So I find myself sitting here on this not so beautiful Friday afternoon with a little time to kill before I am granted freedom for the weekend. My Friday afternoon teacher's class was cancelled, so rather than staring at the clock for the next thirty minutes or so, I figured I would update you all a bit.Aside from my Canadian friend, Noel, and I getting jumped by six Koreans a couple weekends ago for asking for directions, nothing too crazy has been going on. I have fallen into a steady routine of work and play, and live for the long weekends when I can go somewhere new. The jumping, by the way, faired worse for the Koreans than it did for us and we made it out relatively unscathed.
My Canadian buddy, Noel, who arrived here about 5 weeks ago.
Last weekend was Buddha's birthday, so we had Friday off. The plan was to go to the bus terminal and pick a random city that nobody had ever been to before, buy a ticket and see where it took us. After staying up all night in Bucheon, we were all set for a long bus ride and a nap, the only problem was that our bus was sold out, so we had to wait a while for the next one to come, the nap couldn't wait, and lucky for Joanna and I, I came prepared with my thermarest. The others in the group, however, napped on the ground.
Keeping it real, Waygook style, by sleeping in the grunge that is Korea.
After the sun came up in Bucheon, we found some Koreans who were willing to take our picture.
We ended up going to Chuncheon, a city northeast of Seoul, known for its famous dakgalbi street. Dakgalbi is an intricate blend of hot spices poured over a whole lotta cabbage and cooked with chicken--and man is it delicious. I was not a fan of cabbage before coming to this place, but I am pretty sure that about 40% of my diet is cabbage at this point.
This is dakgalbi and we saw this same lady on the news really excited about something just yesterday.
In Chuncheon we had ourselves quite the adventure. First, since it was Buddha's birthday, the normal 2.5 hour bus ride was somehow turned into 6.5 hours, so for a significant part of the trip we thought we had missed the stop for our city. Upon our arrival, we got a room for the 7 of us, Korean style, so there are no beds to sleep on, just a pile of blankets.
Scoping out the scene for a hotel.
Our hotel came with these sweet ass robes.
Then we went for some drinks and recreation in a park, while turned into an all night event. We managed to find a frisbee like toy (they don't have frisbees in Korea) so we spent several hours tossing that around. Next we managed to find some squirt guns and had the most epic water/beer fight I have ever participated in.
Saturday morning/afternoon we rose from our slumber and tried to go to a shooting range to blow some stuff up, as several people in our group had never shot a gun before. We got there only to find that the place was closed, and since it was out in the middle of nowhere and none of us could tell a taxi where we were to pick us up, we were in quite the predicament. We went out the the main road and eventually flagged a cabbie down.
We are all looking really confused standing outside of the closed shooting range.
Waiting at a bus stop where busses never seem to come, eventually a cab came.
There were seven of us at this point, so one taxi wasn't going to cut the mustard...or so we thought. He, for whatever reason, didn't want to call another taxi for us, but instead told us all to pile in. 8 full grown humans in one taxi is one laughing matter. We told him to take us to the ferry, so we could hitch a ferry ride to an island where there was all sorts of outdoor activities to indulge in. We hiked around, tried to rent some atvs, went on a speed boat ride, and enjoyed quite a few beers and beautiful weather. As we were waiting for the ferry ride back, I decided I was going swimming....or at least wading.
Team foreigner picture waiting for the ferry to depart.
A view from the island that we visited.
Canadian Nik sporting his sleeve tats on the ferry.
Joanna, Sarah, Nik and I went for a high speed boat ride....the driver let us give him a beer just before we left.
As I was wading into the water with my shirt on, having every intention of just getting my shorts wet, the ground sort of ended, and I plunged in up to my head. So I said awww screw it, I'm swimming. By the way, at this point there are several hundred Koreans on the dock, also waiting for the ferry, looking at me like I'm a dumb ass.
The man whose cell phone I rescued.
Anyway, I get out and am walking back to the group of laughing foreigners that I was with when this Korean man comes running up to me. I thought he was yelling at me for swimming there, but I wasn't sure. After a few minutes of "conversation" I realized that he had dropped his phone off the dock and wanted me to find it for him, since I was already wet. I agreed and after a few minutes of digging through the muck I found his cell phone and was thanked with a hearty applause.
Bibimbap is one of the cheapest and most delicious foods you can buy here, it is rarely more than $2.50 or $3 for a meal-sized bowl of this stuff.
After the ferry ride back to the mainland, we went to the river and rented some swan paddle boats, which we ended up playing bumper boats with.
Ben looks more like a Cass advertisement than a swan boat paddler.
Sunday we woke up, checked out of the hotel, and went to Pizza Hut, where we managed to spend 120,000 between the 8 of us on 4 pizzas. The ride back only took 2.5 hours, and we finished the weekend with a few celebratory pitchers of Hite and soju.
