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.

So it has been a while...

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.

Opening Ceremony for the Science Club

I was asked to take pictures for the opening ceremony of the Science Club at my school. They are basically like the Boys Scouts, only for both boys and girls and they get to shoot off rockets within city limits. By the way, you can also shoot off roman candles in the street here and it is totally acceptable.

Hongdae Street Jazz

Stumbling through Seoul after the pillow fight, we came across some of the first talented musicians I've seen in Korea, naturally we had to stop. A few street beers and a couple hours later, we thanked these guys for playing and carried on with our festive evening.

International Pillow Fight Day 2010, Seoul Edition

International Pillow Fight Day in Seoul was quite an interesting experience. There was exactly one hour, from 6 to 7, dedicate to random foreigners beating the juice out of one another with pillows. As you can see, it was a bit chaotic.

At one point you could hear people plotting against this fellow. "Get the guy with the cast on his arm," a little heartless, but hey, its a pillow fight and somehow this dude was swinging two pillows with one arm and holding a pitcher of beer with his broken one.

This guy was pretty hardcore about the pillow fight, Boondock Saints style.

Mayhem

Have you ever lived through a South Korean winter, and still you had to go outside?

Aside from counting down the days until all the cold weather has left to go pester Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, there has not been all that much noteworthy happening lately, which is why there have been no updates.

However, the end of last week brought some rather intriguing events. On Wednesday, as I was counting down the minutes until I could go home and take a much needed nap, my coteacher informed me that we would be attending a funeral in five minutes. Now I hadn't actually ever met the person whose father had passed away, but she was a fellow teacher (or so I'm told), and all the faculty were going, including the native teachers.

So we get in the car and drive to what looks like the basement of a hospital--a little strange--but I was thinking it seemed pretty normal by Korean standards. Everyone walks into the entranceway, picks up an envelope and stuffs it with money, myself included, as I was informed it was "a required custom" beforehand. Next we head into this room with flowers, all sorts of rice cakes and other objects of personal significance to this mystery corpse. Then I saw his picture, so at least I can assign a face to this event--I wish him and his family the best, I really do--its just that I really have never talked to, met or even seen this teacher before and I don't think she even works at the school anymore...whatever.

After we deposited our envelopes and wrote messages on them (I'm pretty sure she won't be able to read mine--that whole English thing) in this big box and we were all crammed in this little room, everyone proceeded to kneel down, place their hands forming a circle with their fingers, straight out in front of them and bow until their foreheads touched the ground. This seemed like something that took too much practice and elegance for us Westerners to accomplish, so Susan and I just looked at each other and sort of shrugged our shoulders. After that, everyone stood up and repeated the intricate bowing and standing process 6 or 7 more times--I am sure there is some sort of custom governing the number of stands and bows but for for now, you will have to cope with my ignorance, it was a bit of a sensitive time, so I didn't really feel like asking for a culture lesson. As Korean tradition follows, we then all sat in the room adjacent for food and soju. Overall, it was an interesting experience.

Friday evening, I was invited to the apartment of Jisun and Braven. Jisun worked at my school last year, and her husband, Braven is a 44 year old Canadian who has been here for 10 years and is now an associate professor at one of the universities in town. Incidentally, his father had just passed away and he brought back a bundle of Canadian liquor on his return from the funeral. I am not sure why Jisun likes me so much as I had minimal contact with her last year, but she does and my Korean coteachers, the librarian, Neo and I all went for drinks. We had a grand time, and at one point my coteacher, James, was even tearing up while explaining to me that he was glad I fit in so well with him and his friends. A heartwarming gesture.

After we were a couple fifths deep in Crown Royal Limited, Jisun asked me if I would be interested in going out with her little sister, who is my age, to "teach her English and explore Korea." This is a bit confusing, because Jisun speaks excellent English, and her husband is Canadian, so I'm not sure why they don't just teach her. I feel like maybe they have something else in mind. Anyway, I'll give it a shot and at least get to see some cool stuff. The journey begins at the icebreaking dinner next Saturday at 6:30.