Filled with hot air, doing loop-de-loops, kung-foo fighting and meeting Romeo.

Last weekend Jen and I had the pleasure of meeting up with some old ABU friends who are also living here in Korea. They were kind enough to teach us how to use the subways, bullet train and bus systems of Korea, as well as treat us to some great adventures and experiences. This blog will mainly be a picture blog… I’m horrible at remembering the place names and spellings of all these Korean places… and I figure that the pictures will be relatively self-explanatory. The following were taken in Daejeon, South Korea :)

After eating a wonderful Korean lunch, strolling through some sort of Korean market and then experiencing a nice downpour and thunderstorm, we arrived in Daejeon. As we were on our way to an amusement park we noticed this balloon. Who doesn’t love hot-air balloons? We were perhaps abnormally excited with our close proximity to such awesomeness, and proceeded to take massive amounts of photos. Eventually, we ended up continuing on towards the park when we heard yelling behind us. A nice Korean woman caught up with us and with a combination of broken English and gestures she communicated that the people working with the balloon wanted to take us foreigners up in the balloon. “We want to take pictures!” she said. Who are we to refuse a free hot-air balloon ride?!!? Very excited, we trotted back to the balloon, ready to have our photoshoot.

First up were Darrell and Shannon:

Next were Chelsea, Jen and I:

Below is a picture of the tour bus crowd that appeared beneath us. I wonder how many pictures we are in?! It was great fun, albeit a bit loud and hot what with the blasts of flames shooting up in the air. Just ignore the scorch marks and the rip in the balloon. It was all perfectly safe I’m sure ;)

Soon, we were on our way to the park. I believe it was called Kumdori Land or something like that. I’m not good with symbol reading yet:

While many delight in the big rides and so forth, we initially embraced the free amusements:

This is me being super short. Below we are being short AND stout. The little teapot would be proud.

Next I experienced alien fingers and extreme tallness:

And then met myself for the first time:

Jen had an alien encounter:

We considered the Ferris Wheel:

But it was going super slow and the things were enclosed and strange. Instead, I tried out the Roller Coaster and the Viking Ship. Childhood was relived.

I think we foreigners were the loudest people on the rides. Koreans are very reserved and apparently ride in nearly complete silence.

Jen decided to stay grounded, and embraced… well, whatever this is:

And because everything in Korea is best described as “cute”, we were not at all surprised to find a love seat at the park:

Gotta love it.

Then we found this:

If you look close enough, you will note that the park was selling mace balloon things for kids… hahahhahaa.

Thank-goodness for road signs. We would have gotten quite lost were it not for this sign:

“Earth. Straight ahead.”

We then continued on to dinner. And man, it was unbelievable. Soooo good. May I present “gal mae gi sal”:

We ate until stuffed, then moved on to a Noraebang. This is a sort of private Kareoke room that you can rent. Think somewhere along the lines of a soundproof room, complete with disco balls, tambourines, water to drink and a great many awesomely translated English songs.

It’s hard to pick the songs, but once you’ve chosen you get to stand up, dance and belt out some tunes like you’ve never belted or danced before!

Here I believe we are Kung-Foo Fighting :)

As for the rest of the weekend, we got up for church the next morning and enjoyed a great service. It was there that we met a young guy named Romeo. All of these awesome English names will never fail to amuse me.

Finally, we hit up Cost-co and Save-zone in an attempt to locate some dearly missed ‘American’ products such as cheese, coffee and hair conditioner. Then, Jen and I were off to find our way back home.

This picture was taken from the Bullet Train. We had to ride first class because all of the economy class tickets were sold out for the entire day. Korea certainly has some nice pretty scenery.

Overall, it was an AWESOME weekend. Thanks Darrell and Shannon for your hospitality and allowing me to steal some of your pictures for this blog :) We had a great time!

To all you back home, I hope you’re all doing well :) Send me some email updates if you want! I love hearing how everyone is doing!

~Kate