Episode 2: In Which DFM Discovers A Plot To Unleash Giant Destructive Guinea Pigs In Korea, And Has A Mishap With A Hot Glue Gun

My first full day in Korea was a very long day. For the most part this can probably be contributed to the fact that my body had not yet adjusted to the time difference and I woke up at 3:30 AM.

When I arose it occurred to me that I had not yet procured food stuffs for breakfast, and while the bars and clubs seem to stay open all night in Korea, the "food marts" keep fairly "normal" hours.

Around 9:30 AM (local time, obviously) I decided to explore my surroundings and find a food mart. I was amazed at the variety of stores in my neighbourhood. When I lived in Itaewon I could find an overpriced, "over sized" store for giant tourists without a problem, and I could also have a tailor made suit constructed, but other than that and drinking there were very few stores. Here, though, it seemed like I could find anything and everything. I even found a pastry shop that wasn't called Paris Baguette! Most importantly I found a reasonably priced small food mart, and a couple of local food vendors that sold fresh fruit - including the juiciest nectarines I've ever tasted - for a much lower price than in Itaewon. Apparently the harvest season is upon us (er... me) though, so that could have something to do with it.

After some breakfast, Lee and I went to Itaewon to get my "hand pone" (mobile phone) set up. While the Immigration board was being contacted to make sure I existed, Lee and I went to his office close to the Han River. Lee went to lunch with his boss, so I called up Hyeun-A (who shrieked with excitement) to tell her I wanted to have lunch with her (Hyeun-A works with Lee at the same office and used to teach me Korean during my last visit to Korea).

Hyeun-A surprised me when she said she wanted to go to the nearby taco restaurant. I wasn't thinking straight yet though, and thought I would be getting an American style taco, but I forgot that this is Korea and so my burrito contained rice, coleslaw, and some sort of ranch dressing, along with extra spicy pork. It was still delicious though, and since I wasn't sure when I'd be able to eat supper I made sure to stuff myself full.

After lunch it was time to do what I had been waiting two and a half months to do, ever since deciding that I would return to Korea - surprise Ji-Hyeun and Choi at Ace Climbing Centre. When I arrived, I opened the door and proudly proclaimed "hello!" (in Korean). Ji-hyeun and Choi both had their jaws hit the floor, and they stammered a bit before being able to say something along the lines of "how can you be here now?" Later I asked Ji-hyeun about what she thought when she saw me and she said, "I thought, 'I can't believe my eyes.'"

At 3:30 PM I had to leave for a meeting with my boss. The last time I was here this used to involve going to his "headquarters" in downtown Seoul. However, it now required traveling over an hour and a half to another city to reach my "local office." My hour and a half trip this time turned into a two and a half hour trip though, because I accidentally got on the wrong train and didn't notice until I was heading out of Seoul in the wrong direction. Eventually I was able to get to the proper station but then I almost missed my connection because I got caught up watching a Peruvian pan flute band (I hope the giant guinea pigs decide to wait until I leave Korea before they come to destroy it).

I should mention the bus ride from the subway station to the local office, for it was a most incredible experience. On narrow mountain roads with no shoulder whatsoever, this bus raced around blind corners, sometimes even cutting them. At other times, the outside section of our lane was narrowed even further by rock slides, but still the driver did not slow down and neither did the cars from the other side, and what would have been considered a one lane road in Canada was transformed into a Korean freeway. All this happened while destroying the buses suspension and the passengers' skeletons on the copious speed jumps bumps (jumps?).

The meeting went longer than expected, but was mostly uneventful except for when I burned my finger using the hot glue gun (don't tell my mother or she won't let me use a glue gun again either as well as the knives she is already terrified of seeing in my hands). Also, on the way home I could have sworn I saw the Korean David Suzuki (either that or it was just a Japanese tourist), but that isn't really important.

Finally I made it home at 10:00 PM, absolutely exhausted and incredibly hungry since I hadn't eaten since noon. Tomorrow I start my first day of teaching at a new school though so I'm fairly excited about that (I work at two schools). Since no one knows how many lessons in this unit the children have covered I cannot adequately prepare. This makes me just a bit nervous, so I'll just have to do what Hank Hill would do and "fall back on natural instinct."

Episode 59: In Which DFM Visits A Museum Without Walls And Plays With His Food At The Dinner Table

Day 3 of my trip called for another early morning rise and a train trip to Gyeongju.  Before I left I said my good-byes to Mr. and Mrs. Kim and Mr. Kim's parents.  I also try out my new Korean phrase, "I will miss you," which prompted Mr. Kim's mother to call me "sweet."

Today (Saturday, May 2) is Buddha's Birthday in Korea.  When I ordered the tickets last week there was only one spot left on the KTX train for this day and it was in First Class.  What a pity.

I was excited to see what a first class train ride would be like, but unfortunately it was a bit disappointing.  There was so much leg room that my feet could not reach the foot rests no matter how far I stretched, which was rather uncomfortable.  Furthermore, the seat in front of me was so far away that the fold down tray was out of my reach and so I had to bend over awkwardly to use it.  This was not the most comfortable position either.  

On the plus side, I could get out of the seat without putting the tray up and, with the combination of an a/c unit that actually worked and 25% less people in the car (only three seats per row instead of 4), I made it all the way to my destination without feeling like I had been sitting in a pool of sweat the whole way.

Part way through the trip, I had to switch from the KTX train to the much less glamorous, or speedy, Mugungwha train (astute readers will remember that Mugungwha is also the name of Korea's national flower).  

At least the scenery at the platform where I disembarked was nice.

Eventually April and I got to Gyeongju.  I originally took this picture because I thought it looked pretty, but upon reviewing my pictures later I realized that I had actually learned the meaning of the sign on the left during my trip (in an unrelated incident).  The writing in the red circles on the pillar reads "hwan-yong," which means "welcome!"

After trying to find a reliable form of transport (the buses we needed were not coming around at an acceptable interval for two impatient Seoulites), April and I took a cab to meet her friend, Sun-hee and her friend's daughter, Jee-seon.

The four of us went to a traditional Korean restaurant, at which to enter we had to squeeze through a door only five feet high.  We tried not to bump our heads ("try" being the operative term), and were rewarded for our troubles with a delicious meal of spicy barbecued chicken and ddeok in a some sort of hot sauce.  Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that this is the same meal I ate with my boss on Thursday before I got paid and left for this trip.

After lunch we all drove over to Bulguksa.  Bulguksa is a Buddhist temple ("sa" means temple) built in the wooded foothills of beautiful Tohamsan ("san" means mountain in Korean, so Tohamsan translates to Toham Mountain).  Many invading countries liked to arrest Buddhist monks, so the monks often built their temples in the mountains to hide from enemy armies.

Bulguksa was built roughly 1480 years ago in AD 528, during the Shila dynasty.  Unfortunately, the Japanese appear to like burning down temples more than the monks like hiding them up in the mountains, and so Bulguksa also had to be rebuilt after the 1592 Invasion of Korea by Japan (the second temple this trip).

In 1995 UNESCO (a branch of the United Nations) declared Bulguksa a World Cultural Heritage site.  Bulguksa contains no less than seven National Treasures, and it is also located in the most beautiful place I've ever seen, and is reached by Korea's best driving road (that's the most important thing though, isn't it?)  Bulguksa is often referred to as "a museum without walls."

Before you can reach the temple, you must walk over this bridge (behind the trees).  The bridge is called Haetalgyo, and it represents the crossing from the sin filled world to the realm of bliss - Nirvana.

Every reader has seen the giant rock piles from my hiking trip with Perry, right?  Here we have hundreds of tiny rock piles built by visitors behind one of the temple buildings.  There must have been a lot of praying here.

Of the seven National Treasures, these were my two favourite.  The first is Seokgatap, a classic Korean pagoda of superior quality.  The second is Cheongungyo and Baegungyo, which combine to make a massive 33-step stone staircase that represents the 33 heavens and hells of Buddhism.

After a wonderful exploration of Bulguksa, we all went out for yet more spicy Korean food.  This time the meal was a spicy bowl of soup containing a number of vegetables and a whole fish, merely gutted, but not deboned or beheaded.  Lucky me, I got the fish head again.  It had received a debraining, but I was still able to play with its mouth.  In hindsight, I think perhaps playing with one's fish head at the dinner table is not something that Korean dining etiquette encourages.

Episode 22: In Which DFM Gets On The Wrong Bus And Tries To Sing Karaoke In Korean

Today the plan was to go to O2 World Climbing Gym.  O2 World Climbing Gym is the biggest climbing gym in Seoul, and probably all of Korea.  Without a doubt it has the biggest indoor ice climbing gym in Korea, if not Asia.

You can see from the side of the building that it's kind of hard to miss, except for that it's nowhere near anything else in Seoul and this makes it hard to find.

I had directions but for some reason I decided not to review them before I left.  Instead I combined information from three different sources and got all of it wrong.  Long story short I got on the wrong bus, rode it all the way around, switched buses and then got on the right bus but going to wrong direction, then finally realized I was going the wrong direction and finally got on the right bus.  All together the subway trip plus bus rides took over two hours.  It was an absolute nightmare.  Not to mention my bus driver the first time was a maniac and actually hit another bus that was picking up passengers.

Speaking of maniacs... scooter couriers.  I've talked about them before but the other day I saw a female scooter courier.  She must have been out of her mind though, because was driving on the road, in her proper lane, going the speed limit.  She'll never last.

To make matters worse this day, the gym was quite a bit of a disappointment.  It's definitely the tallest indoor gym in Seoul that I've seen so far, but it still pales in comparison to the average Canadian climbing gym.  Furthermore, there were very few people climbing today.   I also tried to look at the ice climbing wall, but the observatory deck was closed today.

I had limited time after the transportation debacle, but luckily there was this steep overhung bouldering wall that enabled me to tire myself out in about an hour-and-a-half.  There were only two other climbers there, and they spoke no English, but they would point out hard routes for me and then cheer wildly if I could do them.

Afterwards I was invited out by Hyeun A for dinner.  I was under the impression that we were meeting in Itaewon, but apparently that was too far away, so I was supposed to go there.  I took the subway, which took half an hour, but later found out I was a fifteen minute walk away (I went the long way round on the subway, with two transfers).

Lee Young San and Hyeun A's supervisor, Aeri (don't ask because I couldn't figure it out either, in the white coat), came along too.  We had some spicy beef dish and a spicy tuna/kimchi soup.  As usual I couldn't stop stuffing myself full.

After dinner (Aeri was the boss, so in keeping with Korean tradition she had to pay, woo hoo!) we all went out for karaoke.  Lee did not understand how I knew what karaoke was until I told him that in Canada we imported it over from Japan.

Lee also gave me many more tips for getting along in Korea.  His number one tip was "never pay for a Korean girl, because then she'll always expect you to pay.  Always go dutch."  I asked how this fit into Korean culture.  Lee explained that in the past men were considered more powerful than women, but modern women don't want to get hit by men anymore, so they have to pay.  Makes sense to me.

Tomorrow I plan to check out the World Cup Stadium and visit Mr. Chang back at Summit Climbing Center.