Chuseok

Annyeoung Haseyo! Yep, I’ve mastered hello in Korean. We just got through the Chuseok holiday here (like Thanksgiving), and having had four days off work to explore Korea, I have mucho stories to tell.



Friday at school was a blast. All the kids came dressed in their hanboks (traditional Korean dress). Scratch that--the kids BROUGHT their hanboks with them and changed at school (read: a bunch of six-year-old girls running around my classroom in their underwear giggling uncontrollably and squealing the word “PANTIES!” in pitches I thought only dogs could hear, while my sole male student tried desperately to sneak a peek through the cracks in the door from outside the room). The school even rented hanboks for the teachers to wear, so I, too, got to look like a giant rainbow cupcake for a day. We spent all morning and afternoon making yummy Korean deserts and playing Chuseok games. The only bummer was the hot, nasty smell of sweaty bodies in hanboks. We don’t air condition the communal areas in our school, and it’s still like 85 degrees here every day. You can imagine the stink. Think hockey locker room.

All the teachers headed out to Dublin--a cute little Irish pub in downtown Bundang--after work Friday night. It’s an Irish pub, but with the strangest mix of American music. The Koreans are always trying to replicate western style, but usually end up with some odd twist that just makes you say, “what??” I’ll never complain about Bon Jovi though, even if it’s in an Irish pub. Anyway...darts, pool...good times.

Saturday morning, Liz and I packed up the gigantic backpack we borrowed from another teacher (Dad, bringing the roller suitcase instead of the backpack was the wrong choice--you were right!) and headed to the bus station with no set plan...just a few cool-sounding places circled in the guide book and the hope that there would still be some tickets to places outside of the city available. We decided to hit up Deacheon first--a small beach town on the west coast of Korea and a two and a half hour ride from Seoul.

We got to Deacheon without a hitch. As we were walking around town trying to find a place to ditch our backpack, a woman ran up to us eagerly asking, “Hotel? Hotel??” and proceeded to practically drag us to what would be our accommodations for the night. Did

we have a choice? We started to realize at this point....the point where hotel owners were standing in the streets hunting down backpackers...that we had landed upon a sleepy (not to mention creepy) little town. Deacheon holds a huge mud festival in the summer that is apparently just a way-big party and draws masses of people. I guess when we read about this in the guide book we just assumed the town would always be a happening place. Wrong.

We failed to really think about the fact that we were traveling during a major holiday weekend and that most shops/businesses would be closed. The DAY was great; we rented four-wheelers and rode around in the sand, sprawled out on the beach, and enjoyed the awesome views. The EVENING, however, was a different story. Once night-fall hit, it felt like we’d been thrown onto some creepy, deserted carnival movie set with eerily cheery music echoing in empty streets and the odd two or three people playing one of those ball-toss games randomly set up on the side of the road. Trying to find a place to eat was nearly impossible; the only restaurants open were the many seafood places along the beach that had massive tanks across their facades packed with fish--both dead and alive. Not exactly appetizing. Even those restaurants, whose neon signs claimed they were open, had no patrons. Maybe someone just forgot to unplug the signs ten years ago...? So, it was us and the poor thousands of fish teetering on the brink of death. The handful of people who WERE left in town were all down on the beach lighting off fireworks...AT each other. The only thing left to do was buy some coolers at the 7-11 on the corner, sit on the boardwalk watching these revellers, and laugh until we peed about the random, bizarre, and surreal nature of our little ghost town.

On Sunday morning, we woke up early and headed to the beach for a morning dip. Even though Deacheon didn’t exactly have the night life we would have liked, it definitely had that super peaceful, serene thing going on. We were the only ones on the whole beach at 8:00 am, and it was perfect. Not a bad way to start a day. After a swim, we decided to try to catch another bus to Chungju Lake in central Korea. Eight hours later, we were

hotel-shopping on the streets of Chungju, looking for the cheapest and least “love-motel”-ish hotel we could find. Korea is known for its love-motels. Just to give you a visual, a standard love-motel room usually boasts things like neon-lighting from the ceiling, a round bed, and always plenty-o-condoms on the vanity. High class! Some of the fancier ones even adorned with paintings of voluptuous female silhouettes lining the walls of the stairwells. We did end up finding a very simple, cheap, non-love-motel place to stay. The only problem was that when we got to our room there was no bed; we’d been given an “ondol” room where you’re supposed to sleep on thin mats on the linoleum floor. Back to the front desk to swap our room for one with a bed. I have now memorized the Korean expression for “western style room”: Chimdae bang juseyo...aka, “Gimmi my American bed, yo!” Another teacher told me the “ondol” sleeping actually isn’t that bad, especially in the winter time since the heating here is under the floors. I’ll have to try that one another time.

Sunday night was again spent trying to find something to eat in a town all but shut down for Chuseok. Note to selves: when planning a spontaneous trip, avoid Chuseok! We were feeling pretty crappy about our luck until Monday morning when things took a turn for the strange and wonderful. We decided to get up early and catch a bus to the ferry terminal to take a boat tour of the lake. As we were coming out of our hotel, a taxi driver pulled up and told us he’d take us there instead. Why not? Taxis are dirt cheap in Korea. And it’s a good thing we took this taxi driver up on his offer because he strangely ended up being the highlight of our weekend.


Our ripped-jean-shorts-and-backwards-baseball-cap-wearing cabby cranked some Korean club music and half-danced, half-drove all the way to the terminal. He was seriously raising the roof at one point. His Enlish was pretty much limited to "OK!" (accompanied bya big smile and thumbs up) and “Big Sale!” (referring to his bargain fares), but he still joked around with us and tried to teach us Korean words using non-verbals (e.g. he taught us the word for lingerie by pointing to the lingerie store then motioning across his chest, raising his eyebrows, and making an “ohlala” sound).

When we got to the ferry terminal at 8:00 am, our driver and new friend informed us that the ferries didn’t start running until 11:00 am, but insisted that he buy us coffee while we waited. He also wanted to show us on the great big map posted outside the terminal where all the best site-seeing spots in the area were. He then offered us “Big Sale!”, motioned to his taxi and to various places on the map, and said “One hour, Ten man-won ($10)” How could we say no? Back into the taxi with our buddy. For the next hour he drove us around and stopped to let us walk around and take pictures where ever we wanted. Mid-way through the trip he asked, “Gim-Bap?” and then proceeded to stop and buy us five roles of the yummy Californian-roll type stuff. He even got us each a melon ice cream bar while we waited because the gim-bap order was taking so long!

If I heard this story from someone else, I would definitely say that the taxi driver was a huge creeper, but he totally wasn’t. He was just a genuinely nice dude who was probably really happy to break up the mundane cab-driving routine by hanging out with a couple of

foreigners for the morning. Unless you’ve experienced it, you can’t really understand how cool it is to get to know people who don’t speak English just by pointing, acting things out, laughing at yourself, and giving the other language your best shot. Even though we hardly understood a word coming out of this guy’s mouth and vice-versa, we still probably learned more about Koreans and their culture from him in one hour than we had since we got here. This--getting to talk with local people--has been by far my favorite thing about living overseas so far...for sure the most rewarding and interesting anyway. Ice cream waffles and Christmas-oranges (available every day of the year here) are a close second and third :P.

When we got back to the terminal, Liz and I ended up two-stepping in an empty parking lot to the music playing over the loudspeaker while we killed the rest of the time until our ferry ride on Chungju Lake. We figure that we get stared at no matter what we do simply because we’re foreign, so we might as well have a good time while being started at--embrace our foreignness! The lake area was gorgeous and had some beautiful mountainous scenery, so the ferry ride was worth every penny. In the afternoon we took a bus to a town called Danyang and went to an awesome cave--nothing like I’d ever been to in North America. By 10:oo pm, and after a long haul of a bus ride back to Seoul due to the stop-and-go post-Chuseok traffic on the expressways, we were back home. And that was our weekend. Whew.

I can’t believe I’ve been here a month already. The time is flying. Work’s still going great and the apartment isn’t so bad anymore. Everything finally feels comfortable :). The weather has been fantastic and is supposed to get even better with the fall--lots of blue skies and warm, comfortable temps. I’ve been doing something new almost every day and can’t believe how glad I am that I made the decision to come here--it really is just what I needed. Life will be waiting for me back in North America in eleven months, but for now I’m loving meeting great new people, doing whatever, whenever, and packing every day with things I’d never be doing back home. Liz, Katy, and I are booking tickets to Thailand for Christmas next Monday (pay-day). Life is good!