Jeju-do day 1

I'm in Jeju island for a week. We get a week off for the Korean Thanksgiving holiday "Chuseok." Good thing about this is we all really needed a break but the bad part is we don't get even one day off from next week until December 22. That is a long time!

I am here with fellow teachers, Brie, Jo, Elizabeth, Rhoda, and Jeffery. We are staying in a hostel in the south western part of the island. The hostel has a very "home-y" feel and we really like it. The woman who runs it is named Isabelle and is extremely helpful. We all tell her where we want to go the next day and she figures out everything to get us there. She talks to the cab drivers to get us home too.

Jeffery, Brie and I flew in yesterday and spent today exploring. We took the bus one town over with 3 other people (from Canada) that we met in the hostel. We walked from the bus to this amazing waterfall and walked right into the water. We hiked back up and decided to wander down the street to see what we find. We went down one road to these lava rock tide pools. We climbed all over them. It was so cool to see the patterns the lava made flowing into the ocean.

From there we walked towards the other falls but got lost and stopped for lunch. After bimbibop we walked to the other falls. These falls were a walk through a beautiful park that look like a jungle. The second falls were smaller but beautiful just the same.

Next we walked up this looooooooong staircase and hiked up to a place called "lonely rock" We walked along this big cliff and saw a beautiful view of the ocean. Jeffery and I noticed a staircase so we made our way down and discovered a very cool pool of water hidden behind these big volcanic rocks. People were swimming so we joined them. We sat on the side of the pool and let the waves of the ocean wash over us until one giant wave came, washed us off the seat and across the pool. It was fun and scary all at once :) We, again, climbed all over the lava rocks and then headed up to the cliff to see the "lonely rock." Walking along the cliff was a gorgeous view and the waves were amazing. It was much like PV only volcanic haha.

Korea has this thing where in parks all over the country there are work out machines. They are mostly for balance and agility not like weight training but they are in almost all the parks. Surprisingly (but also not) they were at the top of the cliff in this park. We decided to try them out. It was a lot of fun :)

We walked back to the bus and headed back to the hostel to meet the rest of our crew that had just flown in. We walked to a restaurant from the hostel and had kimchi jigae for dinner. We are now showered and definitely ready for bed! Tomorrow we are aiming to see the volcano tubes on the northern part of the island!