CAMERA FIXED!

SEE???

Traffic

I have seen 2 traffic accidents since I got here. Mind you, the first one was just the aftermath and the bloody cleanup, but today I saw my first full-on collision. It was between a bus and two kids on a motorcycle and thankfully it didn't end as badly as the first one looked like it did. The bus clipped the boys as they were trying to squeeze in a left turn and they were thrown to the side. They both appeared to have broken legs but were conscious.

Honestly, the traffic is pretty nuts over here sometimes and I am surprised that I have only witnessed 2 accidents. Motorcycles drive on the sidewalk, cars do not slow down for pedestrians ever, and buses plow through intersections a good 3 seconds after you've been given the OK-to-walk sign. Jaywalking here is a dicey proposition and should be left to the experts. Apparently, a teacher at my school died a year ago after being hit by a car while riding a bike. I've been keeping my head up and my wits about me so I've been getting by just fine so far. I'm going to start buckling up in cabs now cause the last one was like something out of an action movie where the cop commandeers a taxi just as some arrogant white guy (me) jumps in the back and says "take me to Laguardia!" or whatever and next thing you know the cab is vaulting off of flatbed trucks while I'm flailing around in the back.

Anyways, there might be a lull in the picture posts too because I dropped my camera and now it's not letting me take pictures. I'm going to have to either see if I can get it fixed or use this as an excuse to buy a digital SLR like some avid blog readers have suggested. I did get some pictures of the wild night that led to it getting broken (the show I mentioned 2 posts ago), so you can stay tuned for that.

Bridge over the river Han

I took these at an outdoor picnic on a sandy embankment next to the Han River. There were fireworks and food and drinks and music and fun. I can't wait until summer kicks into full gear over here.

OHH MAN

I'm seeing this band perform tomorrow:



...and I cannot be more excited.

Strawberries in the park

The other night I dreamt that I was back home. The first thing I thought in this semi-lucid state was how unbelievably brief my time in Korea was, and I suspect that even after the year is through, I will still see this tenure as a brief, yet exciting, chapter of my life. When I look back at Japan, my nine months there seem like a spike of chaos amidst the relatively workaday routine I had nailed out back in Ottawa. I suspect that Korea will be a somewhat longer, less radical spike, but carry with it the same amount of sentimentality.

Sometimes when I wake up, I have to establish what continent I'm on and who's around me. I've never, ever lived completely alone in my life and it's definitely a weird feeling having absolutely no one around all the time. One night when I stayed at Gord's apartment, he woke up in the middle of a semi-lucid dream of his own and screamed at me at the top of his lungs. Another night, in the midst of yet another lucid dream, I thought there was someone sleeping next to me and I felt like my heart stopped for million possible reasons.

Things are getting a little more routine over here. I go out a lot on the weekends, and I don't do the tourist stuff nearly as much. I have a whole slew of acquaintances that I met through various people and common interests. Most of the people I know exist within the microcosm of foreigners that live in Seoul since language barriers make it difficult to make Korean friends. I'm trying to start a band with Gord, since the one I was in didn't work out too much for me. In essence, life is rolling on out here, and Seoul is starting to become the setting rather than the plot.

Other notable things:

- Teacher's day was on May 15, and I received an assortment of candy, chocolate, flowers, socks, and Korean sweets from my students. I think the male teachers get less, cause my female coworkers went home with bags filled with gifts. Either that or my students don't like me.
- I'm going in for a CATscan this Saturday for my mystery ear problem. I'm not really scared about what they might find, but rather, how much it will cost me.
- I bought a sampler. This one actually. I've been messing around with it a lot, and I hope to use it with the band that I'm starting with Gord. The place I got it from was a multi-story shopping complex that was exclusively music stores; close to 100 of them. Totally unreal.

AAAANNNNYYYWWWWAAAAYYYSSSS.... that's all

Big weekend, part 2

I know many weekends have come and gone since this one, and perhaps I shouldn't try to narrate my time in Korea and instead just spout off each experience as it happens, but I still feel like this weekend needs closure. After all, the weekends since haven't reached the kind of epic-ness that would require paragraphs of playing catch up.

The few minutes of morning experienced in Mokpo were spent scrambling to make the noon check-out time. Following that, it was more mind-numbing hours spent in transit. In order to pack light, most of us didn't bring a complete change of clothes so we were haggard and hungover for the 1:00 KTX back to Seoul; probably the closest I have ever come to being a bum in a boxcar.

I got back to my apartment at around 6pm. I was barely gone for 32 hours, yet was barely home for 1. I washed up and headed out the door to catch the Lotus Lantern Parade downtown. Here's some of the spectacular floats that awaited me:

Buddha rode in style in a helicopter / DJ booth. It was his birthday after all!

My comrades and I managed to procure some lanterns which in turn led to us being ushered into the parade. Not being ones to scoff at opportunities, we joined in for the entire trek from Dongdaemun to Jonggak, a distance covering a good portion of downtown Seoul. Along the way I saw Gord and his family watching from atop an electrical box. I waved to them.

That's them right in the center.

The parade ended at a huge intersection where a stage was set up and some further festivities were no doubt about to take place. While the Korean version of the Carpenters played their hits, TV stations had cameras on cranes scooting around the crowd filming people (mostly foreigners) clapping along in merriment for a live broadcast. My cadre was not overlooked.

That flash on the left is me taking this picture.

The music was like catnip for old Korean people cause they were dancing with passion! Afterwards, everyone in the entire intersection had to sit down, which meant that, after that point, any attempt to leave would be an awkward exercise in skirting around hundreds of seated people, while sticking out like a sore thumb. It also soon became clear that this show wasn't ending until really late, so we waited until the cameras were trained on some other gaggle of foreigners then stood up and split for the subway station.

THE END.

Big weekend, part 1 - Supplemental

Big weekend, part 1

I had an absolutely massive weekend about 3 weeks ago and I've been putting off making a post about it, mainly because I feel compelled to write some elephantine blog entry to compliment its scale and complexity. Also, keeping it entertaining is a must, especially if it's a long entry. Maybe I'll Davinci Code the whole thing into small digestible morsels so no one gets overwhelmed by any hulking paragraphs. Yeah, let's do that.

So, on a whim, I decided to join my coworkers on a trip to Jindo Island to see the Miracle Sea Road, a phenomenon in which, for a very fleeting period of time in the entire year, the tide gets so low, that a land bridge forms between Jindo and an adjacent isle.

The story, if you must know.

The island becomes a mottle of townies and tourists, there for either the once in a lifetime experience, or the all-you-can-gather clam clamor (wow, I'm copywriting that).

It's also very very far outside of Seoul, way down here to be exact, so it took a whopping 7 hours to get there by taxi/train/bus/bus/bus again, with each conveyance getting progressively more ramshackle as we went on. Eventually we were scooting through rice fields with old Korean marms. We left Seoul at 5:20 am and arrived sometime just after noon.

It also bears mentioning that the weather was so deathly cold, I spent the first several hours in a huddled, glowering mass. The sky was filled with ugly, ominous clouds and the wind made the unbearably low temperature feel even lower. Special event tents were whipping about everywhere and the impromptu bouncy castle was a guaranteed death sentence.

See? Gorgeous.

The seas were set to part at around 5 that day, so we had more than a few hours to kill. The various demonstration tents and kiosks provided very sparse entertainment in the form of grinding seaweed and hitting a couple of drums here and there. The real entertainment came from hanging out at the restaurant tents. People eating live squid, circles of old women singing and clapping, drunk Korean country folk jostling one another...

Making seaweed.

Then, magically at around 5, the skies cleared up and the sun came out. All those who came out for the hallowed sea parting were no doubt humbled by this divine fortune. The weather warmed up, and like magic, the once roaring water was partitioned by a long strip of seabed. I decided to scale a cliffside to snap a couple of opportune shots.


Speaking of being opportune, they were hawking theigh-high boots close to the land bridge for 5000 won and I managed to score some in my size for the trip. The water got above the knee at some points and my friends and coworkers, who up until that point were rubbing in the fact that they brought their own boots, definitely wished they had bought a pair of wellys.

If ya got wellys, throw your hands up!

Israelites

Group shot!

The bridge itself was awesome. A long stretch of people, all united by the thrill of the trek. All of the ordeals I had endured up until that point seemed worth it. I made it about halfway until the men in boats told me to go back because the sea was closing up. Incidentally, so were the clouds.

Initially we had all planned on camping out on the beach, but since the weather decided to be colder than a witch's tit, we agreed to hightail it back to the closest urban area and score a hotel room. I didn't bring any sleeping gear either (WHOOPS!) so I was thrilled with this decision.

Getting to the closest urban area was easier said than done, considering we had to take two very infrequent, rural buses to get there. Half of us grabbed a taxi to the Jindo terminal and then caught the last bus to Mokpo. The other half couldn't fit into the initial taxi, missed the bus and had to take a 70,000 won cab ride all the way back to Mokpo. When we got back, we crammed all 6 of us into a hotel room and capped the night off with some Cass Red.

That was saturday.

Sunday was a whole different bag of nuts, so maybe I'll get to that another time. Give this entry some closure. Thanks for reading!