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The Last Korean Road Trip: Celebrating Buddha’s Birthday in Busan
Welcome to the LAST leg of our final road trip! To recap: with a year to spend in South Korea, our goal was to see as much of the country as possible. We planned our last big road trip for the major holiday week of Buddha’s birthday. Making several stops, we covered some well-known sites we hadn’t visited yet: Songnisan National Park, Andong Hahoe Folk Village, and Busan, South Korea’s second largest city. The weather during this trip unfortunately was not on our side. Indeed, this was hands-down the rainiest vacation we have ever taken, with significant rainfall on six out of seven days of traveling. However, our desire to see something…
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The Last Korean Road Trip: Adventures in Busan
Welcome to the next leg of our final road trip! To recap: with a year to spend in South Korea, our goal was to see as much of the country as possible. We planned our last big road trip for the major holiday week of Buddha’s birthday. Making several stops, we covered some well-known sites we hadn’t visited yet: Songnisan National Park, Andong Hahoe Folk Village, and the city of Busan. The weather unfortunately was not on our side. Indeed, this was hands-down the rainiest vacation we have ever taken, with significant rainfall on six out of seven days of traveling. In this post, we visit Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, about a…
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The Last Korean Road Trip: Adventures in Hahoe Folk Village
Welcome back to our final road trip! To recap: with a year to spend in South Korea, our goal was to see as much of the country as possible. We planned our last big road trip for the major holiday week of Buddha’s birthday. Making several stops, we covered some well-known sites we hadn’t visited yet: Songnisan National Park, Andong Hahoe Folk Village, and the city of Busan. As you will see, the weather unfortunately was not on our side. Indeed, this was hands-down the rainiest vacation we have ever taken, with significant rainfall on six out of seven days of traveling. Fortunately, a year of walking and hiking in…
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The Last Korean Road Trip: Adventures in Songnisan National Park
With a year to spend in South Korea, our goal was to see as much of the country as possible. We planned our last big road trip for the major holiday week of Buddha’s birthday. Making several stops, we covered some well-known sites we hadn’t visited yet: Songnisan National Park, Andong Hahoe Folk Village, and the city of Busan. As you will see, the weather unfortunately was not on our side. Indeed, this was hands-down the rainiest vacation we have ever taken, with significant rainfall on six out of seven days of traveling. Fortunately, a year of walking and hiking in all kinds of different weather was good training, and…
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Finding a New Normal: What We Miss Most about Korea
Now back in the United States for a couple of months, we’ve been enjoying some of the comforts of home. Catching up with friends and family has been a highlight of our return. However, it’s also been a time of reflection on those parts of our South Korean experience that we really miss. Grief is a normal part of culture shock, and part of coping is understanding that conflicting emotions are okay. It’s okay to miss home and also to feel really excited about living in a new place. It’s also okay to feel happy to be home but also to grieve for the place you left. Few life transitions…
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Returning to “Normal”: Hitting the Easy Button on Stateside Life
We loved our experience of living in Seoul and wouldn’t trade that time for anything. It was hard to leave a city we had come to love and the people who made our year really special. As happy as we were, we knew that parts of life in a different culture and with a significant language barrier were very stressful at times. The moment we landed in Hawaii, our first stop in the U.S. after leaving South Korea, we were reminded of how much easier life’s simplest tasks are when you are in a familiar culture and speaking your first language. Here are some of the first everyday “easy button”…
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A Chemical Mystery: Navigating the Unpredictable Course of Research
Did you know that research scientists and detectives have some things in common? Research often does not go according to plan, and sometimes in the lab you stumble upon something unexpected and mysterious. If you’re lucky, you can follow the clues to solve a mystery that you didn’t originally set out to solve. This is the story of how my biggest discovery during my sabbatical year at Seoul National University (SNU) was not in the research area I set out to study. It’s not a disappointment, nor is it something that really surprises me. In this post I’ve described the chemical mystery that I stumbled upon and how I solved…
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Making “Framily” with Seoul International Hikers Club
When we considered what it would be like to move to a large city in a new country, especially in the middle of a global pandemic, it was impossible to know what it would be like. Would social activities be allowed? Would we find other people willing to meet strangers during a pandemic? Would we make friends? Even though we had some ideas about how we might meet people, I think we were semi-prepared to spend a lot of time alone. Within a month of our arrival in Seoul, I found the Facebook group for the Seoul International Hikers Club (SIHC). The introduction to the group says, “We are a…
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How to Pack for Korea: The Wins and the Regrets
Packing for a year in South Korea was remarkably difficult. Never having traveled here before, we had a hard time managing our expectations about what we would and would not be able to find easily. We figured the chemist might be able to find some clothes and shoes to fit him if needed, but as a taller woman I was afraid to count on finding anything in Korea that would fit me. Plus, we are #1 cheap and #2 efficient, so we weren’t willing to bring extra bags or to add weight beyond what the airlines allot for free. We found lots of packing lists on the internet, and for…
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Mountain Parks Blooming: Places to See in Jeollabuk-do (Part Two)
Our road trip started with South Korea’s south coast and the province of Jeollanam-do, but we ended by driving back up to Seoul through the western province of Jeollabuk-do. This area offers a rural and small-town feel, very different from Seoul and distinct from the coastal towns and villages we visited earlier on this trip. Here, we explored the foodie city of Jeonju, hiked the rugged peaks of Naejangsan National Park, and trekked through the towering stone pagodas and blooming cherry tunnels of Maisan Provincial Park. In part one of this post, we visited historic Jeonju Hanok Village. In this post, visit nearby Naejangsan National Park and Maisan Provincial Park.…
