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Week 31 - Y2 (Oct 1st to Oct 7th) |
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Sunday Oct 1st,
Today in Gyeongju was kind of a bust. We got a pretty
slow start, not going anywhere til noon. Then we took
a bus to the coastline to the fishing village of
Gampo, where there really wasn't much to see at all.
I guess it was kind of cool to see the little fish
market, and the boats that they bring the fish in on,
but not really worth the 45 minute bus ride. From
there, we took a bus to the sea tomb of King Munmu.
This is a legendary spot where this king was
supposedly buried underwater to protect the coast of
Korea for all time. What was weird about this was
that the bus dropped us off literally on the side of
this tiny highway along the coast, where there was a
pavilion lookout onto some rocks off the coast and
THAT WAS IT! That's the whole tomb, that's all there
is to see. So we were left standing there like okay,
what do we do now? How do we get back to Gyeongju?
Since there was pretty much nobody around, we were
kind of at a loss. We ended up walking down closer to
the shore, and there ended up being nothing there
either. And of course, everyone was a little crusty
by this point. It's pretty difficult to get a group
of ten people moving, so it was frustrating waiting
around for a concrete decision to be made. Ange and I
ended up deciding to head back (it's only an hour to
Daegu from Gyeongju, but I had a 5 hour bus ride ahead
of me, and I wanted to get started). So we started
walking along the road that the bus had driven on,
hoping that a bus would come by. This was kind of
sketchy, since it was a full-on narrow twisty coastal
highway with no shoulders to speak of. Ironically,
when the bus did eventually come, the rest of our crew
was on it . . . guess we could have waited it out
after all.
Finally about an hour later, I settled in for a good
sleep on my long bus ride back to Seoul. There's a
lot of really cool things to see in Gyeongju, but we
sure didn't see any of them today . . .
Just checking my email now, I finally got an email
from Eun Mi, my student who suddenly dropped out last
week. Turns out that she's getting married in the
spring, a surprise to her too, and that's kind of why
she had to drop out of school. Things are so
different for women here! A girl would never be
forced to drop out of school for marriage in Canada.
Furthermore, I think that Eun Mi is way too young to
be married right now. She's only 20! She wrote in the
email that she's nervous about being a wife and a
mother, which makes me wonder if there could be an
accidental pregnancy involved . . . But then it seems
that a lot of Korean wives are expected to have
children almost right away, so maybe that's what she
meant. Anyway, it's good to know that she's alright,
and she has promised to email and visit me at school.
At least I'll still get to see her |
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Tuesday Oct 3rd,
I spent the morning scrubbing my apartment clean for .
. . the four visitors that I'm going to have all week!
ange and Allison arrived from Daegu on the slow train
at about 1pm. I went to meet them at the train
station, and took them back to my apartment and my
neighbourhood for lunch. Then we just kind of chilled
out and lounged about my apartment-- hey, we're on
vacation!
For dinner, a pleasant surprise . . . my mom's former
co-worker's son had contacted me about 6 months ago
because he was interested in working in South Korea.
Via email, I gave him some (hopefully) helpful
information and the link to this journal. So, turns
out that Alex has been working happily in Daejeon
(about an hour away from Seoul) since March. It also
so happens that his parents are here visiting him
right now, and they wanted to take me out for dinner.
We had an incredible dinner at a place called Korea
House, which serves 7 course royal cuisine, and puts
on a show of traditional music after the meal. When
we got to the restaurant, we were taken through this
little garden, up some stone steps to a private
room/building just for us. We were seated on the
floor around this large table, with plush legless
chairs. The food was incredible-- personal side
dishes for each person (usually they're shared), mini
vegetable pancakes, eel, beef in really good marinade,
soup, pumpkin porridge, so on. The performance was
also really good-- it featured some traditional fan
dances, some traditional drumming that's performed
while wearing a cap with a long ribbon-type thing
attached to it that the performers twirl using head
movements-- it sounds weird, but it's really cool, and
pretty difficult to do. It also featured some folk
singing, and traditional zithers and pan flutes. All
in all, a great choice for a fancy dinner, and thank
you so much to the Opreas for taking me out for such a
nice meal.
Back at home, the girls and I lounged around and had a
relatively quiet night at home, in anticipation of the
craziness to come later in the week . . .
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Wednesday Oct 4th,
Today was our designated shopping day. We had a big
breakfast/lunch at my favourite little neighbourhood
restaurant (kimbap, bibimbap and cold noodles) and
then hopped on the subway to Dongdaemun Market,
possibly the largest market in all of Korea, and
apparently the best place to find cheap clothes in
Korea. It's overwhelmingly huge-- there are a
gazillion buildings sprawled out over a massive area.
When you get there, you don't even know where to
start. We only saw about 5% of the market, and we
were already shopped out. However, all three of us
managed to make some good purchases, like great cozy
hoodies, jewelry, hats shawls. I even found a really
cheap, but really comfy floor mattress that I can use
for guests.
Our shopping completely wore us out, so we had to go
back to my place for a good rest before doing anything
else. We had just decided to go for a late dinner in
Itaewon with Allison's friend Christie (who lives in
Seoul) when I finally heard from Jason and Stephanie,
my other house guests for the week. Right after I
dropped Ange and Allison off in Itaewon, I had to turn
right around and go to get Jason and Steph (plus their
cute little dog Shandy; they couldn't find a dog
sitter for the week. Ive never had a dog before, and
I was a little hesitant about having one in my
apartment-- so sue me, I'm a germophobe-- but Shandy
is exceptionally well-behaved, fortunately) from the
bus station. When we finally got back to Itaewon, the
girls were settled into a nice French restaurant that
served good and cheap martinis (mmm . . .
Cosmopolitans . . .) After we had had our fill, I
took our expanded crew to my new favourite bar in
Itaewon, Bar Nana. It's a fun, funky lounge kind of
place, that has cool decor, comfy chairs, low
cushions, and good djs, with occasional dancing
(depends how drunk the crowd gets!) We grabbed the
corner that has comfy floor seating, and got ourselves
some good drinks! I was initially worried that
everyone wouldn't get along, especially there's four
people living in a very small living room this week at
my place, but I had nothing to worry about! Everyone
was having a great time.
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Thursday Oct 5th,
A slow start this morning, with me playing hostess and
making coffee and tea; taking turns with the shower.
Ryan and Lindsey plus mom and aunties arrived in Seoul
early this morning and wanted to know why we weren't
already up and at it!
Finally, once we were all ready to go (getting four
girls ready, two of them relatively high-maintenance,
is no easy task. Poor Jason), we had a huge lunch at
my favourite kimbap place (they must be happy that
I've brought them so much business this week!). After
lunch, I took our crew to Insadong, my favourite
neighbourhood in Seoul, filled with craft shops, art
galleries, and traditional teahouses. Again, more
shopping, browsing, compulsive coffee drinking
(actually that's just Ange and I; we're both full-on
addicts!). We really burned through all our energy--
it's amazing how much energy being a tourist actually
requires. On our way back to the subway station, we
ran into Ry and Linz and co. unexpectedly. We made
tentative plans to meet up later.
After a good long rest at my apartment, we were
finally ready for a late dinner at a Mexican
restaurant in Itaewon. When we got there, there was a
full-on party going on! There were a large group of
Brazilians who were hanging out, drinking and playing
Brazilian percussion instruments at their tables.
Some people were samba-dancing. It was fantastic!
Things like this make you forget what country you're
in, and having a largely Caribbean family, sometimes I
really miss that unique party atmosphere that comes
along with it. North Americans just sit around and
drink a lot, that's their idea of a good time, but I
think that there should always be good music, and
dancing, and just general joyousness on any given
night. Granted, none of us could figure out exactly
why there were so many Brazilians hanging out in Seoul
. . . what would be here for them? Are they tourists?
Are they migrant workers? Street vendors? Seems a
little strange, doesn't it? Anyway, we wanted to
continue with the party atmosphere after dinner, so we
tried to go to a salsa club in Itaewon, but it was
filled with Souteast Asian migrant workers singing
karaoke-- weird. I noticed tonight, that the
foreigners really take over the city of Seoul during
the holiday. And not just white foreigners. There
are a lot of Southeast Asian, Filipino, and African
foreigners that work as street vendors, factory
workers, so on. I guess we just never see them, cause
they're usually hidden away in the factory. But not
this week . . .
So instead, we met up with my friend Ben from Daegu,
and some of his friends in Seoul. They took us to a
bar that I think is really sleazy and that I hate, but
it was kind of funny for entertainment value. Get
this-- on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, it's ladies
night, and girls drink FOR FREE! This sounds like a
great thing in theory, if you're a girl, but really,
it's just a crass way to get all the girls obscenely
drunk, and for the guys to prey on them. Gross.
Anyway, we had fun, because there was a great group of
us, and Lindsey and Ryan even came out to meet us
after the parents went to bed, but there's no way I
would have ever gone there otherwise (however, we did
take advantage of the free drinks, and I can't deny
that Ange and I did get quite drunk!)
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Friday Oct 6th,
Another slow start this morning, but we had promised
to meet Ry and Linz and co. for a tour of
Changdeokgung Palace at 3:30, so that was our
motivation for getting ourselves together. We were
going to grab some egg sandwiches from a shop in my
neighbourhood, but when we got outside, we discovered
that almost everything was closed! To Korea, Chuseok
holiday is a lot like Christmas Day to us-- nothing's
open everyone's at home with their families. In a
moment of panic, we realized that the palace might not
even be open, but we got Allison to check on my
computer (she had decided to stay back for some quiet
time), and found that it was indeed open. We did
manage to find one kimbap place that was open close to
the palace. The palace tour was nice enough, but I
had already seen it a few weeks ago, and Ange and I
were a little grumpy due to lack of coffee and sleep
(and a little bit of a hangover, I admit it!).
However, everyone else loved it, so it was a
successful venture. Afterwards, we were pretty
hungry, so we decided to make it an early dinner in
Itaewon. We went to a really nice Indian restaurant
that I had wanted to go to for ages-- it was SO good!
Mmm . . . even just thinking about it now makes me
want Indian food . . . For Lindsey's family, it was
their first time having Indian food, and they loved it
as well. The restaurant had a beautiful garden
terrace for us to eat our meals on, so the atmosphere
was perfect too. We stuffed ourselves silly. After
we got some ice cream, and took a walk, we all decided
to Ryan and LIndsey's dismay, that we were pretty
exhausted and that we wanted to have a chill-out night
at my apartment. Having just downloaded the first
Lost episode of the season onto my laptop, we gathered
around my computer and watched it while drinking tea
and hot chocolate ( I know, we're absolute party
animals!) A nice quiet relaxing night, followed by a
long long sleep.
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Saturday Oct 7th,
Another chillout day. We ordered food in and lazed
around watching movies. Ange and Allison had to get
the train back to Daegu at 5pm, and Jason and Steph
had to be at the bus station at 5:30pm, so we didn't
have time to do anything special today, but we were
all pretty wiped out from a crazy week, so we were all
pretty content to do nothing. I was kind of sad to
see them go; it was fun playing tour guide and hostess
(this is what I have to look forward to when Kevin M.
comes to visit from Canada in February!). However,
now I have the enormous task of cleaning up after four
crazy house guests . . . looks like I won't be going
anywhere tonight! Happy Chuseok to everyone here, and
happy Thanksgiving to everyone in Canada-- enjoy your
turkeys!
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