Jeju: Day 2

The night before, the guy at the front desk told us that there would be breakfast for us the next morning at 7:30AM. We didn't actually make it there until 8:30. When we went downstairs, the guy held the door for us. He had prepared a traditional Korean breakfast for us with those mini side dishes in the middle, rice, and bean sprout/seaweed soup!

The meal room was completely empty. We felt a bit bad, hoping that we weren't the only guests in the hotel and that he didn't wait the whole hour for us to come down. Anyway, afterward, the scuba diving instructors came to pick us up from the hotel. We had an English translator accompany us. About 40 minutes later, we arrived at the harbour and hopped onto a boat along with around 5 other instructors.
They lugged our scuba equipment onto the boat and we were zipped off onto a really small island made out of some sort of lava rock.
Halla-san in the background.
We were given wetsuits (had to give in our height and foot size the day before). Putting it on was quite the ordeal! Then we were given instructions as to what to do if the salt water should get into our masks and the different signals we should give to our instructor if anything were to happen. Theeeen we hopped in!! Surprisingly, I didn't feel the cold water at all because of the wetsuits. The wetsuits made me float like no tomorrow hahaha.. but they later put weights on our hips and our tanks on our backs that almost made me tip over so it definitely helped me sink. We each got a rope. An instructor was with us the whole time. My goodness the pressure in my ear was intense!! About halfway down, I realized I couldn't take it anymore so we had to surface. We were told to plug our nose with our hands and blow really hard to ease the pressure but it only ended up working for one ear. I eventually gave up and decided to deal with the uncomfortableness. At the bottom, we let go of the rope and held an instructor's hand and swam around. We got to touch a bunch of different coral, seaweed, and jellyfish. We also had a personal underwater photographer and posed for a few pictures. I gave the photographer my e-mail but have not received any e-mail yet. The most amazing part for me was when one of the instructors gave me a piece of some white weiner and showed me how to crumble it up. It was fish food! The fish all came to eat the food!!

Afterward with the guy who told us to call him Oppa.
Resting and sunbathing while we were waiting for some of the instructors to dive.
They drove us back to our hotel where we showered and changed and then we took a taxi back down to Jumun Resort. The taxi ride was nice as the streets were lined with a ton of colourfully potted plants! We went to the Botanical Garden (the largest in Asia).
Very pretty here!
Dandelions! Make a wish!
They had different rooms for different types of plants such as the jungle plants... cactus.. water plants?
Bamboo -- you can carve your love on these!
Cactus garden:
Pretty flower!
lol...
Japanese garden with Koi fish in the pond.
In the Korean garden:
Then we walked over to the Teddy Bear Museum!
We got to see the history of teddy bears, teddies from all over the world, and how they've evolved over the years!
Look at how they used to look!
Paddington! From Darkest Peru...
Swarovski Bear.. bling bling
Louis Vuitton Bear - most expensive bear in the world
Mr. Grocer Teddy, here's some money for your apples and bananas!
Smallest teddy bears in the world - not even as big as my pinky toenail!
These bears were the reason why we visited this museum -- they are from the popular Korean drama called Princess Hours (or Goong).
At the teddy bear shop:Lotte Hotel @ night. We met a mother and daughter from New Jersey who told us that a lot of Korean dramas are filmed here and at the Hyatt.
Teddy bears pretty much took over the SW part of Jeju...
To keep with the teddybear-ness, here's a picture from our 3rd day @ the Ramada Hotel, I believe... we were trying to find a non-Korean restaurant to eat at. I was stealing the groom on his wedding day haha!
OH - we had heuk taeji (black pig) BBQ for dinner. These pigs (with black skin) are raised on the island and they are apparently unique to Jeju. Really just tasted like regular pork to me but now I can say that I've tasted black pig!