Did you know that in the morning, they have food, TV, almost everything. It's pretty good.

Starting work at 2 o'clock has made sleeping in as long as we want, exceptionally easy. We always say we'll get up early, go hiking on our backyard mountain, maybe, or make it to the fruit market (literally 3 blocks away). We even talked about grabbing some coffee one morning before work, a relatively simple and quick task, and we couldn't even manage to pull that one off. It's just so easy to hit the sleep button when you know you don't have to be at work for hours. There was one morning when we hit the snooze button for over two hours. Every eight minutes that damn thing went off, one of us would get out of bed, just to do it all again in eight more minutes. For over 2 hours. Terrible decision. Although, extremely satisfying.

One morning however, we managed to get up, out the door, and down to school by 8:50 in the morning. I know, an ungodly hour, but we had our reasons. We met up with a few of the other teachers to head down to Haenam (a beach town) for the weekend. It was definitely one of the best decisions we had made. After a taxi ride to the bus station, a bus ride to another bus station, and finally one last bus ride, we were in paradise.

Haenam is a very small town that happens to sit on one of the more gorgeous beaches I've been on. We quickly dropped our stuff off at the minbok (a hotel sort of thing, except there's no bed, just a comforter and a sheet on the floor for you) and spent the next 9 hours lounging on the beach, drinking OB Blue, playing cards games and doing crossword puzzles. It really doesn't get better than that. Jake and a few of the guys played frisbee in the water, which was entirely too cold for me. I just waited until the tide went out, so I could easily go out 100 feet and not hit water any deeper than about 5 inches.

We were pretty much the only ones on the beach, but not the only ones at the beach. There were quite a few Korean families having picnics in the trees just behind the beach. Koreans do not like being in the sun or getting a tan. With the sun as my natural enemy, I do tend to agree more with the Koreans on this one (sun on skin = bad news), but not even I could resist laying in the sand with the sun on my face (no worries Bonita, I had my spf 50). I managed to make it out of the weekend with only sunburnt feet.

When we got hungry, we'd make a quick trip to the convenience store for some ramen, crackers, and bugles. I know, quite nutritious, but we had very few options. That night, one of our friends found what amounted to being a private beach where we built a roaring campfire with the dried bamboo we found and lit some fireworks. About one month too early, or it would have been the perfect 4th of July celebration.

The next day we lounged some more, played a few more games, and then, while being sufficiently sick of ramen, ventured down the beach to find a restaurant. We were very happy to find exactly what we were looking for on our first try, and a little disappointed in ourselves we hadn't found the place yesterday. We ordered some bulgogi for the table, and with it came the most side dishes I have seen yet in Korea. Everywhere you go you will get at least a few side dishes, but there was about twice as much food in the side dishes as there was in the main dish. It included kimchi (of course), clams, eggplant, about 3 dishes of different greens, radish, mini anchovies, potatoes, quail eggs, the list goes on. Needless to say we were quite full after that, and extremely satisfied.

Once we got back to the beach, a sand castle contest had started with three very impressive contestents. We had a ziggurat, a round "summer house," and a quite formidable "administrative building." The administrative building ended up winning unanimously due to its very clean architecture. That, and it easily withstood the fire works that were shot into it. An impressive feat for sand. At about dusk, we caught the last bus out of Haenam, and so ended our first trip outside Gwangju (and so far our only one, although next weekend...Mud Festival!).

With that, I will leave you with this picture of Jake frolicing in the ocean.