Exotic animals – water edition

Posted on 22/01/2014 by Ingeborg

I haven’t been to many aquariums before and wasn’t sure what to expect of the actual animals in the aquarium in Korea. But I was very happy that they (too) were mostly interested in local animals, so we got to see a lot of fish and other animals that I have only heard about in university.

Well, I have seen penguins before, but not this species.

And I really liked these while whales. They were the stars of the aquarium.

As I am a proper biology nerd, I also love these animals. It’s funny how everyone thinks they’re plants, just because they don’t move.

Many animals had bright colours and big forheads 😉

It worked surprisingly well to use the macro lens through the glass.

These are piranja, pretty!

Not this one though. I think.

These pictures are from the big water tank. Lots of sharks and skates.

Can you call that wash board in English as well? Fun to see the underside of it at least.

Oooh, this is the mantis shrimp! Maybe the only thing that Erik and Ruben were as exited as me to see in real life, as it is super fast and super strong and very pretty.

This strange creature is actually (probably) one of the really old animals on the planet. There are fossils of the same species. A quote from Wikipedia:

Horseshoe crabs resemble crustaceans, but belong to a separate subphylum, Chelicerata, and are closely related to arachnids, e.g.,spiders and scorpions. The earliest horseshoe crab fossils are found in strata from the late Ordovician period, roughly450 million years ago.

So this was probably the most interesting thing I saw…

Had to take a picture of this fish with huge eyes in what looks like a face. Will it kiss you?

I’m not sure if I will go to every aquarium I see, but I think I will try to go to some that are in entirely different habitats than the one I grew up in (or at the shore of).

A trip to the aquarium

Posted on 19/01/2014 by Ingeborg

I realized I have only posted pictures of the crazy mermaid show from the aquarium we went to. So here are some pictures of the people as well. I see now that I almost only took pictures of animals while we were inside, but you know….

The men had once again decided on matching outfits, turned around.

Statues of mascots.

So matchy-matchy.

Walking in the shade, because heat.

Fish!

Solar powered charging stations.

The whole expo area was huge.

After walking around, we drove to the beach to catch the last rays of sunlight.

Grown-up Koreans on their floating toys.

We went out to get dinner! ~~Shoes!~~

One of the few shots of Korean BBQ I have.

This was actually one of the best places we had dinner. Tiny place with busy Korean business people and the best service.

Oh, and also the only time in two weeks we saw a group of women by a table in a restaurant. There were either groups of men or families, but no women. I have no idea what groups of women do, maybe they don’t eat?

Crazy hiking Korean gear btw.

Soju

Posted on 06/12/2013 by Ingeborg

Today is the first Christmas party of two, this season. I guess it’s the universe making up for zero Christmas parties in 2012. Today is the party for the whole of UMB and I will use it as an excuse to have free dinner, but not much more.

I therefore post pictures from our night with soju in Korea.

With the soju came cabbage and pasta free of charge. Strange Koreans.

We only found one decent beer:

Soju:

Soju (Hangul 소주; Hanja 燒酒) is a distilled beverage native to Korea. Jinro and Lotte soju are the first and third top selling alcohol brands in the world.^[1] It is usually consumed neat.

Most brands of soju are made in South Korea. It is traditionally made from rice, wheat, barley, but modern producers of soju use supplements or even replace rice with other starches, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, or tapioca.

Shared meals

Posted on 03/12/2013 by Ingeborg

I wish we could have more ways of shearing meals here in Norway, like they do in Korea. That you go to restaurants where the food is supposed to be shared.

Ruben trying to make sense of the menu.

You know this is going to be hot when:

Getting help deciding what to eat.

We first got some kind of soup with meat and vegetables and after we finished they put rice in the pot, mixed everything and this is what if looked like after the second “round”. Very good and a cool way of doing it.

Beer also cools the heartburn…

I wish there were restaurants like this in Oslo, fantastic for a meal with friends 🙂

Hiking in Yeosu

Posted on 29/11/2013 by Ingeborg

Here is one of many eventful and beautiful days we had in Korea together with Ruben. We spent some days by the sea on the South shore in a place called Yeosu. They had the world exhibition there, but also very nice landscape.This day we went hiking and stumbled upon “kirkekaffe” in a Buddhist temple.

First we had noodles for breakfast at the G25, because nothing was open. But lots of school children did the same thing, so it must be ok.

This is where we parked the car.

My boys.

The map we tried to follow. We went up on the mountain, did a round and went down again.

Erik had just bought a new backpack in Seattle and it was perfect for short hike like this.

What Koreans who hike look like. Long sleeves, west, hat, gloves, long pants and scarves. We looked like aliens, but at least we also had colourful clothes…

We finally reached the top!

It was incredibly hot and humid.

Even Erik is getting the hang of the hand gestures 😉

The view from the other side of the mountain.

You couldn’t see far because of the humidity.

When we came down on the other side we found a temple.

Had to go and say hi.

They were in the middle of a service, so we waited on the outside and got some rest.

We went inside when they were finished to take some pictures, and it was clear that they didn’t get much tourists up there, because they invited us to their meal afterwards.

One of the women there also showed us how to pray in the temple.

Love this slightly loopsided tiger.

I didn’t dare take any pictures inside, put when we went into the common house, we queued for food, got noodles with vegetables and kimchi, ate at a big table in a big room together with all the others and listened to their talk. When we were finished we did our dishes and drove home.

The rest of the temple goers finding their cars and going home.

It was both such a surreal and normal thing to do, go to the temple, share food and be part of a community. And the fact that we had no common language was no problem.

When we came back we spent more time at what almost became our regular coffee shop, making a ruckus when we asked to move a table outdoors.

The beach

Posted on 27/10/2013 by Ingeborg

Just wanted to post some pictures from the day where we probably did the least. The day I managed to get the guys to go to the beach with me for a whole day.