Konjiam Resort

There are advantages and disadvantages in working in the academic environment. Among the pluses there are the meetings, usually organised in very nice places. Few weeks ago I participated to a workshop organised by Sang Mook Lee, the head of the group where I work and of the korean Institute for Quality of Life Technology. It was quite hard to follow (everything was in korean!), however I was amazed by the amount of efforts spent for allowing disabled students to follow university lectures (varying from Math to Literature, overcoming many sorts of physical and technological barriers, due to the variety of possible disabilities). 

The workshop was in a very nice place, called Konjiam Resort, just in the middle of the small but cute korean mountains (the back of the tiger). Also Dorothea and Marlen reached me there, so at the end of the workshop I took my camera, and we went to visit the new Arboretum, just opened in 2010, and still incomplete.  With us there was Erik, from Minneapolis, who also joined Sang Mook's group. Erik knows Japanese already, and lived in Japan, so it took for him much less than us to settle down in Seoul, and he immediately opened a blog, while it took months to me. 

Erik has a great capacity to socialize, and to solidarise with people, so he immediately entered in symbiosis with Dorothea.  

The Arboretum is quite big and the way up is quite steep, but there is a monorail to reach the top.

The view from there is nice, although it is impossible to find a spot without trees at all. The area around is a ski-resort in winter, so not an uncontaminated area, but still clear of constructions.

On the way down there are stone constructions

It was quite hard to push the pram on such a rough path but Erik helped us with that and also baby-sat Marlen when we were really tired

Finally we found a great and well hidden pond

where dragonflies of all colours live

as well as hunting frogs.

A dragonflies had lunch, but did not bother of our presence...

further down we continued between the most classical flowering fields

Dorothea really enjoyed the stay

and Marlen was proud of her spirit of adventure

So, after few more shots...

...it was time to go.

 Back at the resort we had the irresponsible idea of buying one of these soap bubble maker for Marlen. She discovered the new state of matter usually called "foam"... 

... with a taxi we reached the bus station, where Marlen was the big star, as usual.