MUD FEST!! Boryeong-Si

The Lone Waygookin

So Susan went home to South Africa for the first time since coming to Korea, and I had have to hold down the fort as the only remaining foreigner at Anseong Elementary...which meant that I had to go on the end of semester school trip as the only white guy. We went to some island that required a 30 minute ferry ride to get there, so the sight of a white guy on this island was apparently something of a miracle.

Another interesting thing that says something about Korean culture and their group mentality and how hardcore they are about everything can be seen in the following. As we were waiting for the ferry to leave, every single teacher, except for me was drinking these small 30ml bottles of something. Come to find out, they are motion sickness remedies, just in case the 30 minute ferry ride across calm waters on a HUGE ferry caused sea sickness. They couldn't believe that I wouldn't drink one and said that I would regret it later. Needless to say, on they way back nobody drank them.

The trip itself was not bad, per say. There are just a few things that really got on my nerves after spending the whole weekend with a group of almost 100 korean school teachers from my school. The first, and most annoying thing, was the lack of free will that I was given. It seemed as if though I was their little puppet, and although they had good intentions and wanted nothing more than to include me in all their activities, it got really annoying at times. For example, after everyone had been drinking for quite some time, they all went to the basement of the hotel that we rented out to sing karaoke. Although I don't mind nowadays occasionally getting down on some singing in the Noraebang, we were on an island at the beach and it was a beautiful evening. Naturally, I wanted to sit on the beach, drink a few brews and watch the ocean.

After they dragged me downstairs and I told them that I wasn't signing and I was instead going to the beach, they sent Neo and Hyong Jun with me to make sure....something. After being there for about 5 mintues they said, ok, lets go Codey. They we like, oh ok you have seen the beach and we did what you wanted, now its time to go back. I was like no, I'm staying here and this is what I am doing, you don't have to stay, but I am and I am perfectly fine with sitting here by myself. They couldn't wrap their brains around that concept and ended up sitting on the beach while I walked around and caught some crabs. Many other things like this happened throughout the weekend, but you get the gist.

At the end of the day, I got a free trip to a place I have never been and that was unlike anything I have seen, so I can't complain too much.

Neo, James and Hyong Jun on the ferry to the island.

They are really crazy about feeding the sea gulls or "gullmaggie" as they call them here.

Jun tried for a while to get a sea gull to eat one of these shrimp chips out of his hand.

This kid had the sea gull feeding thing down pat.

This guy was one of my roommates, and after returning from the beach late a night, I found him butt ass naked standing in the room starring at the wall. No tv on, just standing naked and starring. Then he passed out after getting some clothes on.
These are the rice paddies outside our hotel/pension.

Reunion in Itaewon

Quiero Taco Bell!

Busan!

So the same group of us that went to Chuncheon decided to head down to Busan for the weekend, minus Ben. Several people were pretty ify as to whether or not we should go because the weather forecast was looking pretty grim. As I have come to realize that the Korean weather reports are even less reliable than American ones, I was confident that it would be completely wrong and the weather would instead be awesome. This turned out to not be the case, but at least it was only overcast and not thunder storming, like the report predicted.

Busan is a the second largest city in Korea, with a population of about 3.6 million. It is the largest port city in Korea, and the 5th largest port city in the world. At one point back in the Korean war, the North Koreans pretty much had control of all of the Korean peninsula, with the exception of Busan. Then the Americans came, kicked ass and reconquered all of what is now South Korea and even much of what is currently North Korea. Needless to say, it has some history. Unfortunately, on this trip we didn't really see any of the "historical" parts of Busan. Instead, we ate tacos, drank beers on the beach, went to some night clubs and had nice break from the daily grind of school.

It is about a 45 minutes bus ride to a station in Cheonan to the south of Anseong, and then a 2.5 hour train ride on the KTX. A high speed train that averages about 300 km/hour.

Shortly after arriving in Busan, we found this awesome restaurant called Fuzzy Navel. Or as some signs put it F N Tacos.

Beers were only 2,200 KRW a glass, about 800 KRW cheaper than normal.

We actually ate at this restaurant twice in the same day, this is from the second meal...chimichangas....mmmmm. You know how I love my Mexican food, and this place had pretty damn good Mexican.

This is Haeundae beach, the most popular beach in Korea and it actually has the Guinness World Record for the most umbrellas in one location at one time. It not like any beach in North Carolina, and the water is freezing, I think due to the fact that there is no Gulf Stream and it is the Yellow Sea/Sea of Japan.

No Smoking on the beach.

Sara took a page out of my book and decided to do the "sprint as far as possible into the water without testing to see how cold it is" trick.

So these Russian guys really liked Sara, and they were wearing Speedos, they got to be a bit creepy after a while, so we had to skirt away so they wouldn't follow us.

I think that Joanna was trying to match my swimming trunks with her flowery beach dress.

Nik lounging on the beach with a beer, before he got really sunburned legs.

The Koreans were looking for some sort of creatures in the rocks here. All I found were some huge cockroach looking bugs and a jellyfish.

A view with a mermaid statue in the back.

Haeundae beach is 2km long.

The lighthouse didn't actually do any sort of lighting, it did house a clock on each side though.

I have no idea what this particularly interesting bit of architecture is for, but it looks neat.

The city has an interesting mix of mountains, skyscrapers and coastline. Before heading home on Sunday, we went on one of these boat rides, so that we could say we did something touristy.

Apparently these islands are special for some reason. There are 6 islands in the group when the tide is out, but when it comes in, there are 7.

This lighthouse does actually function, and is precariously perched on this rock.

It is a heck of a walk of there, not that I know from first hand experience. There was a guy inside, because we saw his laundry drying, but there was no boat, so they must work in some sort of extended shift of a couple weeks or months.