Two cultures combined - still exploring others

Our Korean family

We miss our UK family dearly, and look forward to seeing everyone soon we hope but I have been very lucky to be accepted into such a wonderful family and so here are a few of the experiences we have had together lately.
Buddah's birthday - On 8th April (lunar calender) Koreans celebrate Buddah's birthday by meeting with their family and going to the temple. We met with many family members and went to Hyunwoo's Grandmother's temple to give thanks to Buddah and to his grandmother. We had bibimbap - Korean rice and vegetables together at the temple and gave thanks.

In the picture from left to right - Ju-han - Hyunwoo's brother, Na-ri - Hyunwoo's sister-in-law, me!, Hyunwoo, Father, Hyunwoo's aunt and Mother.

At the beginning of June we went on a family picnic to a lake which Hyunwoo and I had spotted from the top of Beomeosa mountain on our last hike!
We met at the subway and after cramming into a taxi had a beautiful walk and picnic by the lake with Father, Juhan and Nari.

The lake is at Oreyu-dae about 20 minutes from our house.

The path was beautiful and went through the trees right alongside the lake

Time for the picnic - we sat up under the trees looking over the lake to eat our Gim-bap - traditional Korean picnic food. Gimbap is similar to sushi rolls but with no fish so you have dried seaweed sheets filled with rice and vegatables and sometimes tuna.

We had a wonderful day and can't wait to take Mum and Dad here when they visit us next :)

WORLD CUP!!!

Well we have had some excitment watching the world cup seeing as we now have 2 teams to cheer for!! Hyunwoo's family have also been getting up in the middle of the night to watch the games!!

The chant - Dae-han-min-guk and Eng-er-land!!

The last game we went to Juhan and Nari's house with our parents.

Juhan with the correct cheering gear!

Mother with her horns!! She proceeded to sit in the corner and pray during the game - only looking up if a goal was scored, high five and then back to her prayers!

Overall we have had a lovely month with our family so wanted to share our experiences.

All our love to everyone

Cer and Hyunwoo xxx

A walk over the mountain to Beomeosa

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So it was a beautiful sunny day and we decided to take a walk over Geumjeong-san (mountain) to Beomeo-sa (temple) with a couple of friends.

We started by taking a hair raising journey on the bus - no seats so we got our work out for the arms gripping on for dear life as we whizzed around the hairpin bends!! We arrived and headed up and over the mountain - it was a beautiful sunny day and we could see for miles -perfect for destressing the soul and working the body!

Here are a few pictures of our journey up and over Geum-jeong fortress wall.

Taking a needed water stop

Heading back down from the mountain towards the temple

When we reached the temple it was time to fill up the water bottles

Joan exploring the temple

Overall we had a fantastic day - finished off with some good padjeon (Korean vegetable panckes) and mandu (fried dumplings) - very delicious!

Honeymoon part 2

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Thought it was about time I did the second part of the honeymoon trip - I got delayed by university assignments! Sorry!

So....

we woke up to have breakfast overlooking the beach and were assigned our tea according to origin hence they gave Hyunwoo greent tea and me English breakfast! We found this very amusing!!

Breakfast was beautiful though with fresh mango and Phillipean breakfast of fryed fish and pork with eggs - very yummy!

We decided to go on an exploration.... this is a picture of the cave you must walk through to reach the hotel

And Ceri posing by the entrance to the cave / hotel

This was the beach as you stepped out from the cave.

It was gorgeous with many small sailing boats waiting to carry us away! (and far too many touts asking us!!)

This picture is looking back on to our hotel which is nestled up in the cliff

This was the path on around from our beach - Diniwid to the main beach - White sand.

I loved my big hat!! Thanks Mum!! :)

Now we reached White Sand Beach - we were at the quiet end and to walk to the super busy bit was about 30 minutes I guess...

It was very very very hot!!

SO we decided after all our hard work we needed to have lunch!!

And then it was sunset on a beautiful day!!

The honeymoon - part 1

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So thought it was about time I stop being lazy and actually write the post about our honeymoon. We had 6 days for our honeymoon once we finally threw out the rabble so we decided to go to Boracay - an island in the Philippines. The good new about this destination - only accessible by boat, the bad news - the travel time!

We started our journey from Busan at 9pm in the evening with our first destination - Manilla. The flight was lovely and we arrived at Manilla airport at around midnight local time. We then had to transfer to a different terminal (one of the more frightening parts of our trip as we rode on the "official" bus through some rather sketchy parts of town!!) We then found our bed for the night - the wonderful airport floor (a rather romantic first night to the honeymoon if I do say so myself)

After our wonderful night of sleep on the airport floor we boarded a second - much smaller plane to Caticlan. The plane was tiny!! When we arrived at Caticlan we waited for our luggage as it came off the plane!! It was a very interesting journey!

Next it was time to meet our guide to catch a private speedboat to our hotel (I felt like some kind of celebrity going to our private boat!) It was a hair raising experience as he zipped through the ocean at full blast!

Heading to our boat!

Us and the driver - Alvin

Our hotel from the water

When we arrived at the hotek it was only 8am but they allowed us to check in early, presented us with our welcome drinks, shell necklace and the most beautiful room with a view....

We decided we were going to have a lazy day...so...we headed down to the heaven which was the balcony below us where (for non sun lovers like ourselves) we could lay out on the chairs, under the shade with the magnificent view of the boats and ocean as we sipped on a cocktail! Heaven!