Annyeong to you dear reader

안녕 An-nyeong! (Hello)

So now we live in great little city named Sokcho 속초. This is a wonderful little place perched on the West coast of the East Sea, or more commonly known as the Sea of Japan. The city is quite near the north Korean border and thus has a few military protocols other more southern cities do not experience (such as beach curfews, more on this later).

Daechong mountain, heart of Seoraksan

As the city motto says: "where mountains, the sea and lakes come together", this is a great spot to be in. Far removed by geography from any major city, industry or agribiz-agriculture, here in Sokcho we breathe clean air and have great water quality. I was surprised by how close this city is to the Seorak mountains. These are South Korea's premiere hiking destinations and an abode for nature lovers like us. We have ventured into the smaller surrounding hills and checked out both lakes in town but have yet to really explore the back country, I think that might be this weekend!

Ulsan Rock, we see this everyday!

We were a bit surprised by our apartment, which is small by our whacky Western standards, though it has all we need and is much more spacious then our friends apartments in Japan and some of the bigger Korean cities. But the apartment has a nice easy to clean and simple layout so that we can always us the space efficiently, and also learn to live a more Korean lifestyle (mostly on the floor haha).The best part of our new home is that from our couch we can see Ulsan rock, a scenic craggy peak of the range that looms over our town. This rock is the background picture for the blog at the time being.

The Ssang River, great spot to catch mountain trout

So While Josh explores, fishes for our dinners, and learns Korean (teaching some days), Jackie is busy working with students to prepare English speeches for the school English speech competitions, though we have a lot of spare time to hang out together and eat great food and learn Korean. The school is a great place run by a Canadian and Korean couple who are great people to work with.

Our new town

So, for now, there is so much to say and write about so how about we let this just be an introduction to life here in Sokcho. The blog will cover the town, our adventures, elements of Korean culture and food (our favourite Asian diet) and more from the realm of ideas and what it means to be human. So this is not merely a travel blog, we hope it is a venue where people come to learn about something other than their mundane routine in many ways. For now this is Jackie and Josh wishing you well.
안녕히 가십시오 Annyeonghee gashipshio (Goodbye)

A chunk of the Seorak mountains