Fifth Last Weekend

Oops, I was wrong last week. Just because I teach English doesn't mean I can count.

You might remember when I arrived here last year that I was kind of excited about having bought a bike. Then you might have wondered why I never wrote anything about the said bike. Well, I was waiting for the perfect day to take it out for a ride. That day came about a month ago and when I went to pump the tires the valve-stem fell out and I couldn't pump them up. Last weekend Tom and I decided that we were going bike riding this weekend, he would borrow Lorne's bike and I would get mine fixed. The week passed by and my bike sat down stairs, collecting more dust and I didn't take it to get it fixed. Yesterday Tom showed up, looked at my bike, pushed the valve-stem back in, and pumped the tires. Turns out the stem is supposed to come out, some weird Korean style tires. Anyhow we collected Lorne's bike and we were off! It was a beautiful day out and I don't know how far we went but we were all over town, riding down by the river on the trails and throughout the city. I even got a bit sun burnt on my shoulders! It is kind of funny riding through the cities because bikes are expected to go on the sidewalks, along with scooters and the occasional car. Pedestrians rank last on the totem pole of sidewalks, so anytime we came across a lowly walker we dang our bells for them to move. I've been contemplating a scooter for next year because it would make getting around a lot easier, not to mention how fun it would be, but I was pretty hesitant just being a biker on the sidewalk I don't know if I should be trusted with anything motor operated.

Then later in the day we had a barbeque on Tom's deck and it was fantastic! We had picked up salmon a few weeks ago at Costco and it tasted just like salmon from home (which is another item I can cross off my food list for what I can't wait to eat when I get home). It was delicious! Ended up at Brickhouse for a Red Cross fundraiser and it was kind of boring for the better part of the night until about 1:30 when everybody just seemed out of control and it was pretty amusing.

Not sure what I am up to today, have completely wasted the morning but would like to get outside and catch some more sun, maybe another bike ride even. Might as well get two rides out of it before it is time to pack up and head home....

Motorcycle Helmets are the New Black

I've had a ton of comments and messages about this photo on Facebook so I thought I would circulate it a little further. This is from my Friday night antics...

Fifth Last Weekend

Another weekend is over :( This weekend was quite lowkey, but enjoyable at the same time. Friday night we had plans of movies and drinks before heading downtown. By the time we had finished the movie (and a bottle of wine on my part) we decided to head out for a bit and ended up at our friend, Ivan's, for a few drinks. Turns out he lives in the apartment directly behind mine, we've known each other for 3 months and knew we were in the same area but was surprised just how close we were. We stayed there until about 3 and then Tom and Richard headed downtown and I came home to get some sleep.

I got up fairly early on Saturday and walked to Dunsan, which is the opposite side of town. The weather was like a summer day and I got a nice tan and many many freckles on my face because of it. When we had been at Ivan's the night before I saw that he had a real stove, like oven, four burners, everything! It was so exciting! (I'm such a loser) But I promised them I would make lasagna for Monday night with the help of Ivan's oven so I was in search of ingredients. Had to make a few improvisions, but found most of the right stuff, plus havarti cheese which I haven't seen since being in Korea. Anyhow after I had got what I needed I grabbed a taxi home and spent the rest of the day lounging around. Tom, Richard and I went back to Indian restaurant we had attempted to eat at a few weeks before and it was pretty delicious. After that we headed to Brickhouse to meet a few others but didn't stay very long because we were feeling the effects of the night before.

Today we went to the World Cup Stadium and watched a soccer game. It was a lot of fun. I had never seen a professional soccer game before and surprisingly I really enjoyed it. Daejeon is in third last place and the team they were playing is fourth last, so they were evenly matched and ended up tying 2-2.

Tonight I assembled my lasagna and am about to settle in with a movie and maybe a face mask and try not to think about going to work tomorrow. Bye!

Blah Blah

Hello! Been slacking in the posting area again, haven't been around much and haven't had a lot to say either. We did go hiking last Saturday and the view from the suspension bridge was great. The only problem with the trip was that it took us over four hours to get there, each way, so I saw far more of the inside of buses than I really ever cared to. By the time we got back to Daejeon it was nearing midnight and we were wiped so the excitement of our night ended up being a trip to HomePlus and doing some grocery shopping. I know, I know, we're wild!

It was nice being home so early on a weekend night and not having anything to do the next day, it was a relaxing feeling I haven't enjoyed in quite some time. Sunday I got up and did the mountain around here and then went over to Tom's to watch some Korean film and test out his new barbeque...delicious!

Other than that I haven't been up to much this week, still doing the mountain each day which is far more enjoyable than the gym, played poker, though not well, and met up with the normal group for a few drinks last night.

This weekend should be fairly low key as well, I think there is bowling in the works for Friday night, not sure about Saturday yet, and then Sunday we are going to hit up Yuseong Hot Springs and then go to the soccer game at the World Cup Stadium, not that I am really a fan of soccer but I am a fan of sun and tanning, so here's hoping to great weather!

For any of you counting the days (come on I know you are!) I will most likely be home around May 28th or 29th. My last day of work is May 24th so I will stick around for one final hurrah and then endure the long plane ride home where you can all shower me with attention because you've missed me so much ; )

Anyhow hope everyone is having a good week!

Goodbye Winter

The weather has been so great lately, nice and warm, don't even really need a jacket during the days. It is, however, yellow dust season, which I'm not sure I understand but apparently it's dust that blows over from China. Personally I think it might just be pollen and typical hay fever and Korea is just trying to pass the blame onto another country for nature's problems.

Anyhow on the weekend we went to Gyeoraksan National Park for some mountain climbing and it was great because it was actually the Cherry Blossom Festival because all of the trees are in bloom and it was quite beautiful. We weren't, however, prepared for the instensiveness that was the mountain, we got caught up in the tourist moment and forgot about the endurance mountains can sometimes take. This mountain took us five hours to climb! We got to the peak in just under two hours and then discovered that to complete the trail we actually had to go up and down three peaks in total. By the time we reached the third peak night fall was setting in and we were starving for some Indian food that we had planned on afterwards. The entire way down was all rock and my joints were killing me by the time we reached the bottom. We made it to the Indian restaurant by about nine o'clock and were turned away because they had had a busy night and didn't have food left. We were heartbroken, but hungry, so we went and devoured some Chinese food, which was a close second to Indian.

Even though the mountain was pretty intense I was disappointed with my exhaustion afterwards, so I decided that I was going to start doing the mountains in my neighorhood on a more regular basis. So each morning I've been out there hiking up and it's been a great change from the gym, plus I think I'm even getting a little bit of a tan on my face, which is great being that there are no tanning beds here. This coming weekend we are going to a different national park, in a different province and going to tackle the mountain there, which is supposed to be a good hike and there is a suspension bridge which I'm excited about because we had planned to go to it way back in November but never did because it was so far away. Plus I only have six weeks left here so we are trying to make the most of them so hopefully I will have some entertaining things to write about in the coming weeks, besides drinking and poker!

Blow

Ended up at Brickhouse last night after what started off as a low key night in our neighbourhood with dukgalbi for dinner (chicken with rice cake and cabbage in hot sauce) and a few local beers, but after we had sat around for a few hours and we were feeling kind of sleepy we decided we needed to get out and liven ourselves up a little.

Brickhouse was having a fundraiser for a local foreigner who was badly injured on his motorcycle so it was pretty busy and full of familiar faces. There were three Koreans near the bar who were doing some sort of testing or survey and they asked us if we wanted to participate. Turns out they were sampling personal breathalizers and if you participated in the testing you got your own breathalizer. I filled out the paper and blew a 0.05% which meant that I was right on the Korean limit for drinking and driving, although I guess since I don't have a car it doesn't really matter. Anyhow Tom, Richard and I all got our breathalizers and we were planning all the fun games we could do with them: who can get the highest score, who is the most drunk, who gets drunk the quickest, etc. Then someone spoiled our fun by telling us the highest they can detect is 0.12, which we conceded after was probably a smart thing judging by the stupid things we were planning to do with them. Anyhow that was the excitement of my night, I didn't stay out too much later because I was exhausted and still haven't shaken this cold, plus we have plans of mountain climbing today at a nearby national park so I wanted to be in top form for that. I think after the mountain we are going out for some Indian food and then maybe having a movie night and tomorrow I have plans to climb a different mountain with Kevin so it should be a good weekend to get out in the warmer weather and do some physical activity.

Hope everyone has a Happy Easter!

Oh Korea...

I haven't posted one of those "Oh Korea" moments in a while, but school is always a good breeding ground for those types of stories.
We have this student Ron, he is about eight years old. He has been at our school for about five months and hasn't learned a word of English (which is NOT a reflection on our teaching!). He could be a poster child for ADD, I have him two days a week and Richard has him three, and each day we dread going into Ron's class. Sometimes we make bets how long it will take for him to be sent out into the hall, or how many times. My record for sending him out is three times in one 40-minute class. Anyhow, he is also this way with his Korean teacher and nothing seems to get him to behave, so when the Korean teacher was calling parents last week, he mentioned the problems we have with Ron, and his mother's response to Richard was, "Well just tell the teachers if he is bad in class they should just hit him."

Photos

Just in case you were too lazy to go to my photo site (you do know you can access all my photos by clicking on the flickr badge, right?), here are a few highlights from the weekend!

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Busan - The Novel

Hello! Just got back from a great weekend in Busan, a coastal city about two hours away. We left Saturday morning, bright and early at 8:30, unfortunately the day was rainy and slightly chilly which dampened our plans for checking out the beaches and such but we made due with what we got.

We were meeting up with a Canadian couple, Dave and Erin, who we had met at our ski trip a few months back. By the time we met up with them and got sorted it was almost one o'clock and the first thing we did was headed to the Busan tower, which is pretty much the same as the CN tower. Due to the weather it was so foggy we actually couldn't see the top of the tower and nixed going to the top because it seemed rather pointless. After that we decided to be more organized than past trips and set out to find a place to sleep for the night, rather than wait until we were drunk and stumbling and willing to sleep anywhere. Tourist Information directed us to Arpina Hostel which was the nicest hostel I have ever stayed in. There was a wedding hall in it, a gym, a driving range, restaurants, bars, it was amazing! The pension rooms, (big, empty rooms full of blankets and pillows, slumber party style) were all booked up so we had to settle for two rooms with 3 single beds, but they were great, it was just like having a hotel room.

We stayed only long enough to drop our things and were on the move again, towards Haeundae Beach and the aquarium, fortunately the weather had begun to clear and it was actually quite nice for walking around outside. I wasn't all too excited about the aquarium, being that fish aren't the most exciting of animals, and even when I was in Australia the Sydney aquarium didn't seem all that great, but majority of the group was up for it so I went along with it. So glad I did because it was actually pretty amazing, they had so many different fish and I got some really cool pictures which I will post a little later.

One of the most exciting things about Busan was the fact that it has a casino! Trey and I were pumped for it! Everyone else indulged us but overall they were pretty indifferent to it. It was in the top of a hotel building and open to foreigners only so we headed up there around six o'clock and took a look around. This was far different from any casino I have ever seen. It was quiet, there were no noisy machines or crowds of people. There were about 10 gaming tables set up and maybe ten slot machines. Trey sat down to play some Black Jack and I was kicking myself for not having stopped at a cash machine being that there didn't seem to be one around. I had a bit of money on me but not enough to sit at a table, which was probably for the best. Tom and I sat at a slot machine and played around for a few minutes before conceding that the game was silly and we weren't going to win. We gave Trey the nod that we were going to meet the others and he stood up from the table to come with us, forty dollars up. Not bad for about fifteen minutes of play.

Afterwards we went in search of a bar for predinner drinks and walked around for about half an hour and each bar we went into was either dead or "a sexy lady bar". Finally we ended up back at the exact place we started off our search and went in for a pitcher of beer and made plans for the rest of the night. We decided on a Thai restaurant for dinner and the atmosphere of it was great. I debated back and forth between Pad Thai and Cashew Nut Chicken for a few minutes before decided on Pad Thai. Everyone's meal came and looked delicious, mine on the other hand was rather bland looking and quite disapointing in the taste area. It wasn't awful should we ever go back I will definetly go for something with a little more flavour. After dinner we decided to walk off some of our meal and headed back towards our hostel for a little regrouping, we'd been going steady now for about 14 hours and it was beginning to show on all of us. Our room came equipped with the BBC channel and we watched a few Brit shows. Just as it was starting to seem like we were all down for the night Dave and Erin asked if we were ready to get back out there (as was the original plan). As you may know, that's all it took to get our group back into gear and we were off once again to the downtown area in search of some ruckus.

Our first stop of the night was at a Wild West Bar and it was kind of amusing to see a Korean take of what a western bar is like; it was covered with pictures of Indians, cowboys, and signs like "Wide Bill" (instead of Wild Bill), reinforcing the notion that nobody can screw up an English sign quite like Koreans can. We stayed for one drink and then we were off again. The next bar we came across was The Beatles bar, complete with their pictures on the sign. We were sold! Unfortunately we got up the dark staircase and it was closed or no longer in business so we had to keep moving. Next we came across "Bar Diana," but it was a 'room' bar, which means it serves a purpose other than just drinking so we kept moving (but I got pictures!). Next we came to the "Kenny Rogers Noraebang" and the sign had Kenny's face splashed across it, which I also got pictures of. Had it been later or had we had more drinks in us we probably would have made it a noraebang night but it was a little too early for that. Finally we ended up in a bar on the ninth floor of a building which made for a great view. It was also one of the dirtiest bars I've been in in Korea, complete with a cockroach on the floor! But they had these one litre glasses that were about 3 feet tall and everyone wanted to get those. Well almost everyone, Richard and I, stuck to the normal sizes which was fortunate because everyone else had a tough time drinking out of such a tall, narrow glass. The rest of the night went as a usual night out, we hit up a few more spots and finally decided to head back to our hostel around 4:30, which was good because I was still fighting my cold and was exhausted! Upon getting back to the hostel everyone decided to go use the jjimjjabong except for me who dove into bed the second I was in the room. Finally around six o'clock everyone was in bed for the night (er.. morning).

Weather wasn't much better today but we still had some sights we wanted to see and we decided we were going to go up the tower regardless of the fog. I'm glad we did because when we got to it there were some festivities going on which involved a lot of music and artisitic dance which I got some good pictures of. The fog wasn't all that bad and we had a good view of the city, but the waterside view was pretty hazy. After eating, shopping and some more touring around we decided to head back to Daejeon. We said goodbye to Dave and Erin and grabbed our train tickets. So much activitiy definetly made our weekend fly by and I can't believe it's already time to head back to work tomorrow but it was so nice to get out Daejeon for a bit and see some more of Korea.

I will post some pictures later, which I'm sure you need if you've actually read all the way through this. Sorry it wasn't actually all that interesting but it was a change from my normal weekend recaps! Hope everyone had a good weekend!