Daepohaeanjusangjeollidae

This past Wednesday Dad, Ben, and I went to the Taejongdae cliffs to see the view, lighthouse, great rock formations, etc. Ben had two weeks off of school for his Spring Break. We had missionaries go home and new missionaries come in so our time was filled up with many training meetings. Ben was a good sport about not really vacationing. He had Seminary lessons to catch up on and some studying for his classes. We tried a couple of new restaurants and walked to the Marine Museum close to our home (with a cool art exhibit). At the beginning of the break Ben had his physical for his mission papers, and will have his dental appointment this week, then he will be done and ready to turn in his mission papers!

   

 

Just looking at these cool rock formations made Ben comment about maybe wanting to go into geology.

These trees were beautiful but Dad could smell the beautiful blossoms from far away  his allergies will kick in soon. The trees looked kind of like the Magnolia trees back home, except they didn’t have any leaves out on them.

 

Last Friday we had MLCM with a lunch afterward that Sister Lee prepared. She made a dish called jimdak. She starts off making a huge pot of some smelly fishy broth stuff, that I really don’t know nor want to know what it is made up of. She adds some of that to this dish, which is made by cooking a whole chicken that has been cut up in no rhyme or reason, bones included. I guess the Koreans think that cooking the chicken with the bones adds flavor, which it does. But trying to eat the chicken off of the bones and around the skin of pieces of chicken while using chopsticks is difficult. So imagine a big serving platter with thick, clear ride noodles (like japjae noodles that are shaped/size of fettuccine noodles) that are covered over with chicken pieces in a sauce, along with very few pieces of sliced carrots, potatoes, and green onion pieces (I really would like more vegetables in it). The rice noodles are long and stretchy/don’t bite easily.  Because in this dish they cook the whole chicken Sister Lee told us that if we eat the chicken neck (which she has in her chopsticks) then we will be able to sing beautifully!  Sister Lee made a batch of jimdak the day before the meeting, for us to taste, as her guinea pigs. She had never made this dish before but she went to a restaurant where she ate it and then made it from that. She’s very talented. And we enjoyed taste testing.

Last year when we attended this festival Ben tried to eat bundaegae (roasted bugs) disgusting! He wasn’t willing to try that again.

Walking around the grounds we saw the area where the hotel provides overnight camping in large, nice looking tents/campgrounds.  Another area we saw a bride and groom with their wedding photographer busy taking pictures.  We walked down toward the area that has a bunch of rocks and puddles overlooking the waves as they crash up the coastline.  Then we walked back up to the hotel past the jogging trails through the woods and the tennis courts.

 

Fun ice cream cone that they filled from both ends with soft serve ice cream.

The Korean name of the Jungmun cliffs is Daepohaeanjusangjeollidae. They are made up of columns of volcanic lava that solidified when hitting the saltwater making polygon shaped pillars. So fascinating to see.

 

Just down the hall a few feet Ben and I noticed this exit, thinking it might be a stairwell, but No! It surprised us with the sign on the door and then, again, when we looked inside.

 

 

Dad and Ben started the day with a jog around a nearby waterfall and crossing a bridge to run-on an uninhibited island.

People are so nice in Korea when it comes to taking pictures you can ask almost anyone to take your picture. They seem to enjoy counting One Two Three.  I thought this young woman’s phone was cute.

  

  

We saw a number of fields of yellow flowers that people would stop and take pictures in, reminding me of back home when people would take pictures in the Blue Bonnets.

We quickly left the Jungmun cliffs to go back to the hotel to change our clothes before driving the other direction to see the Seongeup Folk Village which I think was first built in the 4th century as the government capital. The problem was that it was closest to Japan so the Japanese invaded them many times. Also, there was damage from typhoons. The village was built and rebuilt a number of times before the capital was final moved over to Jeju/that side of the island.

 

There was another tree propped up as well, that was 600 years old.  Fascinating buildings some really tiny hovel/hut like structures.

 

The sign posted by this building said it was built in 1901. I think the buildings were built in stages/different yesrs with people living in them now. The sign said this house was originally used as an inn where cows and horses were reared, there are horse managers in many places. It reminded me of the Nativity story from the Bible so I wanted to capture what it might have looked like back in the time of Christ’s birth.  The next building was in the center of the fenced in area, used when government officials came to spend the night much nicer.  The next building looks to me like a Buddhist temple though I did not see a sign with information.

 

 

The restaurant had writing on the walls and the woman working there even brought over a couple of markers for Ben to use for his drawings. Ben found messages from people from Australia and Japan.

 

We had tried to go to a restaurant that sells hamburgers the size of a dinner plate (recommendation from the Bowcutt’s), but we could not find it.

 

Saturday evening we attended the wedding of a woman in the Seogwipo branch and her fiancé (a man who was baptized 3 or 4 weeks ago) by one of our assistants just before he transferred to the mission office). This was the first wedding held at the branch church building. We had been visiting Seogwipo a couple of weeks ago when this woman, Sister Kim, told us she was getting married at the Justice of the Peace office. Dad suggested she just hold the wedding at the church building and it turned out great! The branch members had so much fun/supported them well. Some of the Jeju branch members supported them, too. It was fun helping set up the tables and chairs when the catering truck arrived. It seemed like everyone is part of a big happy family. The parents of the bride just recently finished serving a mission together in the Daejeon Mission, after which Dad released them. It was fun to see them there, hear from the father, see the sisters (the bride and another sister have been translators for me when I¹ve given talks in district conferences in Jeju and Ulsan).