Friday, August 02, 2013

Love 146

So a few months ago liz and I joined an organization called Love 146. It helps to abolish child sex slavery and human trafficking. Basically it is a very large organization that was started by an American guy and you can go online onto their website (www.love146.org) and start a task force of your own in any country that you are in. It can have as many members as you would like and you register with the organization and then get a series of modules that you have to study and educate yourself on the statistics and facts involved by having weekly meetings and then once the course work is done you hold a fundraising event to try and raise $1000.

We decided to do a scavenger hunt. We held it at one of the foreigner bars downtown and got many companies to sponsor us with some awesome trips and prizes. Basically people had to get into teams of four and then we gave them a scavenger hunt list that we came up with that they had two hours to complete. A lot like the scavenger hunt I took part in last year that I posted about except this time we changed rules and came up with new challenges. We also sold raffle tickets for the participants to buy to win some extra prizes. 

I am very proud to say that we raised about R18 000 or about $1800 dollars :) way over the target! 

I seriously urge anyone that has extra time to look into this organization and if you can start a task force of your own that would be amazing. I have learnt so much through this process and it has opened my eyes to realities that more people need to be aware of! I really hope to get further involved in topic while travelling and hopefully volunteering wherever I can. By starting task forces you can also meet lots of new people and discuss eye opening ideas and opinions which really change the way that you see the world. 

I was lucky enough to have an amazing team of individuals in my task force, so here are a few photos of these awesome people and the day of the event. 

Before the event we held an introductory presentation about the organization and everything it stands for to try and get people to sign up to take over the next taskforce.








Or awesome team! Jase, Me, Liz, Andrea, Brennan (behind in the hat is  Colin) 





If you want to learn some more about it all you have to do is Google Love 146 and you'll get all the information you need. Even just taking a look at the videos on their site is well worth your time!! 



Boseong green tea fields (보성 녹차밭)

Liz and I have wanted to see the green tea fields for quite a while now and so we picked a weekend we didn't have any other plans and decided to head over there. Its pretty far from Daegu as you first have to make your way to Gwangju which is about a 4 hour bus trip and then another 1 and a half hour bus trip to the tea fields. So we decided to go up straight after school on Friday and stay at my friend Gwens place in Gwangju where we had some dinner and caught up with her and then we made our way over to the tea fields early Saturday morning. 
It was an amazing sight! The tea fields stretched for miles and miles all along the hillsides and everything was just so green! you can walk through them all the take a little bit of a hike up the to the top where you get a view of the whole area. It was a bit of an overcast day though so the mist made the view not as spectacular but it was still pretty great. We spent a few hours exploring and walking around before going back down to the base and enjoying some very good green tea ice-cream and buying souvenirs from the gift shop. 


I was surprised at how hard and waxy the leaves were.











This means I love Boseong

Once we were done we made the long journey back to Daegu and arrived about 7 that evening. 

Geoje Island

So in Korea Buddha's birthday is a national holiday so we had the Friday the 17th of May off. At first we had though about going to Jeju island but when we looked into it all the flights were sold out and we heard it would be REALLY busy and crowded that weekend so it was probably a blessing in disguise. 
Liz, Aubrey, Gareth and I then decided we really wanted to hire a car and road trip somewhere, preferably somewhere with a beach and that's how we decided on Geoje Island. It is very convenient for a road trip as it has a really big highway connecting it to the mainland so you don't have to go through the hassle of loading your car onto a ferry or something. The drive itself was beautiful! The highway that you drive along gives you a view of all the surrounding islands and scenery and I tried really hard to capture this on camera but the railings of the bridge ruined my photo so I found some online that shows you what it looks like. 



My photos from the drive up

My photos from the drive up

Highway to the island

We decided to camp this weekend so that was also a very good reason to hire a car as that meant we could pile all our stuff into it and not have to worry about lugging it all from one bus stop to the next. Once we arrived on Geoje we made our way over to the beach we were camping on called Gujora beach (구조라). It turns out that many other foreigners had decided on the same beach and we ended being surrounded by friends and familiar faces which definitely added to the gees of the weekend. 

Road tripping it down. Gareth had an international drivers licence so he did all the driving for us.
 Here are a few photos of Gujora beach and us setting up camp.






Setting up camp





 Once we had set up and got all our gear out of the car we were pretty hungry and decided to make our way over to the local restaurants and try out some of their famous seafood. 

This is the little fishing village in the middle of town

The locals selling fresh seafood in the harbour

These are what most seafood restaurants in korea look like. They have all the seafood in tanks outside and you can pick what you want. 
We decided on Seafood stew. They bring it to you like this and then you let it boil and all the flavors and spices seep into everything and it turns into a spicy seafood broth type thing. Was pretty good. 


Gareth messing about with the octopus  


Once lunch was over we made our way back to camp for a relaxed evening filled with braaing and chilling on the beach with friends. It was a great night!! 

Aubrey and Gareth being cute as usual



It got pretty chilly at night!

The boys setting up the fire for us
 The next day we did some exploring to a famous beach nearby that is called the black pebble beach because there are black pebbles instead of sand. It makes an amazing sound when the waves break. After the pebble beach we went exploring around our beach and found a bamboo forest type thing that took us up to quite a high point on the island with an absolutely amazing view! 

Pebble beach




Bamboo forest


Amazing views



Aubrey, Ina, Justine, Liz and I 
They found a very high wall to get up on to

Some burial mounds along the way


We spent another night braaing and chilling on the beach before it started to rain at about 10 o clock and didn't stop till the following morning, resulting in us sleeping in puddles in our tents and getting back in the car to go home VERY early the next morning! 




Night time entertainment



Even with the rain though it was an amazing trip and I would definitely like to go back! 

What the following morning looked like


 I recommend this Island to anyone in Korea! Great place to make a trip to :)