I took my first mini-vacation this past weekend for the long Chuseok holiday, which is Korean Thanksgiving.  We have 5 days off so a bunch of pals and I ventured to Muuido Island, which is off the west coast of Incheon (on the China side).  Katie, Liz and I all slumber partied at Abby’s Friday night, and woke up at the crack to take turns showering and then make the long and epic journey to the island.  From Itaewon it took us about 2.5-3 hours, which was a bit absurd, but it was an awesome journey with my 3 new Seoul sistas 🙂

After about 50 subway transfers, 2 buses and a 4 minute ferry ride, we made it to the shore where we snagged a cozy little hut-for-four right on the water.  We immediately threw our backbacks (and pillows, and towels, and sweatshirts – eh hem Liz) down, made a quick change from our typhoon attire, which had us scorching hot, and ran off to meet the rest of the crew who made it much earlier than us.  We ate lots of sodium-filled spicy ramen noodles and mystery flavored chips, imbibed lots of 1,000won bottles of soju and Powerade, played some silly animal games and took lots of awesome photos.  It felt so great to be enjoying myself with such a fun and sweet ass group of new pallios on a little island in the far east.

The amazingness struck at sunset, when the tide drew back about a mile, exposing the softest mud (and some glow in the dark penis fish).  The 4 of us, with soju bottles in hand,  literally ran out like we were running to the edge of the world, and shared what I would like to say was the best, most happy moment of my life.  It was yet another one of those “I’m so happy I’m in Korea” moments.  Certain people and times popped into my head, and I realized that even while not present, they still have such an impact on where I am today, whether I like it or not.  And all I could be was happy.  Ch-ch-check out the videos below to see the most gorgeous sunset of life, and some ugly (what we think are) penis fish (and cute little Korean boys!)

I love taking photos, of course you all are aware of that since you love when I take awful photos of you (love you), but being in this place, this weekend, with the people I was with, just made me want to snap snap snap and do lots and lots of reflecting.  It was just so breaktakingly beautiful.

Hope you enjoy these little nuggets of beauty, because next post will be some bomb diggity drawings of me by some of my very creative students, and one of them involves eating dog meat.  Enjoy the beauts!