Lotus Festival and more

8-10 Ok, so I wanted to start this entry by stating that I cannot believe that it's already Aug. 10th. The time is really starting to fly by and it's difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that I've already lived in Korea for over 4 months, or 1/3 of my contract is already up! I'm currently in the second week of my vacation and like last week I'm just kind of meandering around Seoul and my little village. Last week I spent a great deal of time walking around Seoul and checking out partts of town that I hadn't visited so far. My buddy Glendon and I went on a couple trips around town and while they were not entirely exciting they were a good time as we were able to relax and enjoy taking our time. We visited the prehistoric settlement and pondered how archiologists could identify pots, tools, etc while excavating. It seemed particulary difficult to do so to us.
I also visited Taco Bell in Itaewon, which is not particularly awesome, but it is nice everyonce in a while to go somewhere that gives me a little sense of the Western world. I also found the bookstore "What the Book", which is an English bookstore in Itaewon. I picked up a John Muir book, which is the collection of his writings from several of his books in one. I also picked up a book on South Korea to better understand this country and why things are the way they are. A couple days later while roaming around I stopped at YP Bookstore and picked up "A walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson. It is a book about walking the Appalachian Trail and I highly recommend this book as he is a hilarious writing and I plan to pick up some of his other books soon. I finished the book in two days as it reignited my desire to one day hike the entire AT myself. If I planned it out and stared shortly after going home next spring I would have more than enough time to hike the entire trail in 2011. If there were anyone that would seriously consider doing thus with me, I would have to seriously consider doing so.
This past weekend I finsihed Mr. Bryson's book while on another Adventure Korea (AK) trip that took us to the largest Lotus pond in the world in the Muan area and it was a very fascinating festival where we had rice, etc that was rolled into a lotus leaf and steamed and was rather delicious. While waiting for our rice to steam we made Onion Kimchi, which simply is onion slices, the red paste, and salt mixed together and then placed in a container which it ferments for several days. I look forwad to eating mine in a few days. Later we moved down the platforms to try two types of lotus tea, one was lotus leaf tea and I can't remember the name of the other, however, both were very delicious!
After sampling the tea we moved over to the portion of the festival where we were allowed to sit in a small covered boat and row around in a path through the lotus pond in which we bumped other boats continuously and noticed an abundent number of tadpoles coming to the top to eat. After leaving the festival we stopped for dinner before heading to our beach house for the evening. Our beach house was quite nice and had a small swimming pool and the beach was nice although the water was no where near the little beach as low tide was definitely in effect. We spent the night talking and having a great time swimming and throwing each other in the pool. I'd like to take a quick second to point out I was the only one not thrown into the pool!
The following morning we walked out to the beach to where the tide had come in considerably and we were going to be net fishing. With myself being one of the two biggest in the group, of course, I was selected to hold one of the two poles and would be heading the group out and then likewise on our march back to the shore hopefully with fish in tow. Sadly our first trip only merited five small fish, but we did decide to venture back out, this time though I only helped to hold the net up high to keep the fish from jumping over our net. This time we did at least snag a few fish large enough to keep. After finishing our host cut the fish up for us and we had fresh sushi right next to the house and it was delicious.
I have another AK trip this weekend in which I will be hiking and camping in the North East section of the country. There I will also get to see the 4th Infiltration tunnel at the DMZ and check out the observatory in which I'll get to look into North Korea. Hopefully I won't get captured while there, calm down Aunt B! Anyway, I'm going to get off here now and read some more of my current book Theodore Rex, in which I'm a little over half finished, and see how the ordeal in Panama comes out and see what happens with this Canal, lol. 'Til next time.