quite disappointed that they neither carried Gingerbread or Peppermint, but I settled on a scrumptious soy Toffee Nut Latte. We hit the "strip" of designer, name brand, international, and local shops. I looked in just about every store for boots, but to my dismay women's shoes just do not come in my size in Korea. I wear a size 255 and the very largest you can find is a 245. *sigh* Good thing for online shopping. We did find some "cramp-ons" for hiking in the snow so I'm planning a trek up Mt. Halla in January. The Nam-po-dong market was really fun, too, and we found some great deals on booze and clothes. Then we took the short walk up to the temple and spire which had a nice view of the harbour and surrounding hills. We ate dinner at Ganga, a delicious Indian restuarant, with Hugh and Jung Mi and had another early night at the apartment. (After tea at Starbucks...again)

A temple in the city amidst designer shopping and busy streets

A colorful street decoration - Kale!


Busan

A marble dragon statue

Sunday we went to a fabulous bakery around the corner and enjoyed some french style pastries and cookies for breakfast. It was a rainy day, but we took a long walk to a giant bookstore that had a nice selection of English books and then to a sweet shop where we found Tim-Tams and candy canes. (You can't really find candy canes on Jeju and the Tim Tams-Aussie wafer cookies- were a big surprise!) I really wanted some Thai food since you also can't find that on Jeju so went to Happy Thai for lunch and had green curry and spring rolls. Yum!

Hae-un-dae beach

Unfortunately, we missed the airport bus - he drove right past us! - and had to wait about 30min. By the time we got to the airport it was 5:58 and our flight was to leave at 6:00pm. They actually held the plane for us, ran us through security and threw us on the plane by 6:03pm. I've never been through check-in that fast! The flight attendant on our small puddle-jumper made us a balloon animal and took our picture with Chrismas ears. We felt like celebrities! Jeju Air is a nice airline, very considerate and friendly staff and a smooth plane trip. The landings were a bit short (and a little scary) but we all made it safely home. It was great to get off Jeju for a few days and I really liked Busan, but it's nice to be home, too. We had snow again yesterday, though not nearly as much as Seattle, and I have a little cold and 2 long boring days at school ahead. Tonight I'm making puff-pastry and teaching yoga, and tomorrow the Christmas parties begin.

Merry Christmas to everyone!