Hey all,
I'm finally back with what I promise will be, an epic, mega blog post. It's been a while since the last time I sat down to bang out a new post and I apologize for that, I didn't want to write something new without having the pictures to accompany my writing, but now that I have my camera back (and all 8 pictures I was concerned about), here goes the new post! The pictures above were taken at Haeundae Beach in Busan during Buddha's Birthday weekend (May 21-23). Most of you may know from reading this blog that I had gone to Busan twice before, once last October for the International Film Festival and this past February, because it was our departure port for our boat to Japan. Like last October, foreigners and Koreans from all over Korea flocked to the beach to enjoy the nice weather and the long weekend. We got in to Busan lat Thursday night via the KTX (Korea's equivalent to the Bullet Train in Japan, except it's a little bit slower) and proceeded to make our way straight to the beach. We found a motel about a block from Haeundae that was relatively cheap, dropped our things off and went to enjoy in some nightime revelry. Unfortunately the jjimjibang that we had wanted to stay at (the same one we couldn't get into last October) was under repair this time around, so it didn't work out again. Anyways, everyone packed it in relatively early on Thursday night to get the adequate sleep needed to properly enjoy a long and leisurely day at the beach on Friday. The initial weather forecast for the week looked great, but halfway through the week the forecast changed to rain on both Saturday and Sunday so Friday became officially designated as our beach day. The weather was great on Friday, temperatures were in the high 80s (low 30s C) and the beach was packed. There was plenty of badminton playing, frisbee throwing, and even some beach rugby. The water was cold, but refreshing after hanging out in the sun and on the hot, hot sand all day. Everyone got there fun in the sun time and by the late afternoon, most of us were ready for dinner. Given that we were in Busan, a city famous for its seafood, the men (Dave, Alex, Peter, and myself) decided it would only be appropriate to indulge in some local cuisine. The following pictures do our dinner more justice than any amount of words I type ever could. Needless to say the clam dinner was excellent.
Pretty much a smorgasboard of clams, all different shapes and sizes and they had pretty good side dishes as well.
And here is the aftermath of our dinner.
So that was Friday night's dinner and from there we made our way around downtown Haeundae, culminating the evening with a late-night trip back to the beach.
Unfortunately, the weather forecast was pretty accurate in its predictions (unlike my sports predictions) and the rain started to come down around noon on Saturday. Dave and I had found out through the grapevine that there was going to be a little ultimate frisbee tournament being held on the beach, starting on Saturday. Fortunately for the tournament, light rain is almost perfect weather because it cools the sand and makes it very soft and easy to lay out onto. So, Dave and I headed down to the beach and played a few games in the tournament before the rain picked up and they decided to cancel the rest of the games. I think the Beatles said it best (of course I do), when they sang, "when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads..." This is precisely what happened for the better part of Saturday and Sunday. We went for barbeque for dinner on Saturday night and then out to celebrate our last night in Busan on our mini-Spring Break. Sunday brought more rain, so we went to see Robin Hood at the local movie theatre, which was pretty disappointing, but seemed to set up for a decent sequel (possibly). After the movie we trekked back to the train station to take the KTX home, wrapping up a pretty good weekend.
The past few weeks, Korea has been swept up in election fever. Election Day was this past Wednesday, although it was just midterm elections, so mostly city mayors and local representatives. The midterm elections are usually seen as an evaluation of the President and the ruling party and the results from Wednesday indicate that the Korean people are somewhat unhappy with the job Lee Myung-Bak has done thus far, since his party lost a considerable amount of positions. Campaigning in Korea is somewhat similar, but also very different from campaigning at home. Every day for the past few weeks I would be awoken around 6:30 am to campaign dancers (mostly ajummahs, older Korean women) waving signs to the beat of campaign songs. The campaign songs are rip-offs of popular music, with catered lyrics replacing the original lyrics. Highlights include the Beverly Hills Cop theme, "This Land is Your Land," and "If You're Happy and You Know It." The politicians ride around on stages propped up on the beds of flatbed trucks giving speeches, somewhat reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt's trip across America, giving speeches from the back of a passenger train. I'm just upset that I didn't have my camera with me to give any visual representation/videos of how ridiculous this actually was.
Last Saturday, I hiked Bukhansan with a few friends. Bukhansan is a mountain within a national park, located just northwest of Seoul. When we started out the weather was pretty nice, but about 3/4 through our hike, it began to rain. Overall, the hike was pretty good, we saw some small temples along the way, there was a nice stream that our trail followed for most of the way up and down. We found out later that evening that it didn't rain anywhere else, just on the mountain (lucky us). Other than that not too much is new here. I'm still getting adjusted to teaching during the month of June (I'm not used to the school year going this late), can't believe I'm coming up on 10 months in Korea very soon. This week the weather has been great, can't remember the last time there was such a long string of nice days in a row. Now, the important news, I finally booked my flight home to Minneapolis in August, as well as my flights to and from Toronto. I will be back in Minneapolis on Tuesday, August 3rd and I'm leaving to fly back to Korea on Monday, August 23rd. I'm flying to Toronto on Friday, August 13th and flying back to Minneapolis on Tuesday, August 17th. Please let me know if you will be around, I would love to see as many people as possible. I know it's not a lot of time but it's the best I can do and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone. That's all from this end.
What I'm listening to: the new Blitzen Trapper album "Destroyer of the Void" streaming on npr.org/music
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtlcHiSHTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM2637_waoI
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