Good-bye Korea!

I'll leave you with one of my favourite things about driving in Korea...
...getting stuck behind a truckload of cute men! (All Korean men must do 2 years of military service in their 20s). ;)

Good-bye Korea, I love you, I will see you again soon.
Hello Canada, I love you, I will see you soon! *muah!*

I'll be home for Christmas...

And not just in my dreams! I'm comin home Dec 18....yay!

My next favourite monks

Whilst whiling away a couple of hours in the magnificent gardens surrounding the Potala Palace (residence of the Dalai Lama), we met these wonderful monks:

Don't you just love those runners? (the other one has sandals and socks on...cute!)

They spoke barely a lick of English, and had one old raggedy English phrase book which was, well, not the greatest to say the least. But, through the use of mimes and that book, we sat and had a wonderful time with them for hours. The funniest was teaching them the word, "monk." It just wasn't sinking in...so finally I pointed at each of our group in turn: "Monk, monk, teacher! Teacher, teacher, monk!" They got it after a couple rounds of that. hahaha!

To sit with people so eager to learn, and trying so hard to understand was something else. Maybe in the future I'll re-locate to Tibet University...

My favourite monk

This poor little rascal was bored out of his tree at the Jokhang Temple in central Lhasa, and while other monks and commoners were seated in great halls listening for hours upon hours to scripture readings, he amused himself by bothering tourists. It was pretty comical...he'd run over to a group of tourists taking photos and stick his head in the pictures, and pretend not to notice he was getting in the way. Sometimes he blocked people's paths and wouldn't let them pass, sidestepping and demanding a toll.

We first saw him running over the roof here, and followed him.
Spying on people below...
And so we played with him for a bit:

Young boys are often put into monkhood (is that a word?) by their parents at a very young age. In fact, the population of Tibet has been steadily decreasing and one factor is the tradition for every family to have at least one son as a monk.

Shish Kebabs

Last night saw me and 4 of my friends going out to a nearby "hof" (bar/restaurant). We had shish kebabs! Yum-my! Well, not all of them were that yummy...I ate one crunchy thing that I rather disliked and was then told it was a "sandbag" from a chicken's stomach. Oh please pass me another! hahaha. I love the Korean tradition of barbecuing your food in front of you at the table. I will miss Korean food!!

S with pre-bbq'd food:
Food cooking:

My side of the table:

Yum and Not So Yum

So, on our trip to Seorak, we visited the East Sea, as I mentioned, and we saw rows and rows of squid drying the the wind. Dried squid is a big treat here...people eat it all the time, usually while they have a beer with friends. No thank you!

On the other hand, Korea has amazing street food everywhere, and always at the bottoms of popular mountains. My favourite is roasted corn on the cob. You can also get chicken, toffee with nuts, rice cake (which is like cake, not like popcorn like at home), boiled fish paste (disgusting), and fried bugs (also disgusting).

Seorak

Couple of weekends ago saw me back at Seorak Nat'l Park with some friends, and was it ever gorgeous!!! Clean, crisp air, fall colours, bright sunshine. Almost thought I was back home there for a bit...not to mention we accidentally happened across the East Sea...also clean and beautiful! (unlike the grey mess that is the West Sea). Here's how we felt...us Maritimers were right at home!