I've been staying in Ulsan with a friend and his family for a little while now. They're sooo kind and good to me, and have been taking me to some really cool places here like a super old famous Buddhist Temple (they're Buddhist), my friend's university here, and their "garden" which is a kind of a farm out in the country which was all built by their uncle. I've been talking a lot with people about happiness in life, and I'm starting to understand why so many Korean people move to America to live. I'm not sure about women, but men have to get hired into a company between the age of 28 and 30 or else they're out of luck. So up until that time there's a lot of pressure on students to study hard and do nothing else, and to do things to build their resume. It's hard to get a job, and even harder to be independent from your parents like in America, and since independence is hard to attain, students are also heavily pressured by their parents' influence and hardly have a chance to think about happiness or where their heart truly lies.

Here I see people in their 60s and 70s every day going to work, because there isn't a good public welfare program in Korea. Parents work most of their lives supporting their children, and then hopefully have their children provide their retirement later on. There are some homeless people here, but unlike homeless people in America, they don't confront you or try and talk to you to get money, they just sit there looking pathetic and hope you decide to give them something.


Lots of people play this game called Jok-Gu, and we saw some old people playing it so I tried it out with them. It's like volleyball but with your feet and a lower net - really fun! They were really excited to have a foreigner play with them and gave me beer and watermelon~

There's a forest here in Ulsan of bamboo trees. We had some fun climbing around hehe - it's like climbing the rope in gym class because there's nothing for your feet to grab onto.

We took a spontaneous trip to a beach in Busan at night, and didn't have a place to sleep, so we tried being homeless for a night and sleeping on some benches. Mosquitoes ate us alive, and we couldn't sleep much, but I think I got like an hour.

The awesome fish market in Nampodong, Busan. It's like going to the aquarium but it only costs you money if you're hungry!

A quick sampler of the fish market. I didn't take too many pictures because I felt kinda awkward just going around like I was in an aquarium, but it really does kinda feel like the best free aquarium ever.

We made a sand highway with underpasses, tunnels, and a soccer stadium here on the beach! It started as Hwanyeong's sculpture of my face, then we dug 6 tunnels underneath it and kept digging. There's also a hole that doesn't go anywhere - that's our nuclear silo.