Winter is coming to Jeju. Since last night, we’ve had start and stop rain, hail and general slush. It isn’t that cold (high 40s?), but the north winds and strong and ever-present.

hail piled up on the windshield last night

So it’s starting to feel like winter!

We also just said good-bye to my parents, who visited us at our home on jeju for 10 days, and travelled with us in Japan a week before that! More stories from Japan will be coming soon!

While my parents visited, we tries to show off some of the strange balances that are Jeju. We saw beautiful scenery at protected waterfalls and hiking spaces,

Beth, mom and dad at Cheonjeyeon Waterfall. This part only flows after heavy rains, but the rocks were really pretty!

An actual flowing waterfall. Jeongbang Falls is the only waterfall in Asia that falls directly into the ocean!

Tried some local cuisine,

Mom and Dad trying some of the local specialty – bbq cooked right on the table.

Another table-top cooking specialty – dak galbi (spicy grilled chicken and veggies).

Visited beautiful temples,

Yakcheonsa Temple main hall. Big golden Buddha is really impressive in person.

A super impressive sand art upstairs in the temple. It’s kept under glass and was so precise that it was hard to tell it was sand at first.

Went beach combing on the local black sand beaches,

Beach find – this was the most beautiful shell I’ve seen (lovely purple!), but all of them still had really goopy living creatures struggling to live, so we nicely threw them back.

Met the neighbors for a pizza and game night,

Our neighbors (and fellow Coloradans), playing Farkle! after pizza night.

And ate fresh tuna for dinner! Their stay happened to overlap with the yellowfin festival, where a highlight activity is watching men in waders try to catch tuna with their bare hands. One of the hosts caught one and handed it to me. They cleaned it up there and we brought it home for dinner!

Koreans trying to catch tuna.

An oddity highlight was the local chocolate museum, which has theoretically been rated one of the top 10 in the world, but seemed to mostly just be several rooms of poster board info about chocolate production and several more rooms packed full of knick knacks this woman acquired on her travels to learn about chocolate. Most of them didn’t even relate to chocolate. Very odd, but entertaining.

Mom with the statue of the “God of Chocolate” in front of the chocolate museum.

We got out of the house one night for a hotel stay on the easy coast, where we again climbed Sunrise Peak and took the short ferry to Udo Island where we bused around to beautiful cliffs, caves, beaches and fantastic burgers!

The family on the top of Ilchulbang watching a chilly sunrise.

Mom enjoying the ferry ride U-do.

Mom and Dad enjoying their morning snack of ice cream and Hoddeok – fried bready pancakes filled with honey. Hot and fresh and yum! Both the ice cream and fry bread had famous Udo peanuts in them.

Mom and Dad doing some impressive (and unexpected) scrambling on the way to one of the caves on Udo.

The cave at the end of the scramble. The water in the cave was so incredibly clear!

A mermaid statue on one of the beaches, complete with Korean girls, uh, admiring it.

Amazing burgers as tall as my head – layers of veggies, little sausage patties, and sauces. Yum!

On our last day together, my folks came out to cheer on Patrick and me and a few other KiS teachers in the Jeju Mandarin Festival 10k race. We all finished strong despite intense winds and steep hills, and part of our finisher swag was a crate of fresh mandarin oranges! Mom was a machine getting a whole box peeled and prepped for freezing, since we won’t eat them all before they go bad!

Mom peeling one of our boxes of oranges while Dad tries to read.

The actual Mandarin Festival is next weekend, and the spot for our next date “envelope”, so more on that to come!

It was sad to say goodbye to my parents, but exciting to be starting to plan Xmas parties and winter break adventures. The time is flying!

Happy changing seasons to all!