August

Hey everyone,

I apologize for not being as loyal to you as Alison has been. August has no doubt been a busy month at work, but I know y'all don't care about that. So lets get into the exciting stuff. Watching the olympics here was really something to witness. While South Korea is a top medal contender every Olympics, they win about 1/4 the total number of what the USA wins, so every medal is celebrated. Some of the highlights of watching the Olympics here were watching Park Tae Hwan win the countries first ever gold in swimming, a Korean woman winning the gold in taekwondo, and of course watching the Korean baseaball team dominate, which culminated with Jordan, his girlfriend, Brady, and myself going to the local pro baseball stadium to watch the gold medal game versus powerhouse Cuba televised live. We were surrounded by 40,000 Korean baseball fans. Admittance was free, and tall boys are always just $3, so it was a cheap and fun time.

Jordan leaves in two weeks, so he and I went east for a man's weekend. We took the bus east to Chuncheon, which was alright, we managed to find a festival, but no real good activies, other than the carnival games. We only played one, I performed better, and was awarded with a yo-yo, but the lady felt bad for Jordan, and have him a big roman candle(which he carried with him for the rest of the day). We thought this might be the case, so we hopped on another bus and headed farther East to Inje, which is toted as the adventure sport capitol of South Korea. We managed to find a place by the river where we set up Jordan's tent. Then we made the 15 minute walk into town to find some dinner. We got some pizza and fried chicken at a local joint, and ate it in front of a convenience store down the road. While there we made friends with a guy that is a rafting a ice fishing guide. He gave us his number and e-mail address, so we are going to hook up with him again come ice fishing season. After we had stuffed our selves with food and beer, we hailed a cab back to our campsite and played some cards(and finally set off jordan's fireworks) before getting some sleep. We resisted the sun, but it finally woke us up around 8. We then made the walk into town again to figure out where we would raft/kayak. We figured out where we wanted to go and grabbed a cab, he dropped us off at this place up in the valley along a nice flowing river. We ended up using inflatable kayaks. Our guides were two guides about our age. The trip was about 2 hours and we got plenty of sun, and the water was cold, but felt great. After drying off we waited for the bus and took it back to our campsite. We then made the walk back into town again to find some food. We ate, chilled by the river. Then Jordan went bungee jumping from 63 meters over the river. Pictures to come later. We then made the walk back into town again, and then jordan realized he left his wallet at the bungee jump place. So he took a cab there and they had it, and then came back into town(this time in a cab cuz we had a bus to catch soon). Funny thing happened on the way back to the bus. We were walking down a hill towards the bus station and from behind us we hear a "Hey!" We turn around, and its our friend from the night before, and he asks, "did you find your wallet?" and were thinking how does he know Jordan lost his wallet? Turns out, the people at the bungee jump place went through Jordan's wallet and found this guy's number that he had given to us, and called him to try to find us. HAHA. It was such a small town, only 30,000 people. We will definitly be heading back to Inje again.