Touring Around Ulsan

Well it has been a little while since my last post so I thought it was about time I wrote another. D and I have been keeping busy withwork, hiking, painting, exploring, and of course eating. The rain is coming shortly and there has already been some rainy days so we are trying to make the most of the good weather we can.On Sunday we decided to go on one of the tours of Ulsan. We didn't really know what to expect but thought it would be a good way to see the city and get to know some of the good tourist spots to take our guests. We arrived at the double decker bus that would be driving us around and of course decided to sit on the top floor. We were the only visible foreigners and realized that the whole tour would be in Korean.

Here are some pictures from our tour:

Here is our bus, it was very comfortable and thank god had air conditioning!

Our first stop was in the Oegosan Onggi Village. Onggi is a type of Korean pottery.

Onggi are pots have been very important to Korean culture as they are breathable so that whatever is contained in them does not go rotten. It was interesting to go through the museum and walk through the village. The pottery is also biodegradable as it is made out of environmental friendly materials such as leaf mold and ashes.

The next stop was Ganjeolgot, the pictures don't do this place justice and I will have to head back again as the sun rises as it is the place with the earliest sunrise on the entire northeast Asian continent. On the beach you can see an endless horizon and a great view of the East Sea.

The final stop on the tour was to Jangsaengpo Marine Park to the see the whale museum. The museum show historical remains related to whaling and lots of whale related information. It was really interesting to see and thanks to our new friends on the tour we got to go to the little aquarium there and see some live dolphins.

All in all it was good tour and a great way to spend the day. We will hopefully be going on more of these tours as there is lots to see in Ulsan and the surrounding area. So if anyone wants to come visit we have 2 extra guest rooms and lots of great places to see!

We plan on posting some pictures of a little walking tour around our apartment, our hiking trails, and our actual apartment. D will also be posting lots of the great shots he is getting with his new camera!

Love the comments that some of you are leaving.

Miss you all,

J and D

World Cup in Korea

Last night D and I decided to head downtown to watch the Korea vs. Argentina World Cup match. Some of D's co-workers were going to join us to watch the game. D and I grabbed a cab and went to go to "The Golden Eagle" pub. Downtown as super busy with lots of people wearing red and flashing devil horns. The Korean fans are known as the "Red Devils" and the advertising all over Korea is for all the fans to be as loud as they can, and believe me they are following! We ended up at Bar9, a log cabin in the middle of new downtown. We had to choose a different bar as everywhere was so busy. Watching the game was so much fun as we had some local Koreans with us to help with ordering beer and food. Now I learned some important Korean rules at the bar and they are as follows:

1. Order very large pitchers of Hite beer

2. Serve the oldest person first, this person is known as a-bo-ji, or father. This was a Scottish expat that we were sitting with, I am not sure if he was happy to labeled the a-bo-ji.

3. After a-bo-ji has been served then others can be served, you never pour for yourself. You must pour with your right hand and you keep your left arm close to your chest, when having your cup filled you hold it with both hands

4. Once everyone has full glass of beers you raise up for "Kom Bai" or Cheers!

5. Food must be ordered with drinks, we made the mistake of eating before going out, but that is ok as most of you know I can always eat

6. During the soccer match you cheer for everything! Someone kicking the ball, blocking the ball, running, standing, and of course scoring!

7. Don't fill up on the food at the table as they bring out this little chips that I have named "ringalos" to the table and they are very addictive, I think I ate three bowls

It was a great game to watch even though the Korean team lost, everyone was in good spirits.

I thought I would write a little about our little Arnold as lots of people have been asking how he is doing here in Korea. Well Arnold has been a little trooper through this whole journey. First flying to Vancouver for a week to be attacked by Sawyer the new puppy, then getting back in his crate for a 11 hour journey across the ocean, getting a scary cab in Seoul, and then on another hour flight to Ulsan. It took him a couple of days to get back to normal but from the second we landed he was still ball crazy so we knew he was going to be just fine. He has found a perfect place on the sun deck for him and his girlfriend to lay and look out the window and smell all the smells. He is a bit confused by the people as they are all quite scared of him and usually has people yelling at him or dogs barking at him. But we have some great pathways by our apartment that we like to explore and he puts his nose into over drive. I think he is enjoying having me around all the time but he is becoming a bit of a baby wanting to sit on our laps all the time. We are so happy to have him here it makes being a lot easier and more like home.

Tonight is games night at the Foreigners Compound Clubhouse. Should be a good time. The teachers that teach at the school are in a band they will be performing for us after the quiz is done.

Have a great weekend

-J

Second Week

Dennis and I are entering our second week here in Ulsan after a great weekend spent together. Friday night I educated Dennis on the ways of the bus here as we took the 1401 downtown go our for dinner and drinks. We ended up leaving late as D has been so excited about setting up all of our gadgets in the apartment. After stopping at the Hyundai department store for some cash (when you find an atm that works with your bank card you stick with it) we were on our way downtown. After sitting in traffic for what seemed like forever (I am not pleasant company when I am hungry), we made it downtown and to the sushi restaurant. Ulsan online has been a great resource for finding great restaurants and we had recently read an article about "Haru Sushi bar" and thought we better check it out. It lived up to the review as it was great, fresh and inexpensive sushi, but still it is no Hana (I know that will drive D nuts). The night ended with us getting drinks at the Miller time bar, and you guessed it they pretty much exclusively serve Miller. It is a strange place but I just had to check it out for myself.

Saturday we headed back downtown to go to the Ulsan Grand Park. This is an 83 acre park right in the city. There is plenty to do there like play mini golf, go horse back riding, ride bikes, and just walking around to name a few. We headed there as there was a foreigner flea market. There is an organization of teachers who create different events to raise money for the orphanages here. I bought a couple of books at the flea market and we headed out.

D was feeling a bit under the weather so we stayed close to home yesterday. We did our big grocery shop for the week and was so happy to find pretty much everything we needed. Although I couldn't find liquid vanilla so I found vanilla powder, I hope it does the same thing! We also stopped at "Foreigner Town" to see what they had to offer. They have mostly indian food items but they did have maple syrup which was very expensive but very worth it on our pancakes the following day!

I met up with the expat ladies for a quick hike up the mountain right by our apartment. What a great place to have so close to us! There are several different trails up the mountain and takes about 30 minutes to climb, that is if you are pushing it! I look forward to meeting up with the same ladies on Wednesday and Friday. Today was a big breakthrough in the meeting people department. I will attending pilates on Tuesday and Thursday and then there is a quiz night on Saturday at the club house bar! I have also heard of some crazy theme parties where everyone dresses up, and I just have to say that D and I will give them a run for their money as to costumes. I am going to go to the consignment store and start our tickle trunk soon! Most of the women will be leaving for the summer but will be back in September.

I will sign off for now and write soon. Thanks to all the new followers to the blog it is great to see you are reading the blog. Send us an update of what is going on in your lives too!! We both miss everyone lots!

-J

Pictures Galore

I've been taking a lot of pictures lately and decided to put them all up online for you to follow us on our adventures through Korea and beyond. Jen and I will attach the more interesting ones to posts here, especially if they're wacky or confusing, but to check out the whole shebang (and to creep through all of my pictures from the past few years if you are so interested) make your way over to http://picasaweb.google.com/dennis.blackwell/. Anyway let's see how this works...

We spent a few days in Vancouver before our flight to Korea. We went down to Seattle one day and ended up at the market.

This guy was putting on pretty much the best show I've ever seen.


Since we've been here, we've done a bit of investigating around and checked out the Black Pebble Beach.  It's a pretty standard beach, but instead of sand there are these 5cm stones covering everything.  It's pretty neat.


I thought this picture was nice.


Yesterday we ended up at Ulsan Grand Park, which is some monstrously large park in town.

Well, that's all for now.  There'll be much more to come in the near future.

Keeping Busy

Date: June 11, 2010

Blog: 2

Time: 5:30pm

Ok we have survived one week in Ulsan Korea, success! I am currently sitting at our kitchen table drinking Hite beer waiting for Dennis to get home from work. We are going to head out downtown tonight to go out for some sushi. Ulsan online gave a great suggestion for sushi so we are going to go try it.

This past week has been great. I feel like we have been here longer than a week as we/ I have been very busy. I decided that it was important that I was a busy as I could be while I am here so that I don’t become a lazy sloth in my year long vacation. I decided that each day I would have to go try something new and do some more exploring.

Monday I went to the club house on the foreigners compound to see what I could see and possibly meet some people. I must have picked the worst time because there was no one around and the lady working the bar didn’t speak English so I couldn’t sign up for a membership but I did get a nice walk. The club house is great as there are yoga/ pilates classes, a squash court, pool, driving range, pool, and of course a bar, everything that expats love. Dennis and I can join and participate in all of those things for 20,000 south Korean won which equals a little less than $20/ month.

I participated in one of the classes offered at the clubhouse on Wednesday afternoon, Korean painting. I know what you are all thinking “Jennifer Gorman participated in an art class?”, well I was skeptical as well. My teacher, Mr. Park is excellent and can even make someone like me, a very uncreative person seem like an expert. For three hours I practiced making flowers that Mr. Park drew for me and then taught me several different techniques. I met several great women in this class and I am already looking forward to next week when I will start my first piece. It was so great to chat with the other women in the class and to have them tell me their favorite parts of Ulsan and some very helpful tips in surviving here.

Thursday was going to be my adventure day on my own as I was going to try to get new downtown (there is an old downtown) on the bus. This was a lot more difficult than I expected. Ulsan online has a lot of great resources for bus routes but it was still hard to interpret what they meant by some of the routes. So I winged it and headed to the Hyundai department store to try my luck. I got on the bus that I wanted to, the 1401, and realized it was the wrong bus when we arrived at a bus terminal and the driver told me to get off. So now I am in a strange part of town in a town I know nothing about. But I used my street smarts and walked up the street and found the bus stop for 1401 going the other way. The same bus driver I had picked me up and I was now on the right bus. I made it downtown and walked around for a bit. Ate lunch at a little noodle shop and decided I better get home as we were going for a team building dinner with Dennis’ co-workers.

So far so good in Ulsan Korea. The biggest “a-ha” moment this week for me was “ it is okay to do nothing”, or at least what feels like nothing. I am used to doing lots of things when I am in Canada. I work full time, have a great social life with great friends, and I am comfortable in my surroundings. I am still learning everything here and if that means my days aren’t totally full then that is ok. I have such a great life and I appreciate everything I have. I am already missing my friends and family in Calgary. It is hard not being able to talk to people I know everyday but it is making me appreciate my great friends and family that much more.

Dennis is home now and working on setting up our Skype phone so we will have better access to communication to everyone. Once he has it up and running and has explained how everything work I will get the information to you all.

Miss you all,

-J

Arriving in Korea

Well this is my first blog entry ever, not really sure what I am suppose to write or if anyone would even find this mildly interesting. I am sitting in my new apartment in Ulsan, South Korea waiting for my family in Vancouver Canada to call me Skype. I have been in Ulsan for about 4 days now, we arrived on June 3^rd and have been running around the city trying to get set up in our new life here. We have moved to Ulsan so that Dennis can work on project that is being built in Ulsan and will eventually move to Fort McMurray Alberta. My work has graciously given me a leave of absence for a year so that I may go with Dennis.

The first few days here have been really great. We haven’t suffered much jet lag which is great. Most of our time here so far has been doing lots of shopping and eating. The apartment that we have moved into is fully furnished but we still need to fill it with food and our own personal touch.

Friday June 4^th we stayed around Ulsan, wandering around our condo complex, the side streets, Hyundai department store, and our local Home Plus store (insert annoying Home Plus jingle here). We also ate some delicious food. We ate bip bim bap, which is bowl full of beef, green onions, cabbage, garlic, chili pepper sauce, and rice. It comes with many side dishes including of course kimchi, spicy cabbage. For dinner we went to Dennis’ favorite shabu shabu restaurant from the last time that he worked in Korea in 2007. Shabu shabu is similar to fondue, where you stick thinly sliced pieces of mean and veggies into a boiling pot of spicy broth that is cooking in the middle of the table. Once all the meat and veggies are eaten you cook the noodles in the broth and then the hostess will come and remove the broth from the pot, and cook rice, seaweed, green onions and egg in the pot and you scoop out the rice and eat it. It is a delicious meal and I know we will become regulars at this restaurant.

Saturday we decided to drive into Busan (second largest city in Korea), which is about 45 minutes away; that is if you don’t get really lost like we did. We wanted to go to Busan to go to the Costco there to find some comforts of home. Going into Costco was like being transported back to Canada, as it was exactly the same including the hot dogs and ice cream, which we of course had to have. It was good to know that we can find lots of great things in Costco. It is a bit of a drive and we can find mostly everything here in Ulsan so I am guessing we will only go monthly or bi-monthly.

Dennis started work this morning leaving the apartment at 5:30am! During the day while he is at work I am hoping to get involved at the club house on the Foreigners compound. On the compound there is a driving range, tennis courts, squash courts, swimming pool, as well as many classes like yoga, pilates, art, cooking and language. It will be great to make some friends here that I can see during the day and go out with their families on the weekend. When you talk to certain people about their experiences in Korea they either love it or they hate it. So far I am loving it and I am going to make the best of our situation and enjoy the time that I have here as I know that Korea has a lot of offer. I also look forward to the boding time Dennis and I have together since most of our relationship he has been away working. I know we will both look back on this year fondly.

More information about Ulsan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulsan

www.ulsanonline.com -Expat webpage

-J