1. Arrive in Korea. Spent the weekend sitting in my apartment too scared to leave for fear of getting lost. For those of you who know me and my sense of direction, you know this is all too likely to happen. Thoughts: Why the hell did I ever think coming here was a good idea?
2. Leave apartment. After a week or so I finally braved the great outdoors. Walking around, I saw many men holding hands, touching, kissing on the cheek. Thoughts: Wow! I didnt know Korea was open like that! Its not. Its the culture. Boys/men touch. And sit on each others laps on the bus. This is all normal and to be expected.
3. Skip ahead to the end of September. Chuseok=Korean Thanksgiving=1 week vacation. How did I spend this vacation? Biking and camping around Jeju Island. Awesome idea, not entirely awesome experience. Again, for those of you that know me, you know I have horrible luck. If something is going to go wrong, its going to happen to me. On the second day by bike got a flat tire. Now, this didnt have to be quite as bad as it was. Unfortunately, however, I'm not a speedy bike rider and was there for at the back of th group.
End result: I wondered around alone for about 45mins with no cell phone, no money, no idea how to read or speak Korean (cant ask for help), no idea where I'm going or where the hell I am. Eventually the leader of the pack (Warren) came back for me and waved down some nice man who put my bike in his car and drove me to where I needed to go. This actually ended up not being so bad since I then couldnt bike anymore and my bottom was very happy about that. Have you ever ridden a bike for hours straight when you havent been on a bike in several years? Its a really pain in the ass. Literally.
Then I had money stolen. My fault. Shouldnt have left my wallet out. And biking miles up hill with the wind pushing you back down? Not so much fun. Especially for people who, while in decent shape, arent used to biking and arent pro-athletes.
However, overall the trip was still pretty awesome. There was some camping on the beach, drinking on the beach and then drunkingly falling down and playing Hands in the Middle, a lovely singing game, meeting some interesting people, exploring Jeju (beautiful!), lying on the beach, making some yummy camp food, seeing a pretty waterfall, and just hanging out and enjoying life. It was one of those things that at some points I had to ask myself, 'Are you crazy? This is torture! Why didnt you do something more relaxing?' But in the end is still worth doing.
4. Hiking. Hiking here is nice. Its nice to get out of the city area and get some fresh air. One hike was really fun with obstacles, like pulling yourself up/lowering yourself down the mountain using ropes. And dont let go, or youll go over the cliff and surely die. That was my favority hike, by far. Lots of fun, nice weather, Jess and Monica were there. It was a blast. Plus, there was some delcious food (ducgalbi) after.
The next hike was good to. Though it was much colder. Going up was fun, the exercise was good, the air was fresh. We started at like 4am and were able to see the sunrise over the mountains. Beautiful. The way down:hell. Hiking down for like 8-9km is hard to begin with. My legs were shaking pretty badly for a while. Its harder on the muscles than going up is. But that wasnt the bad part. What was the bad part? The NEVER ENDING ROCKS! I thought we would never get away from them! They were there the WHOLE way down. Small rocks, big rocks, all of the were loose and hard to walk on. By the time we got to the bottom, I never wanted to see another damned rock again in my life. Unfortunately they are pretty unavoidable.
5. My Birthday. It was very nice. My afterschools class threw me a suprise party. Hearwarming, really. I miss them, actually. It was very, very nice. Later, dinner at Royal Indian with friends. Andy brought delicious cake and Emily made me a really nice card. Crafty, that girl.
6. Skipping ahead to last weekend. Saturday was just...crazy. I got up in the morning, met a friend, Jess, and went shopping. Dongdaemun (?) is insane. Its colorful, its crowded, and there is just so much STUFF! It actually reminded me a lot of the market in Bolivia. Anyway, so we shopped. We ate. We left. Only we went different ways. I was heading back home to Ilsan and Jess was not.
Sometimes the trains here randomly stop and eveyone has to get off and wait for the next train. While, I was so involved in reading my book I wasnt paying an attention when this happened. As as a result two gentlement had to tell me. One of these men proceeded to talk to me, probably wanting to practice his English. Its nice sometimes to have strangers talk to you. This man was getting off one stop before me. So he proceeded to talke to me for the net half hour. Now, I had just reached the pinaccle in my book, so all I really wanted to do was keep reading. But I couldnt.
One of their favorite questions to ask here is Are you Christian? South Korea is a country that has only been recently introduced to Christianity and, those here who are Christian, are rather fervent in their beliefs. So, as someone who isnt particularly religious it can be awkward when asked this question. A simple 'Yes' would suffice, but then I usually get asked more specific questions and thats when the awkwardness kicks in. Naturally this happened on the train.
Anyway, this nice man and I had a chat on the train. He gave me his business card and said he and his wife would invite me to dinner. So far, in invitation, which is a relief.
Now, on this train there was also a girl. She kept looking at me in what I thought was pity for having to talk to this man. Ends up I was wrong. When we were getting off the train, in broken English, she told me she was singing now in my area, and would I like to come? Sure, why not? I had nothing to do.
Ends up there was a slight misunderstanding, but it was still fine. She ended up taking me to see a Christmas show at the Opera House. She had 2 tickets, or rather, a picture of 2 tickets on her phone. This wasnt quite sufficiet. They gave her one ticket. Luckily and nice group of young men came by and offered us 2 of their tickets, and we all sat together.
Our group now consisted of me, 2 guys from Argentina, one from India, a Korean girl, and 2 Korean guys. Pretty multicultural for here. It was really pretty fun. There were some adorable little kids dressed up in santa outfits dancing to Christmas music and some skits to Christmas songs. Lucky for me this was also all in English!
After performance was over we all went and hung out downstairs for a bit. The girl who I had met on the train also had another friend there who I met as well. We split up after a but, they guys going somewhere, and me and the 2 Korean girls heading to get coffee so they could practice their English with me. The second girl spoke decent English, and told me about how she had lived in Tanzania last year. I really had a nice chat with them.
Eventually we split up as well and made it back to my apartment only 3 or 4 hours later than expected :)
7: Christmas. Christmas is tomorrow and tonight there is a small party at my place. I'll let you know how it goes :-)
After today, posts will get more real-life. Everything thats happened in the past has a nice, happy glaze over it. Im at the point I can look at them and say, 'oh yeah, that was fun' even though at the time I was probably miserable.
Oh Hiking! But I thought you said you were good at "going down!" It probably works a whole lot better when you aren't walking on loose rocks! I hope you're going to have a marvelous Christmas! Love you,
ReplyDeleteStephenie