Jeju Island: People Go There For Honeymoons

The yellow splotch in the picture is on Jeju Island. It's an island made out of a volcano. People go there for honeymoons.

Waegwan is the red splotch in the picture. That's where we live, 40 minutes from Daegu, the fourth largest city in South Korea. We walked to Waegwan's train station - actually, we ran to the train station, and the train was arriving as we were buying our tickets, and THAT WAS REALLY CLOSE. But we made it! And rode to Seoul for like 4 hours. Then caught a plane. And then we were on Jeju! We got to be on the 16th floor of our hotel! Which was 2 floors below the breakfast buffet! Perfect spot.

Near the hotel, there was a Dunkin Donuts and a Baskin Robbins (neither uncommon here.) We also found a Krispy Kreme!

After dinner and ice cream and then donuts, we went back to the hotel and watched a boring show where they weren't speaking English while playing a mysterious board game. We couldn't figure out how the game was played. I found it on the internet, though, and we bought our own Go game set at E-Mart the next morning.

I got terrible sleep that night. I spent like 10 minutes trying to turn on the air conditioner when it was time to get ready for bed, because it was stifling in our room and the windows only opened like two inches. But guest access to their air conditioners was turned off because it's winter. So I got way too hot and woke up 97834543 times. Also, Joe and I were sharing one of the two small beds, but that wasn't working, so we slept in different beds that night. In the morning I had a miniature temper tantrum and tried to convince Joe that we needed to find a different hotel. He didn't agree. So I adapted. The next night, we pushed the beds together to make a big one and moved them over to the only source of cool air in the room. AND THEN IT WAS LOUD FROM TRAFFIC. But I had earplugs!

There was a funny sign in the room warning people about putting fish or noodles into the electric teapot.

Also here's a picture of the McDonald's where we had lunch every day. We've only had McDonald's a few times in Korea.

I don't have any pictures of how cold and rainy and windy it was when we caught a taxi to take us halfway around the island to see a LAVA TUBE. The LAVA TUBE was a cave where lava had once flowed. There was old, dry lava everywhere we looked! It was incredible.

Then, there was the leaky bus stop where we waited for 45 minutes for a bus that never came. It was getting darker and windier and even colder. Finally...a taxi appeared! Just when we were trying to find a way to find one! I ran through the rain waving my arms at the taxi. It worked! Soon we were warm and comfy and on our way toward dinner. I'd checked my phone-internet for notable restaurants in the area of our hotel, and found one. "Bagdad Cafe GO!" I said to the taxi driver, in Korean, and IT WORKED! Kind of. He had to call for directions. But we got there! And we were so hungry that we pretty much ordered one of everything! It was Indian food. It was delicious. I'm sad that I was too busy eating and trying to be warm to take any pictures. (It was really cold in there.)

After dinner, we went back to the hotel. We played part of a game of Go. I lost, and moped until we went to bed. The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and saw that it was finally starting to be sunny outside.

We planned to hike up the volcano in the middle of the island and got a taxi to take us to the mountain trails after lunch. But! The trails were closed! It was about 1:00 in the afternoon, and they didn't want anyone else to go up the mountain, because it can take a very long time to get to the top and climb back down and they didn't want anyone stuck up there in the dark. So that was kinda sad. I'm sure it would have been amazing. And also an exhausting 8+ hours. Instead we got to see the first waterfall we've ever seen together!

 

Nearby was a bunch of rocks we went exploring on. I wanted to see what was around the curve of the cliff.

 I pretended I was the Little Mermaid.

I did it wrong.

We bought some snacks at the nearby gift shops: Tiny fresh seasonal Jeju mandarin oranges, and some orange-flavored chocolates. Also I sampled a mass-produced Jeju chocolate with a cactus-flavored filling. It was okay. After that, we took another taxi to the Jeju Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum.

I was particularly impressed with the museum's cardboard James Bond car.

The guy on the left is made of wax.

After the museum was dinner in the attached "Kraze Burger" (I think it's a Korean chain.) It smelled like frying in there. Then we took a bus to the area of the hotel, and got Krispy Kreme! While we were there, I needed to use the restroom. The restaurant had a spiral staircase. The restroom was up the staircase...and outside of a door opening onto the restaurant's roof. Cold again, but I was too amazed that I was in a bathroom in a shed on a roof to be upset. We went back to the hotel and watched the Abraham Lincoln Killing Vampires movie. It was a very nice last evening on the island.

The next morning, decent hotel breakfast again, packed our bags, left them with the front desk in the lobby. Then we took a bus...

...to see a rock in the water, and ate some weird kiwi fruit sold there, and saw a couple of people fishing on a precarious perch, and marveled some more over how the rocks we stood upon had obviously once been lava.

Joe's foot fell in a puddle and his shoe and sock got soaked. It was time to leave, anyway. We ate at McDonald's one more time and picked up our stuff from the hotel and went to the airport. I took one last picture of the volcano-mountain.

It was cold, it rained for the first couple of days and I apparently picked the wrong hotel, but in spite of all that, I think this was the most romantic vacation we've had. We got to see old lava and a waterfall and a cardboard car and the ocean and rocks! For once, I didn't have every second of every day planned, so we got to just relax and eat donuts a lot. It was so great.

2013: No More Maybe

2012:

We started a Roth IRA and maxed out two years' worth of contributions. Paid off the car we signed for three years ago. We saw a rainforest in Singapore, saw the Great Wall of China, spent 72 hours with diarrhea and vomiting in Beijing. We visited an island made out of a volcano on a rainy November weekend, ate Dunkin Donuts, hung out in our hotel room playing an ancient Asian board game and watching Korean TV. We had two birthday parties. I started learning about my DSLR camera and have 5,863 photographs of this year - more than I've taken in the past five years combined. Researched becoming a professional photographer. (Noticed that they often work on weekends. Decided I'm not cut out for professional photography.)

I learned about preparing a balanced diet, approximate calorie counts of what we eat, approximate calorie counts of what we need. It was the most valuable thing I learned last year. I completed an intense 6-days-a-week-for-90-days fitness program. I don't think I've ever been more proud of myself. I also decided I wanted to learn how to run. Did a couch-to-5k program. Ran my first 5k. Joe ran, too, and was at the finish line waiting for me.

I wasted time. A lot of time. That little Korean workbook I got for Christmas last year and could have finished in three months still has two lessons left. [After the first two paragraphs of what was great about this year, this one was supposed to be about the bad parts of the year, but other than my laziness, I can't think of a single thing. Unless you count when I accidentally washing-machined the cellphone two weeks ago and it doesn't work anymore?] Although...of course...there is still something missing.

In August 2010, I was thinking, "It will be this month or next month." It wasn't. "Maybe the one after that." Nope.

When 2011 was the new year, I was thinking, "Just think! Nine or ten months from now, maybe..." But no.

Five minutes into January 1st, 2012, I was thinking, "Maybe this year." ...then again, maybe not.

It's different now. This year's "maybe" is tired and pathetic. I mean, something has to happen soon, but there's not much hope left for the natural, beautiful, wake-up-one-morning-and-find-out-I'm-pregnant I always expected. My expectations have changed: sterile rooms, paper gowns, pain, stress, potential victory still a kind of defeat.

My life is full, and so good. I never stop being thankful. But there are also times I can't stop being bitter. Knowing that this is part of a bigger plan, that everything happens (or doesn't happen) for a reason helps. Doesn't fix all this, but it helps.

Oh well. Joe and I are together. At least we still get to sleep in on the weekends, and easily travel, and play video games constantly. We have peace and happiness and love together. We have a lot to look forward to together, even just little everyday things. 2013 might hold very little "maybe"...but we'll see how it goes.