Sorry to keep you all waiting....it's been nearly 6 weeks since I last blogged! Danny and I have been super busy with school and other things. So we have some good news for all of you back in the states....we are coming home early! In late March I started looking into nutrition programs online to be sure I was on the right track. Originally I had planned to start working towards a registered dietitian (R.D.) certification at Queens College in the spring of 2011. But, I recently found out that Hunter College in NYC just launched a new program that combines a masters in nutrition AND an R.D. certification. This is a great opportunity, because very few schools offer these two things together. So, I won't be ready to enroll at Hunter until the fall of 2011. But, I need to come home ASAP to start taking pre-requisite science courses for the nutrition program. I spoke to my director, and she was obviously sad to hear I was leaving, but she understood. I will hopefully be home in the beginning of June (just in time to take General Chemistry I at Nassau Community College). I am already signed up for two science courses in the fall, and I have to take two or three more in spring. In case you're wondering, Danny will be coming home as well! We are a exciting to come home and see all of our friends and family, but we will miss Korea and our students though.
I'm trying to remember what we've been up to the past few weeks...Danny and I were sick for awhile (allergy season + stomach virus), and we had tons of work to do at our schools. So if you look at all of the pictures I've posted on Picasa, you can get an idea of what we've seen so far. Three weeks ago it finally started getting nice outside, so we walked around Ilsan Lake Park. We walked another 2km or so around the Ilsan area and finally found a vegan buffet restaurant that I've been looking for. It was probably one of the freshest and most delicious buffets we've been to so far here, and we are actually going back for dinner tomorrow. Last Saturday we went to Yeouido, which is an island in the middle of the Han River in Seoul. The annual cherry blossom festival was held there, and despite the late spring in Korea this year, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Last Sunday we went to the Korean War Memorial Museum. It was a huge museum, with displays on all the wars that Korea has fought in, and the grounds were beautiful too. Today we went to Everland, which is the largest amusement park in South Korea. It's owned by Samsung, but it's got nothing on Disney World. It was a lot smaller than Disney, but it was still really entertaining. It was a beautiful day, so nearly everyone in the Seoul metro area seemed to be at the park. Since it was so crowded we only went on two roller coasters and a water rapids ride. The wooden roller coaster was actually really fun and scary. The other rides were mostly kiddy rides, and the other adult rides had ridiculous wait times. So we spent most of the time exploring the park, which was really scenic because it's built into a mountainside and the cherry blossoms were blooming. Our favorite things were probably the giant tulip garden and the huge zoo area. I actually had my best amusement park meal ever there too. Literally every other snack stand or restaurant on the premises served only meat dishes, so we found a fancy buffet that had fresh food with lots of veggies. Plus there were no crowds in the buffet restaurant! The only thing that was disappointing about the day was the transportation. It took us nearly 3 hours to get the park, because the wait for the public intercity express bus was so long. On the plus side, everything was so cheap! For the entrance fee, transportation, and food combined we probably spent less than we would on just the entrance fee alone to an American amusement park.
I promise I will try to keep you all updated over the next few weeks, because we are scrambling to see as much as we can before we leave! We actually planned out a schedule for each weekend.
