Upo Wetlands

Welcome to the Upo Wetlands, go to the website if you want more information about it. 

We had a great time venturing out on the scooter last Saturday. We packed a picnic and didn't know where we would end up. We decided the Upo Wetlands would be nice. We have heard others talk about it so we decided to check it out. When we got there the first thing we did was rent a tandem bike. We just so happened to get the POS-iest bike they had, but more about that later. We were super excited to try something new, we even had the bike man take a picture of us. 

Before we hit the trails we ran into  Brian and Stephanie as they pulled in.  Great minds obviously think alike! (although I contend that ours are the greater of the two  since we were there first) We waited for them to get a bike and then we explored together. It was really beautiful and hot.

Beautiful picture of the back of my head! At this point in our little trip our bike was working okay. It had it's problems but they managed to work themselves out. As for Nick and I working together to ride this thing, I would dare say we did a pretty good job! We couldn't bike up any of the hills, so we walked a little. The longer we rode the bike though, the more it broke down. Pretty soon it wouldn't work at all. The chain would fall off, or the tire was rubbing the Y-bar, or every time we peddled it would make a weird popping sound and stop us.

For an intermission of our biking troubles we decided to head up to the Mountain Observation Building.  (Emphasis on the word Mountain) A hyperbolic number of stairs later, maybe like a thousand point two and a half, we arrived at a cute little building that was the graveyard of some of the largest horse flies I have ever seen.  These things were massive!  Like, three times the size of the little frogs I will talk about later.  Oh, there were also pictures of local fauna, a diorama, and a few of those stationary binocular things you usually have to pay to look through, but the real things of interest are the massive horseflies attempting to quantum shift their way through glass.

Nick decided he wanted to try to use one of those binocular things to view a group of birds hanging out on the wetlands and, right as he honed in on them, a group of Koreans who had gone to the patio plopped themselves on the railing right in front of him.  The great part was that they spaced themselves just far enough apart to obstruct the view of the birds from every pair of binoculars in the observatory.  Very annoying, so we decided to have a little fun.

We have observed in our travels that Koreans are, as a whole, ethno-phobic (is that even a word Nick?).  They will go to great lengths not to stand too close to a foreigner if possible.  this had lead to the creation of several fun games, such as 'escalator hopping" in which we inch up closer and closer to a Korean on an uncrowded escalator to see how close we can get before they get uncomfortable and walk the rest of the way up.  Great fun.  Well this time I decided I would help Nick out and go creep out some Korean men.  So we took bets and I went out to get cozy.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  It was like they had superglue on the soles of their shoes.  I even tried hacking up a lung while standing uncomfortably close to one of them and taking part in their conversations by inserting "Nae" every so often,  they weren't even phased.  After a while of this unsuccessful game, we decided to descend the stairs of  a thousand shin splints back to our tandem bike of cheapness.

After a few false starts, some kicking, and some mumbled cursing, we got annoyed with it and just walked the rest of the way back to the beginning. We stopped at a shop and got a nice Ice Pop, and Nick bought me a sunbrella (my word for an umbrella intended to block the sun but not really rain,  Nick says they are called "sun shades" but all of us know he's full of crap and sunbrella is much cooler sounding) and he got a T-shirt. We then walked outside and sat down by a pond. While there we saw this really cool red dragonfly

As we sat and enjoyed our lunch by the pond we saw some huge fish swim by. At that moment a Korean Mom and her daughter walked up and I pointed out the fish. Her daughter practiced some English, her mom took some pictures of us and they were on their way. 

We also got up to leave because we were tired! We jumped back on the scooter and headed home... or so I thought. When we arrived to a crucial turn Nick asked if I was up for another adventure, "Sure" was what came out of my mouth... then we were lost.

Usually I prefer having a destination and route in mind before I set out exploring, but when you are in a foreign country (and with a crazy person like Nick) you learn to just close your eyes and float where the wind takes you. I hope I remember this lesson and bring it back with me to America. 

Our trip home took about twice the time it normally would have, but we had so much fun and saw so many cool things. We stopped at the town south of us and grabbed a few things from the store before we scooted the rest of the way home. When we got home we changed and I looked at Nick and saw this.....

His arms match his new shirt!

Bless his heart!!!! Even his hands were sun-burnt. (Note: Nick did wear sun screen).  That evening we had a BBQ and shot off some fireworks with friends. When we went to church on Sunday we were grateful to the family who took us to their home for some Aloe and dinner! (Fuhriman's ya'll are awesome!)

This week has been very rainy because we are technically in monsoon season or jangma (장마) as they call it (if you ask me we get just as much rain in Alabama this time of year). We have really loved the rainy season here because all of the baby frogs are coming out. They are hopping around every where and they are super cute!  I keep telling Nick I want one but he's mean and says we aren't allowed to have pets in the apartment. I will leave you with a cute picture of one.

And with that I sign off!  Have a great weekend everybody!