nature

 In an effort to make my scrapbooking better, I've created a few daily writing prompts to answer daily. I figured there was no harm in posting them here as well for anyone who's interested. 

Outside my window sits a new tree for Tet. We watched the hotel owners bring it in and place it into a new pot. They still have their Christmas tree up here in the common room/restaurant. My kind of place. However, my fingers are so cold I'm having trouble typing.

We visited two old temples at Hua Lu.

Today I saw water buffaloes, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, cows, dogs, Jordan ate one of the goats. Some really spectacular country scenery with giant rocks coming out of the rice fields.

Today I felt the cold air rushing past my face as we rode the motorbikes. I'd never been on one before, and it was very invigorating, even if it was cold.

Today I smelled clean, fresh air. Even Mom would have approved.

Today I tasted some bread and jam for breakfast, beef pho for lunch, and fried rice for dinner. I also had a couple bites of Jordan's goat at lunch. It was good, but chewy.

Today I heard sheep making a really loud baaa-ing. I was on top of a mountain and they were at the bottom, but you would have thought they were enjoying the view with all the noise they made. 

A favorite memory from today: Definitely riding the motorbikes through the countryside. It was sad at the end of the day to get off. Although, now Jordan has new plans to get us our own motorbikes. We'll see about that.

The plan for tomorrow:  Long train ride to Hue. Hopefully the train is in better repair than the one we were on yesterday. I guess we'll just have to hope and make do.

Friday was Teacher's Day here in Korea, so to celebrate we went camping with our friends--Matt and Mihye (England, Korea), Jim and Carol (New Zealand), Edwin and Laura (Canada), and Vicky (England). Actually, to say "camping" is probably a bit of a stretch, since we slept in cabins complete with toilets, showers, TV's and, um, our Wii, and had an ice cream (and beer) man located conveniently down the road; but hey, let's not split semantics ;). We had two cabins, with guys in one and girls in the other, and spent two nights.

Anyway, the weekend was a lot of fun. It rained the whole time, but that didn't stop us (slash Edwin) from playing around with making fires and roasting hot dogs under the nearby gazebo, or playing scrabble and bickering over the validity of "ick," or being slaughtered by the girls in Pictionary, or learning how to really play Charades from masters Matt and Marisa, or trading every bit of trivia (slash "what do you call a man with X on his head" jokes) we knew as we fell asleep in the Manly cabin.

Marisa, our grill, and our cabins:

At Edwin's campfire. Left to right: Me, Marisa, Carol (being blocked by Marisa), Mihye, Matt, Vicky, Laura, and Edwin (the next couple of photos are courtesy of Jim):

Learning the intricacies of "water, log, fire" from Matt. He doesn't realize that his log's about to be washed away by my double river action:

Getting demolished in a girls-vs-guys game of pictionary. Our mistake started at "how about best 2 out of 3" and ended with "best 5 out of 9?"

The setting, half an hour outside of Gunsan:

More pictures here.

For any of you who believed all of Matthew's rhetoric about how ugly Gunsan is, here is proof to the contrary: this photo was taken a ten minute walk from our front door. Click on the image to see more pictures.