Lost in Translation

There were so many incredible signs around South Korea. I want to share with you some of my favorites. You should be able to click on any of these pictures to enlarge them.


This is on the floor of the train station past where you buy the tickets. I thought it was nice that they trust us.


This gem was in most of the subway stations in Seoul and Busan. Kim told us that a while ago there was a huge fire in one of the subway stations and a lot of people where killed because there weren't enough exits for everyone to get out. So they put these breathing apparatuses in the stations as a solution.


On the beach at Haeundae. It felt like there were a lot more people who smoked in Korea, but that could be because in Boston there is no smoking in bars and restaurants, so I'm not used to being around it.


This sign is by Seoul tower, along a fence that is covered in locks (the picture below gives you an idea).

We never found out why the fence is covered in locks, but it is some sort of good luck thing. Or maybe it's like a wishing well but locks instead of pennies.


Seen at a temple where construction work was happening. Pretty sure they meant that we could still explore even though they were doing work.


Do you see it? It is the only thing in English on the map. It's a map of the fortress at Geumgang park we tried but failed to visit (with the cable car).

This picture you should click on to enlarge it. It's a pretty awesome translation of the dangers of the cliffs. "Be fascinated by the fantastic views of the wide sea and the beauty of the cliffs. Nature, however, does not have sympathy with accidents caused by your carelessness."


A new bar in Gwangalli beach. I don't think they understand what a womb is.


Not once in my 10 days in Korea did I see a horse and carriage. This must be why.

"Delicious love making just for you"

Saturday

Our last full day in Korea. Andy made Kim and me crepes for brunch. Recipe:

• 2 eggs
  
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup mystery flour (all we could translate was 55% potato starch)
• A dozen or so delicious Korean strawberries sliced
• 1/2 Korean pear (kind of- looked like one but didn't taste like it really)

End result: something like a crepe but not quite. But with a little brown sugar and butter, it was excellent.

Next up is festival at Gwangalli beach. Here is a picture:
Turns out it was the wrong weekend for the festival. Oh well. Found a tiny amusement park instead, which had this incredible ride for only 1000 won. (You may want to turn down or off the volume, it's full of loud screaming kids in the background)



For late lunch we headed to Jagalchi fish market. It was incredible the amount of fish that everyone was selling. The place we ate at we just pointed to 3 fish and they cooked them on the grill then brought them to our table, where we ate the meat off the bone with chopsticks. It was interesting but 2 of the 3 fish we chose weren't very good. We did a little shopping after that but went home without buying anything.

(This is the grill our fish was cooked on, we chose from the fish set out in front of it)

We had a light dinner at Kim's house and then went out for her birthday/last night in Korea. The first bar of the night was a place called the Playground, which is on the 3rd story of a building downtown. It had a huge selection of bottled beer you chose yourself from their fridges. I got a bottle of Hite, a Korean beer, for 2500 won. We played pools and darts and danced. Then we headed to The Fuzzy Navel, which turned out to have mexican food and interesting flaming shots. By the time we looked at the clock it was 3:00 am! The bars here never close. Andy and I went back to Kim's apartment to pack and sleep and caught a train back to Seoul at 10 am.

Thus ended our trip to Korea. There will be a couple more posts though about the culture and random things we just didn't have time to post during our trip, so stay tuned.

Stupid rain

For Thursday and Friday Andy and I decided to do an overnight trip up to Seoraksan National Park. We caught a bus from Busan at 8:40 am and arrived in Sokcho (the town directly outside of the park) at 3 pm. We found a hotel right outside of the park and this was our view from the balcony.

I don't think these pictures do justice to the impressiveness of the mountains. A lot of the craggy peaks we could see look like they are covered in cloud and fog here (which they were). We went to the park information booth and looked around, but didn't do too much that night. Bought ramen in a cup for 850 won each (that's 85 cents) for dinner.

Friday we woke up early so we could get in a hike before breakfast at the hotel ended. It was only lightly misting out. Once in the park, it was more like Kings Dominion than a National Park, with restaurants and games set up everywhere. And the whole path was paved as well. The "hike" we were doing in the morning was a relatively easy one, about 3.3km one way and no major incline, according to the map. Let me tell you that Korean distances are a lot like Mortimer Miles, a lot longer than they say. The farther we were walking, the more it started to rain. We were only hiking for about 45 minutes when we got to a sign that said we still had another 2.5km to go, we were soaking wet and just miserable. So we turned around and decided we'll try again after breakfast, maybe the rain will have let up.

Sadly, the rain never really let up. We had breakfast, took a nap and were ready to leave by 11:30. At that time it was still raining, so we decided to head south to another town instead of hiking in the park again. It was a really hard decision because I had gotten my hopes up about the park and knew that no cave was going to be as interesting or beautiful.

We headed back to the bus station and caught a bus to Donghae. We took a taxi to the Cheonguk cave, which was pretty large. It cost 4000 won for both of us to enter. It was large and intricate and interesting for $4. But that was all we had time for. We had to catch a taxi to the train station for the train at 4:30. We were then on a train until 11:30 pm and took a taxi back to Kim's house.

Teaching

Wednesday afternoon we spent with Kim's kids. They were all SO excited to have us there. We were called Katie teacher and Andy teacher. Each class lasted between 30 and 40 minutes, depending on the age of the class. Kids ranged in age from 6 to 15. Kim teaches all day; in the morning it's more like kindergarten, in the afternoon it's more like an after school program.

This picture is of the last few kids who stayed longer than the rest. The woman on the right is the director of the school. The kid on Andy's left, Ryan (in the tan jacket), LOVED Andy. Towards the end of the night when Ryan was just doing homework, he would come up to us and wave, and came up to Andy and gave him a hug. Just loved him.

For each class, the kids did a little of their regular work (reciting phone conversations in English) and then they were given a blank piece of paper and told to draw Andy and me. They were encouraged to ask questions in english about us while they drew (Kim usually had to help them with ideas on what to ask). We were asked what is our favorite color, animal, cartoon character, how old are we, do we have a boy/girlfriend, where are we from and so forth. One class was SO surprised we were married to each other. I mean, fall out of their seats surprised.

Below are just a few of the drawings the kids made. Some used crayons to color in what they drew. In the first one, Andy had said his favorite cartoon character was Aladdin, so the kid drew a genie. Some were incredibly good, others were laughable.

Taejongdae park

Wednesday is the day we are going to meet Kim's kids. We're only going to teach in the afternoon so we went to Taejongdae park in the morning (please excuse the spelling of Korean places, I'm too lazy to find my map to make sure I'm spelling them right). It's a gorgeous park at one end of Yeong-gu (the island Kim lives on is called Yeong-du, but it is still part of Busan). We spent the entire morning walking only halfway around the roadway. There were cliffy parts that we found out later we could have walked onto, but I don't know that I would have wanted to anyways. All throughout the ocean there were tons of ships. Big and small. I don't have anymore to say about the park but I want to show you a couple more pictures

One of the overlooks during the walk.

This guy was hanging outside of the "observatory" about halfway around the park.

This was posted inside the stalls at the bathroom.

Busan day two

Andy is getting sick. Tuesday morning we went to find a drugstore in Busan. After walking around for 10 minutes we finally found a pharmacy, clearly marked. The guy inside spoke no english, so we mimed stuffy nose and cough. He handed us 2 packs of pills and a bottle of warm liquid and told us to take 2 of each pill and the entire bottle. Talk about drug overload. Andy took the pills but we waited until we could talk to a Korean to figure out what the bottle was.

Our first real activity of the day was to find the cable car in Geumgang park. It was about a 30 minute subway ride and another 20 minutes of aimlessly walking towards the mountain, where we could see the cable car but there were no signs to get to it. Geumgang park was a surreal experience. I didn't take any pictures because I was just too surprised at what was there. If you have seen Spirited Away, this park was a lot like the park in the movie, except more trees. But equally as creepy. There was a small amusement park and food stands mixed in with the forest. But there was hardly anyone in the park at all.

(This is just a small portion of Busan, it spreads all the way on either side of this picture)

We took the cable car to the top of the mountain where we were expecting to find an old fortress. For about 10 minutes we were doing really well, following the signs for Nam moon (south gate) until we reached this sign:

The first two characters say Nam Moon, but I don't recognize the other characters. So we followed the upper path since there was another, more official looking sign, that said Nam Moon this way. The sign says only 0.3m to the gate. Well, after walking for 20 minutes and reaching a food stand we realize that somehow we have gotten lost. We made it back to this sign but we didn't want to go on another wild goose chase for this stupid gate. We started heading back for the cable car.

That's when we met Nick, another fellow American also lost in the woods. Maybe it's a Korean thing, but these signs just weren't made for us Westerners. We had a nice chat with Nick about Korea and the culture and a little about home (He's originally from NY but living in Milwaukee). While up on top of the mountain we found another temple. At this point we're kind of unimpressed by temples. It's like looking at churches, there is only so many that you want to see, especially the unimpressive ones.

Next stop, Busan tower. It's just a tourist attraction, but has a neat view of the harbor and surrounding city. Andy and I hung out in the cafe at the top eating our snacks and just relaxing. We had a couple hours to kill before Kim was done with work and we were pretty tired of walking around. Plus, you can't ask for a better view.

For dinner we met Kim, Krissy (one of the girls from the Temple Stay) and their friend Jin, who is native Korean. Jin took us to a korean restaurant and ordered chicken and seafood barbecue. Not bbq like in the US with sauce and grilling and stuff. A giant round bowl was placed on a burner in the middle of the table and the food was brought out raw and cooked on our table. It was decently good, but Jin kept telling us that it was terrible, so I guess not really authentic.

(View of Busan harbor from Busan Tower)

Busan, for the most part

I just wanted to note here that before we left Gyeongju, we found a korean buffet for 5000 won (that's less that $5 people). It was good food, all you could eat, and 2 types of dessert. One dessert was rice soaked in sugar water and the other dessert was rice soaked in cinnamon water. Both were decent, but not as good as rice pudding.

Okay, so we took the train back to Busan on Sunday night. Monday we took the morning off and slept in. Kim left for work at 9 and came back on her lunch break at 12. By then we were showered and ready to go out exploring. Kim brought back some kimbap for lunch. It is rice wrapped with seaweed (just like sushi rolls). Two of the rolls had cooked tuna, small vegetables, and one slice of ham running through it, and one of the rolls had american sliced cheese with vegetables and ham. I picked out the ham from my slices and Andy ate them, in case you were wondering.

Once Kim headed back to work Andy and I took the metro to Hyundae, a very popular beach. Lucky for us it was kind of cold and rainy outside so hardly anyone was at the beach. We spent some time walking around this area, admiring the ocean until the rain was too much and we found a coffee shop to sit in and relax.

For dinner Kim took us to a little restaurant beside her apartment where we had fried chicken. they fry the chicken whole then cut it to pieces with scissors. Came with some amazing dipping sauce and chopped garlic.

No fun pictures for this day.