Weekend Trip to Anmyeondo

After midterms, CIEE planned an overnight excursion to Anmyeondo, an island off the West coast of Korea and the sixth largest island of the Korean peninsula. It was a wonderful trip and we all got to relax a bit from all the stress from midterms.

Saturday we all met in the lobby at 7:30 in morning, not an ideal time to wake up on a Saturday but the bus ride was going to take about two hours to get to Anmyeondo, so everyone pretty much slept on the way there.

After we had a wonderful lunch of chicken soup, we stopped by a small area where our tour guides for the mudflats were. Before we headed to the mudflats, we played a traditional Korean game, Tuho, a game where you throw arrows into a jar or vase-like pot. The game was played by princesses back in the Goryeo period and Joseon dynasty from what our tour guide told us. It was a lot of fun playing it, but it would get frustrating at how close you got your arrow into the pot!

After playing a couple rounds of Tuho, we moved on to our next activity, making rice cakes! A large slab of rice cake was put down on a wooden block with two wooden hammers lying beside it. The guides kindly showed us what to do as they grabbed the hammers and started hitting the rice cake one at a time before letting us have a try. It was a very fun experience and I think many of us were able to get our stress (and possibly anger) out from hitting the rice cake. After the rice cake was cut up we got to take it with us as a snack!

We then moved on to the mudflats. I didn’t go in, but it was fun watching everyone. After everyone got washed up we ate 부침개 (Korean pancakes). It was my first time trying them and they were delicious! I’ll definitely try more of it during my stay here.

The hotel we stayed at was the Resom Ocean Castle Aqua World, and with it being on the ocean you had a wonderful view. The room I was in was on the ocean side and the view was beautiful! I think dinner was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was one the best Korean barbeques I’ve ever had!

After dinner we could do whatever we wanted, but there wasn’t much to do. My friends and I ran around on the beach while a little mini concert was playing, and the two singers were doing covers of ABBA’s songs. We eventually made our way over to the concert to check it out and there were mostly a bunch of elderly people dancing along to the music before we left to head back up to our rooms. We spent the rest of the night watching TV and eating ice cream.

The next morning after breakfast we all gathered up to do help clean up the beach. It was really upsetting seeing all the trash that was left behind. We spent a couple hours or so trying to pick up as much as we could but eventually the tour guides with us told everyone that we had to stop at a certain part of the beach. I think we would’ve stayed there all day cleaning up the beach there was that much trash.

It felt nice cleaning up and trying to help the community as it was something I’ve never done before back at home.

After putting the trash we collected away we were given options to either hang out around the hotel or go to the arboretum.

The arboretum is this giant park with trees and flowers everywhere. We didn’t go into the tree park but went over to the flower gardens. It was a wonderful place to take photos. I only wish we could’ve spent more time there  because we weren’t able to explore the whole park due to our time schedule.

This trip was probably one of my favorites because it really helped relieve my stress! So thank you CIEE!