Another month gone by!

I am terrible at keeping up with this blogging thing regularly, please forgive my laziness! I have been quite busy over the past month and it looks like things will continue to be busy until I am ready to leave in September!

Since I last wrote, these are some of the things I have been up to:

I went to a lantern festival for Buddha's Birthday at the beginning of May. It was an incredible sight to see! So many lanterns flooding the streets!

The following day we went to the Buddhist street festival and got to try a lot of different things like making lanterns and Buddhist prayer beads. It was a great weekend!

The next weekend I went into Seoul for a haircut and found myself wandering around Seoul Olympic Park. It's a beautiful park in the Jamsil area of Seoul and the day was gorgeous so I was happy just meandering around the park alone.

Last weekend my friend Nate and I participated in a 6 hour endurance bike race along the Han River in Seoul. It was put on by a bike group called the Han River Riders. It was really fun! I went into it thinking I could probably ride about 60km in the 6 hours but ended up doing an impressive 148km!! I had no idea I could bike so far! We met a lot of great people at the race and I am going to be doing a touring weekend with a few of them in a couple of weeks!

This weekend was a long weekend, which was definitely needed. All of us at work were getting a bit tired and burnt out so a nice relaxing mini vacation was just what we needed! I began the weekend with some Korean BBQ for dinner on Friday night with some coworkers. Saturday I slept in and then made the trek into Seoul to run in the Nike Womens 7k Race. It was a really interesting race! The course itself was great, there were a few hills I was not expecting, but the course was mostly on a gravel path which was awesome! I finished the race in 45 mins, so I was pleased with that time. The whole concept of the race was pretty funny. It's a race that is set up to get women who don't normally run into running. They had celebrities on hand to make everyone crazy, and then at the end of the race you walked down a red carpet lined by dudes in white tuxedos, followed immediately by a photo shoot where you were forced to stand in front of a pink limo, next to a good looking Korean dude in a tux, while sweat is pouring down your face and you look atrocious. All things I do not expect nor want to endure during a race, but hey, this is Korea, you never know what you are going to get! I met two great girls at the race as well. Leah, the one I am pictured with, placed 1st!

On Sunday I got up and went for a bike ride into Seoul. Since I am going on a touring weekend soon I am trying to log as many kilometers as I can! Then I came back for lunch and heading into Seoul to meet up with my friend Cait. We spent the afternoon in Seoul Grand Park at the Seoul Zoo! It was a beautiful day out and we had an awesome time! The zoo was much nice than the one we saw in Everland. These animals had actual habitats and seemed relatively happy! I even got to see my favorite animal, giraffes, up close!!

Back to the grind tomorrow! Hard to believe I have less than 3 months left here in Korea! This next few weeks will be spent glued to my side kick Nate. Last week he found out he is leaving for a job in Vietnam on June 17th, so needless to say, it will be a sad time. Nate has been my go-to guy since I arrived here. He has laughed and cried with me, heard my deepest secrets and made fun of my quirks. It's hard to put into words the kind of bonds you can make when you are living alone in a foreign country, all I can say is this is one that I will have for a life time. Without the support that Nate has given me over the past 10 months, I don't think I would still be here, keeping on keeping on. Many a beer have been had on our buildings stoop and those are the times I will miss the most. Our chats and bitch fests have kept me sane in an increasingly chaotic world. While I am sad, and life here in Suji definitely will not be the same for the next few months, I am so happy for my friend. He is off to a new life in a new culture, which I am sure will be filled with awesome adventures!! I am already planning my next Vietnam vacation to visit him!!