Back from Retreat

Hi everyone! Thanks for all of the comments so far! Daniel and I just returned from our three-day retreat with APIS to Korea's southern coast, across the water from Namhae. We stayed at a pension with a gorgeous view (see above), but it wasn't quite large enough for all of us, so in my room, we had five women and only one bed (the rest of us slept on blankets on the floor). It was much cooler down there, which was very refreshing after Seoul's humidity. We ate traditional Korean food at every meal; my favorite dish was a pumpkin/squash porridge that we had for breakfast this morning. We had been told that it would take four to six hours to get to the retreat location, but we were actually on the road for closer to nine hours on Wednesday. This was partly due to the fact that we took a detour by stopping in Jeonju for lunch to eat Bibimbap (see below), which was delicious. We also visited the beautiful King's Pavilion, on a hill above the city.





The Korean countryside was beautiful (once you get ouside of Seoul)!! We saw mountains covered in lush forests (for almost the entire drive), rice fields, and rivers. During our rest stop, we tried a specialty of the region, "walnut cakes." They were shaped like a walnut and had a thin fried layer on the outside and hot red beans on the inside--delicious! The retreat was fun for the most part; we had a lot of meetings, but they were constructive and were intended to help us become a better team. It was fun to get to know the new and old teachers--they are all so nice, interesting, and intelligent. We're really looking forward to working with them! Most of the teachers are in their 20s or 30s, and they have a lot of energy and passion for their work. (And we met a man from Minnesota and a man from the St. Louis area!) At the end of our session yesterday, we climbed to the top of the mountain we were on and had an even more amazing view (I unfortunately didn't have my camera with me), and I later played volleyball with most of the guys and a few of the girls (and even though I hadn't played it in six years, I still managed to do a few good serves and several decent passes). :) Before we went to sleep last night, I shared some wine with a few of the returning teachers on our porch. We were supposed to go on a boat ride and visit the beach this afternoon, but it unfortunately started raining very hard during breakfast. Since it didn't look like it was going to clear up, we decided to leave early (after lunch instead of tomorrow morning), so we returned to Seoul (this time in about six hours) and had dinner at a seafood buffet restaurant. We're hoping to finish unpacking, buy groceries, become familiar with our neighborhood, and frantically read our textbooks this weekend. We hope you're all doing well!