The hour glass is running out of sand as we enter our second to last week of camp. Monday was a rough day full of naughty kids. This week is Invitation to a World Celebration week and I am again in charge of science club. It’s kind of a geology club; we talked about continental drift and Pangaea and tried to fit the continents back together like they previously were. We played elbow tag outside and in rotating activities I made Fuze beads in the art room.
Tuesday in small group we learned all about the fifty states and colored the different states certain colors on the map. They behaved for about half the states, the western half of the country, then an exhausted Miss Smartie gave them free coloring. In club I brought in the bag of rocks I collected from Gyeongju beach and gave one rock to each kid. We had magnifying glasses and they had a piece of paper to draw and describe their rocks. When everyone was done we put all the rocks back in a pile and the test was to see if you could use your notes to find your rock. That afternoon I went swimming with the kinders and first graders and spent lots of water fun time with my favorite Kalisha. She is going to be hard to leave; she says she loves Miss Smartie about ever ten minutes. That night Jesa and I watched the Last Song and cried our eyes out together; it was a real bonding experience.
Wednesday was a wet day, we were in a typhoon advisory starting Tuesday night and it wasn’t supposed to stop till late Wednesday afternoon. James and I walked to work in literally drenching, cats and dogs, torrential down pour rain. We got to work and our socks, shoes, shorts, backpacks, and rain jackets were completely soaked through, and we got to stay in them all day. The problem with rainy days is that you can’t take the kids outside for all camp activities or to any schedule event aka swimming and bowling. So in small group we made four leaf clover lucky charm necklaces. In club we made dinosaurs out of felt and learned about different species. In outdoor activity time we did paint by numbers of different country flags. Then when we were supposed to be bowling and swimming we did rotating activities and I was in charge and Pictionary and made friendship bracelets. That night we had a going away party for our Korean intern Miss Moon who is leaving on Friday. We went to Mr. Ricks and Ms. Jeans apartment to eat dinner with a lot of the staff and their family. They have high active twin boys who are four and a daughter going into seventh grade. They were so cute, and you would think we would be sick of kids after playing with them all day but we could not resist the smiles of these two little kids. We ate a variety of dishes buffet style and enjoyed fruit smoothies. I overcame one of my top fears when the karaoke machine made its debut. Everyone was forced to sing a song, after much protesting I was forced off the coach and wannabe by the spice girls was selected for me. James gets very into his Karaoke and was dancing with the microphone. I think the highlight of the night, and a great end to a trip in Korea was when our centers cook, Mr. Ye, polished off a bottle of wine, no exaggeration he drank it all himself, he got up to the microphone and sang a lot of old nineties love songs really well. It was hysterical in his broken English/Korean accent it took all I had to not die of laughter. Most mornings he is slow getting out breakfast and sits in the kitchen with his head down hating life and hung over, as he was singing Mr. Rick told us that last week he went Karaoke-ing every night of the week. After making James and Jesa belt out Whitney Huston’s I will always love you and ending with a group effort All for one, I Swear, it was time to head home.
Thursday was field trip day. We were off to the Amethyst Caves down by Busan. It was a long two hour bus ride with a broken VCR but I rode with Sammy, the one who normally throws up but this time didn’t, and time went faster than expected. Sammy is a trouble maker and comes from a trouble childhood, he and his sister Samantha about a year ago found their bloody mother in the bathroom after she committed suicide and they have recently opened up a lot more about it. I feel so bad for these two kids; they will never have a normal childhood and have to carry that image of their mother forever. Sammy and I played with plastic animals until he fell asleep, he was adorable and he has just recently started smiling, laughing, and hugging us and I almost want to cry every time I see it. We finally arrived at the caves ate lunch and headed into the most dangerous spot to lose a kid, and the easiest. These caves were freezing cold and very full of Koreans. We went to an underground show first with three men and a young girl. They did acrobatic/flexibility tricks that blew every one’s mind. They had some inappropriate jokes and things that would explain why the show was underground in a cold cave but the kids just thought it was hysterical and watched wide eyed and mouth open. After the show we wandered around the caves for a while and finally headed out. I know I have mentioned before that there are just random amusement park rides everywhere but it still blows my mind. This place had about six rides and we took our kids on the carousal, mini Viking ship, and two other spin car things. After snack we loaded back on the bus and Sammy and I played games again until he fell asleep. That night Jesa and I made our last trip to the commissary and watched rent on T.V. singing along the whole time!
Friday we painted in small group and made volcanoes in club. We learned all about the formation of volcanoes and how they erupt, then we used the left over clay cooking club had made to build volcanoes and put baking soda and vinegar in them. The clay wasn’t very strong and vinegar got everywhere but the kids really liked it. After teaching kids science this week I think it is safe to say that teaching isn’t my calling. In the afternoon we played bingo in rotating activities and played the armadillo game. The armadillo game emerged when the boys, Judae and Sean, were playing with the five little plastic armadillos and Mr. Taffy hid them in really hard spots. Now if they are good during closing everyday Mr. Taffy hides them, tapes them to the ceiling and under tables, and they search for them after receiving one clue for each armadillo. They love the armadillo game and they have been behaving very well during closing. Friday night was very uneventful. Jesa, James, Devin and I hung out making travel plans, since the island that we had originally planned fell through when we realized the return ferry didn’t get back till Tuesday. We settled on heading to the west coast to Byeonsan Bando national park.
Saturday morning we woke up bright and early, 4:20, in order to catch our train at five thirty. Taxis don’t run on base till six so we had to walk off base and find a cab. Our first train was two hours long and I think I slept for a total of fifteen minutes. It is so hard to get comfortable in a straight up seat, especially when you are excited about all the day holds. After a thirty hour transfer we had another two hour train and arrived in Jeon ju at 10:30, the ride was beautiful and went through a ton of rice fields. You could look out on a huge field and see one Korean standing among his crops with a straw hat. Jeon ju is a typical college town with an art university; the boys were drooling over the young promising ladies and wondered how we had missed this place for so long. After taxi-ing to the express bus terminal we found the two hour bus to Byeonsan Bando and boarded. Jesa of course slept the whole way and I enjoyed more rice fields. As we approached the coast we saw long muddy wet beaches that stretched out about a eighth mile before reaching the ocean, we were possibly thinking of camping on the beach and started getting concerned about our slumber arrangements. Finally we got off the bus and found the national park office. We talked, well gestured and used one word phrases, to a ranger who gave us a Korean map and told us to get on a green bus to go to Gyeokpo beach. Oh I forgot to mention that it had been pouring rain all morning and some people were a little grumpy with the cloudy weather, luckily by the time we reached the coast it was just cloudy and the rain had stopped. After another fifteen minute bus ride we arrived in Gyeokpo and walked to the beach. It is a little run down sea side town, and I am pretty sure we were the only round eyed people there. We walked down to the beach and found another long muddy sandy section before reaching the water. We waded in a little and hunted sea shells for a while before moving onto the rock formations. These rocks were like flattened pancakes, cliffs on the shore, and then you could walk around on the barnacle covered rocks next to the cliffs. These rocks had a ton of little tide pools in them chalk a block full of crabs and fish and rocks and it was beautiful. The cliffs had water dripping off like a bunch of mini waterfalls. After taking lots of pictures of ocean and rock and harassing many a crab we headed up to find a camp site. I asked another ranger and he pointed down the road where we found many a Korean also geared up for a night of camping. Koreans know how to camp, they have huge tents complete with patio, outdoor mat rain covers. They also bring coolers full of regular meals and they all sit and eat with their chopsticks. We found a nice patch of grass in the middle of a large Korean huddle and settled in. We were pretty tired from being up late and we took about an hour rest lounging outside the tent and chatting. Around four thirty Devin, James, and I decided it was time to conquer the ocean and all the Koreans swimming in it. Jesa wasn’t feeling 100% so she stayed with the tent. One thing I still do not understand about these skinny skinny Koreans is why they all wear regular clothes instead of swim suits. No one wears bikinis or one piece, its polo’s and button down shirts in the water, constricting one would think. The waves were really blasting and the tide had come in to cover the whole beach and all the wonderful rocks we had just climbed on. We swam around for about an hour, Devin taught us how to make a gun sound underwater and we perfected our whale and seal noises. Devin and James kept doing handstands into the waves and the Korean lifeguards died laughing every time their white thighs were exposed. After swallowing more than my fair share of sea water, my short stature could not jump over the waves, we headed back to the tent to pick up a sleeping Jesa. We walked up to the lookout point next to the beach and watched the sun set on the ocean and the waves crash on the mermaid statue sitting on the rocks below us. It was a pretty picture perfect evening. After the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the moon made its debut we headed back to the tent for a little relaxation. We laid in the tent debating all things political, religious, and social and laughed and chatted and made fun of James Gulley. Eventually we headed back to the beach around ten where we discovered they were selling fireworks and James bought us sparklers and a small box of fireworks. The wind was really blowing so after about fifteen minutes of working with the lighters and trying to make a human shield we got the sparklers lit. We ran around down by the ocean and the boys took turns trying to pick us up and throw us in, luckily they were unsuccessful. The tide had gone back out and our mermaid from earlier was on top of rocks and away from the water so we climbed up to it and relaxed in the sea breeze. We lost James for a while as we were watching Koreans make a heart out of sparklers and gave us some for free. Finally we found him back at the tent and we decided to call it a night. We woke up the next morning to pouring rain; we packed up the tent and caught the 8:10 bus back to Jeon ju. We then found a bus back to Daegu and got home around 2:30, I didn’t get much sleep the night before it was hot and uncomfortable so I was fast asleep for both buses only to be informed that I missed our most beautiful bus ride ever, of course. We dropped our stuff off and headed back downtown to make our final purchases then walked to the market for one last visit and back to the train station so the boys could buy plastic soju bottles to pack in their carry on luggage. Sunday night we watched the Hangover and started some of our packing. It was a fantastic last weekend in South Korea full of laughter and a lot of “lasts.” I cannot believe I will be home and back in classes in less than a week. I am very sad to be leaving Korea, but very excited to return home to see everyone. I will hopefully send out one last email to share my last week of camp and let you know I made it back to Iowa safe and sound.
Kicking and screaming the whole way home!
Elizabeth
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
몰몬교이 세상을 구한다
The life of a camp counselor is tiring yet rewarding. This week in camp was ocean week and children go bananas for anything that can be related to spongebob. That’s how my kids tell time, “Miss Smartie how many spongebob episodes till we go to the pool?” each being fifteen minutes I respond accordingly. My club this week is Fishy Suspicion Science club, I made up the title all by myself, and I would say it has been fairly successful. I have twenty kids in my club, and I am generally alone, so that can present a slight problem. Like I mentioned last week our numbers skyrocketed and they have yet to fall back. Monday was by far the worst camp day I have ever experience, behavior related. My group of 19 small grouper refused to follow any directions, clean up, listen, it was awful. After losing my voice and having spent a large part of the day lecturing and yelling, it was a relief for Mr. Taffy to come in from swim lesson and take over the yelling. In club we learned about coral reefs and I created a long paint by numbers on construction paper and watched them fight over painting it. That afternoon in rotating activities I was in charge of making goo, worst decision ever. They have made it before in small group and it was my turn, unfortunately they lost the recipe so I was stuck experimenting and figuring out the correct combination. The first two groups were a messy failure, glue and water everywhere on the table and by group three it was turning out a little better. Needless to say I was ready to peace out by 4:30 and happy to collapse on my hotel bed.
Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly uneventful, swimming and bowling. On Wednesday in clubs we created paper maché turtle eggs by covering water balloon balloons. On Wednesday we used items from around the room to create turtle shell nest to try to protect them from attacking birds. That night Jesa, James, and I went to Sosong lake to rent swan paddle boats and float around. Jesa and James did the paddling and I did the sleeping in the back. The lake wasn’t too big so we only paddled around for about an hour before heading back.
Thursday’s field trip day was crazy. We took the kids to Busan aquarium with about fifty thousand other Koreans. After a two hour bus ride of trying to keep kids happy and not wetting their pants or throwing up it was frustrating to see how many people were there that we had to keep our kids separate from. It was pretty fun though to watch the kids get excited about the fish, I generally brought up the back end holding hands with Kalisha and Keyona and I would read the plaques to them and they would repeat all the fish names. We went to a 3-D movie that moved; basically it was rows of chairs on a platform that shook as we watched parts of happy feet in Korean. That night we got pizza in James room and enjoyed watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Friday was a long day, the longest camp day I have ever endured. The kids were high on something and completely crazy. We had a rough morning and when Mr. Taffy came into a silent room at lunch his first words were what have you kids done to Miss Smartie. The air conditioning was broken so everyone was sweaty, crabby, and not following directions. In the afternoon we went over to the teen center where the air conditioning was fully blowing and we let the kids watch movies and play games. Kristine, our project coordinator, came down for one last site visit. We all went out to dinner around seven; Jesa and I just ordered rice so we could get Baskin Robbins after. After ice cream and a little down town perusing we were joined by Amanda, Emily, and two other Yongson girls who were staying with us Friday night on their way down to Busan. We took them to Dr. Fish where they got their dead skin eaten and we hung out talking. We headed back to our rooms and stayed up talking and watching television.
Saturday we woke up early and met up in the lobby at seven o’clock sharp. We walked to the subway station in the blazing, morning heat. After working up a good sweat on the fifteen minute walk we bought our 1,100 Won subway ticket and headed to Seobu station where Mr. Kim had told us there would be a direct bus to Jiri-san national park, the mother of all Korean national parks. Unfortunately he is a dirty liar and this imaginary bus was nowhere to be found. At this point James was getting a little antsy, he does not like to stray from the plan at all and wing it, as Devin and I were hustling to find a solution. We decided to taxi over to DongDaegu train station where there are two bus terminals and try our luck there, failure again. The decision was made to travel to Daejeon, a two hour bus ride, and then bus to a different national park that was close by. We boarded and took an uncomfortable nap in the very back row of the bus. Daejeon is the sixth largest city in South Korea, but it appeared larger. The bus terminal was under construction so we were dropped off in a gas station. This really threw us off and we wandered the streets, stopping in the Korean Tourist Hotel which was no help and several other establishments, I stepped into a family mart and asked the lovely lady behind the cash register for help. She pulled out a big bus guide and told us to take bus number 105 for twelve stops then transfer to bus 107. This sounded awfully complicated so we decided to wander a little further up the road first where our prayers were answered with a God-send. Mormons. I spotted them in their button up short sleeve shirt, pants, belts, black shoes, nametags, side backs, and book of Mormon under their arm. They approached us with a friendly greeting and started talking to us about where we were from, what we were doing, if we had found Jesus, I felt like I was back in the states. They were on their two year mission in Korea, loving it, before they went back to school in Utah for college. They walked us down the street to the hidden bus station then when there weren’t any buses, they put us in a cab to bus number 107 so we could get on without getting lost on 105. When Elder Anderson told us we would have to take the city buses, I responded oh ya the 105 to the 107 and he was shocked and believed me to be a bus specialist when really it was all from the kind woman in the family mart. It was hard to part with our new Mormon friends, Elder Anderson gave his card to Jesa to catch up sometime. As we got in the taxi and headed off Devin asked who those Jews were and we all had a good chuckle at his stupidity. We got on bus 107 and endured the hour ride to Gyeryong-san National park. We arrived around one and immediately set off in search of the trail. It was a glorious day, it was a little cloudy and cool, probably around 80, but don’t worry I still sweated through my shirt and backpack. The trail was about 4 km to the peak and once again we were walking on boulder stairs and a boulder trail, I don’t know if I could ever grow accustomed to their cruel steep inclines. The boys took off and Jesa and I enjoyed our leisurely pace. This was our first clear day of hiking where the mountains weren’t covered in mist and clouds so the views were absolutely breathtaking. We came to an observation deck about halfway up and got our first glimpse of the peaks and the rocky outcrops jutting above the trees. The rocks were fairly slick, lots of streams and such around, so the last km was a rough one. I slipped and smacked my camera against a rock, thankfully I had invested in lens protectors and only the cover shattered not the actual lens. Finally we made it to the top and nothing else mattered. It was very worth it. We took lots of pictures and looked over the ridge line that lead to the second peak, it was too late for us to hike it ourselves but it was something to look at and watch the other Koreas do. After an hour of time well wasted we decided to make our decent. My small feet led the hop down the slick mountain, I fell twice, but finally we were back at the bus stop around seven pm. After indulging in a grape Popsicle, probably the best Popsicle I have ever in my life tasted, we boarded the bus and found the KTX train station back to Daegu. We hung out in the station for about an hour, eating and turning into ice cubes sitting next to the huge air conditioner. We had a family car on the way back and we got into a ridiculous argument that left the fifty minute train ride back silent. That night James, Jesa, and I watched most of wedding crashers and were asleep around 11:15.
Sunday morning I woke up around 6:40 to go with James to the base club house. He had signed up to play golf at 7:26 with a group and was nervous to go alone. I walked him over and waited with him to T-off, he tried to explain the many rule of golf to me as we waited, no compredo still. I headed back to the hotel and got dressed for church and headed off to mass where I sat by my camper Jonathon and around a few other campers. After mass I hung out, took a nap waiting for Jesa to get back from church and James to finish golfing. James was in such a good mood after his great game that he took Jesa and me out for brunch, his treat at the Evergreen. It was delicious. After lunch we met up with Devin and the four of us headed out for a day of shopping. We went down town first and split up boys and girls, Jesa and I bought some typical Korean t-shirts and socks. Koreans are crazy about socks and they have crazy designs and are very cheap, I have purchased too many socks. We took the subway from down town to Seomun Market, the market I have visited twice previously. We split up and conquered the market. I got all my siblings their gifts and another purse for myself, whoops! I had some spare time after shopping to browse the food section and I found the live animal aisle. There are cages, and no cages, of chickens, ducks, rabbits, pheasants, and puppies! You would think you were in a pet store aisle not meat aisle, oh and in one freezer section there was a skinned dog head, I am getting closer to my dog eating goal. After the market we taxied back and Jesa and I stopped off at the bootleg DVD store before calling it a day, you can’t not go to Korea, where you get five illegal movies for 20,000 won, and not buy them, trust me! That night we watched clash of the titans, one of Jesa’s purchases and I was asleep by 9:30!
All in all I would call this weekend a success, I feel very comfortable here in Korea and I cannot believe how my time is ending so quickly! Hopefully my camp kids shape up so I am not constantly losing my voice, but I still know the last day will be a tearful one! I miss you and look forward to sending you a report next week about my final weekend vacation in Korea!!
All my new found Asian love,
Elizabeth
Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly uneventful, swimming and bowling. On Wednesday in clubs we created paper maché turtle eggs by covering water balloon balloons. On Wednesday we used items from around the room to create turtle shell nest to try to protect them from attacking birds. That night Jesa, James, and I went to Sosong lake to rent swan paddle boats and float around. Jesa and James did the paddling and I did the sleeping in the back. The lake wasn’t too big so we only paddled around for about an hour before heading back.
Thursday’s field trip day was crazy. We took the kids to Busan aquarium with about fifty thousand other Koreans. After a two hour bus ride of trying to keep kids happy and not wetting their pants or throwing up it was frustrating to see how many people were there that we had to keep our kids separate from. It was pretty fun though to watch the kids get excited about the fish, I generally brought up the back end holding hands with Kalisha and Keyona and I would read the plaques to them and they would repeat all the fish names. We went to a 3-D movie that moved; basically it was rows of chairs on a platform that shook as we watched parts of happy feet in Korean. That night we got pizza in James room and enjoyed watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Friday was a long day, the longest camp day I have ever endured. The kids were high on something and completely crazy. We had a rough morning and when Mr. Taffy came into a silent room at lunch his first words were what have you kids done to Miss Smartie. The air conditioning was broken so everyone was sweaty, crabby, and not following directions. In the afternoon we went over to the teen center where the air conditioning was fully blowing and we let the kids watch movies and play games. Kristine, our project coordinator, came down for one last site visit. We all went out to dinner around seven; Jesa and I just ordered rice so we could get Baskin Robbins after. After ice cream and a little down town perusing we were joined by Amanda, Emily, and two other Yongson girls who were staying with us Friday night on their way down to Busan. We took them to Dr. Fish where they got their dead skin eaten and we hung out talking. We headed back to our rooms and stayed up talking and watching television.
Saturday we woke up early and met up in the lobby at seven o’clock sharp. We walked to the subway station in the blazing, morning heat. After working up a good sweat on the fifteen minute walk we bought our 1,100 Won subway ticket and headed to Seobu station where Mr. Kim had told us there would be a direct bus to Jiri-san national park, the mother of all Korean national parks. Unfortunately he is a dirty liar and this imaginary bus was nowhere to be found. At this point James was getting a little antsy, he does not like to stray from the plan at all and wing it, as Devin and I were hustling to find a solution. We decided to taxi over to DongDaegu train station where there are two bus terminals and try our luck there, failure again. The decision was made to travel to Daejeon, a two hour bus ride, and then bus to a different national park that was close by. We boarded and took an uncomfortable nap in the very back row of the bus. Daejeon is the sixth largest city in South Korea, but it appeared larger. The bus terminal was under construction so we were dropped off in a gas station. This really threw us off and we wandered the streets, stopping in the Korean Tourist Hotel which was no help and several other establishments, I stepped into a family mart and asked the lovely lady behind the cash register for help. She pulled out a big bus guide and told us to take bus number 105 for twelve stops then transfer to bus 107. This sounded awfully complicated so we decided to wander a little further up the road first where our prayers were answered with a God-send. Mormons. I spotted them in their button up short sleeve shirt, pants, belts, black shoes, nametags, side backs, and book of Mormon under their arm. They approached us with a friendly greeting and started talking to us about where we were from, what we were doing, if we had found Jesus, I felt like I was back in the states. They were on their two year mission in Korea, loving it, before they went back to school in Utah for college. They walked us down the street to the hidden bus station then when there weren’t any buses, they put us in a cab to bus number 107 so we could get on without getting lost on 105. When Elder Anderson told us we would have to take the city buses, I responded oh ya the 105 to the 107 and he was shocked and believed me to be a bus specialist when really it was all from the kind woman in the family mart. It was hard to part with our new Mormon friends, Elder Anderson gave his card to Jesa to catch up sometime. As we got in the taxi and headed off Devin asked who those Jews were and we all had a good chuckle at his stupidity. We got on bus 107 and endured the hour ride to Gyeryong-san National park. We arrived around one and immediately set off in search of the trail. It was a glorious day, it was a little cloudy and cool, probably around 80, but don’t worry I still sweated through my shirt and backpack. The trail was about 4 km to the peak and once again we were walking on boulder stairs and a boulder trail, I don’t know if I could ever grow accustomed to their cruel steep inclines. The boys took off and Jesa and I enjoyed our leisurely pace. This was our first clear day of hiking where the mountains weren’t covered in mist and clouds so the views were absolutely breathtaking. We came to an observation deck about halfway up and got our first glimpse of the peaks and the rocky outcrops jutting above the trees. The rocks were fairly slick, lots of streams and such around, so the last km was a rough one. I slipped and smacked my camera against a rock, thankfully I had invested in lens protectors and only the cover shattered not the actual lens. Finally we made it to the top and nothing else mattered. It was very worth it. We took lots of pictures and looked over the ridge line that lead to the second peak, it was too late for us to hike it ourselves but it was something to look at and watch the other Koreas do. After an hour of time well wasted we decided to make our decent. My small feet led the hop down the slick mountain, I fell twice, but finally we were back at the bus stop around seven pm. After indulging in a grape Popsicle, probably the best Popsicle I have ever in my life tasted, we boarded the bus and found the KTX train station back to Daegu. We hung out in the station for about an hour, eating and turning into ice cubes sitting next to the huge air conditioner. We had a family car on the way back and we got into a ridiculous argument that left the fifty minute train ride back silent. That night James, Jesa, and I watched most of wedding crashers and were asleep around 11:15.
Sunday morning I woke up around 6:40 to go with James to the base club house. He had signed up to play golf at 7:26 with a group and was nervous to go alone. I walked him over and waited with him to T-off, he tried to explain the many rule of golf to me as we waited, no compredo still. I headed back to the hotel and got dressed for church and headed off to mass where I sat by my camper Jonathon and around a few other campers. After mass I hung out, took a nap waiting for Jesa to get back from church and James to finish golfing. James was in such a good mood after his great game that he took Jesa and me out for brunch, his treat at the Evergreen. It was delicious. After lunch we met up with Devin and the four of us headed out for a day of shopping. We went down town first and split up boys and girls, Jesa and I bought some typical Korean t-shirts and socks. Koreans are crazy about socks and they have crazy designs and are very cheap, I have purchased too many socks. We took the subway from down town to Seomun Market, the market I have visited twice previously. We split up and conquered the market. I got all my siblings their gifts and another purse for myself, whoops! I had some spare time after shopping to browse the food section and I found the live animal aisle. There are cages, and no cages, of chickens, ducks, rabbits, pheasants, and puppies! You would think you were in a pet store aisle not meat aisle, oh and in one freezer section there was a skinned dog head, I am getting closer to my dog eating goal. After the market we taxied back and Jesa and I stopped off at the bootleg DVD store before calling it a day, you can’t not go to Korea, where you get five illegal movies for 20,000 won, and not buy them, trust me! That night we watched clash of the titans, one of Jesa’s purchases and I was asleep by 9:30!
All in all I would call this weekend a success, I feel very comfortable here in Korea and I cannot believe how my time is ending so quickly! Hopefully my camp kids shape up so I am not constantly losing my voice, but I still know the last day will be a tearful one! I miss you and look forward to sending you a report next week about my final weekend vacation in Korea!!
All my new found Asian love,
Elizabeth
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
시간 때 재미 날아!
My, my, my, what a week it has been since we last spoke. This was a Crazy week at camp, and I mean crazy. Our capacity, maximum capacity, is around 56 kids and we well exceeded that all week. We had about fifteen new Korean kids this week, school just let out and rich parents pay a hefty price to get their kids in an American camp program. Monday was the wildest day, we were given no warning about the amount of kids to come and were bombarded about fifteen minutes before camp started with the realization that there were about fifteen extra kids, a mix of Koreans and Americans, apparently we are doing a good job and word of camp is spreading as many parents try to sign up their kids. We had to switch around small groups to adjust to the size. My small group is generally 12-16 kinders, changing daily, in a room with a fire capacity of 18 children. This week I have had a constant 20 campers a day in the same room. I know have all the kinders and about half the first graders, the spawn of Satan half. Normally in small group time in the morning we go around and share something individually, then learn six new words, then do a coloring art project. When you have 20 kids in the room you can’t have individual time and expect the other nineteen to sit quietly and listen. The coloring activity went decently but the older kids kept saying it was for babies and had stinky attitudes. Everyone was just testing their boundaries on Monday since the routine was basically shot and we did a lot of sitting quietly and I was without a voice by the end of the day from shouting. Lunch was a disaster. Normally it is hard enough to get the kinders quiet and fed, but we had no extra room and were just pulling chairs up to tables and scrunching chatting kids. My camp this week is musical theater camp, basically my sanctuary from the craziness. We have been singing Disney songs and the kids get really into it. Two in particular, brother and sister, Shyana and Jerrell sing their hearts outs, eyes closed, hand motions; it takes all I have to not laugh. I also taught them the doe a deer a female deer song from sound of music which they sing all the time like opera singers. Monday afternoon rotating activities were also stressful because I was in charge of painting and fifteen kids painting isn’t hard, 20 each rotation is. I had paint everywhere on my uniform, which is about normal for any paint activity. Monday night was filled with programming for our last few weeks of camp and getting into a heated, ugly debate about the rock cycle.
Tuesday was a better day, thank goodness, still rough though. The kids realized the way small group would be this week and have accepted it more or less. In musical theater camp we continued to sing from the nine songs I printed out lyrics for. I had all the song lyrics in stapled packets and as we sang I had them go to the back table and put a smiley face next to three songs they would like to perform on Friday in Camp A presents. I thought they would put simple little smiley faces, but to my delight I noticed when I picked up the paper and tallied the marks they had intricate, unique faces with hair styles and it was really cool to see their inventiveness without specific instructions. That afternoon we went to the pool and enjoyed lots of fun times swimming and having them hang on me. I probably hear my name 15 times a minute, miss smartie wanna watch me float, miss smartie dunk me to the bottom, miss smartie how long can I hold my breath, miss smartie watch this, miss smartie will you pick me up, miss smartie watch me swim, stand there miss smartie and I’ll swim to you. I’m constantly moving in a circle applauding small swimming accomplishments and pretending to be interested in how long they can hold their breath. Closing was fun, swimming tires them out so when it’s time to sit in a circle and sing songs I put my legs out straight in front of me and four kids will be asleep on my thighs by the end. After work Tuesday night I convinced Jesa to skip our work out and instead go for a long walk off post down by the river. We walked about fifteen minutes to find the river we taxi past all the time, we walked and talked and jogged for about two and half hours enjoying the Koreans and fountains and amazing environment. We got slightly lost and had to do a bit of wandering to find base. We often get to chatting and don’t realize how far we have gone. On our way back we walked through a small forest grove around the sidewalk between the main road and the river. The cicadas were so plentiful and loud that we literally couldn’t hear each other talking, they were deafening. We would look at the trees and they were covered with exoskeletons and living cicadas climbing up and down the trees, in my opinion it was one of my favorite Korea experiences. I have never heard them so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else, or seen so many up close with their claws and wings.
Wednesday was a fun day at camp. We practiced very hard in musical theater camp and we were trapped inside due to rain for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon we went bowling and I again sat in the lane with a bunch of first grade boys and Jirah and Kalisha. We again played crack the egg and tickle monster while they bowled around a 60. Wednesday night one of our campers families, Dawson, invited us over for dinner. We enjoyed a delicious steak, cuscus, Asian pear, salad, desert home cooked meal that my mouth was salivating over with delight. They were the cutest married couple ever and had been all over the world. Their living room was littered with trinkets from far off lands and she had the most incredible stories to share.
Thursday was a long exhausting day, field trip day. We loaded the buses bright and early, eight thirty, Devin and I with our 18 kids, 57 total kids that day. The bus had one small TV screen in the front and we decided to play the lion king. First problem, the kids sitting in the window seats were too short to see above the seats in front of them, thus we entered into a tear fest for the first twenty minutes. The bus ride was our longest one yet, two hours, and of course we had to make an emergency bathroom break. One of my little trouble makers Sammy, who happened to be sitting next to me, was crying because he had to use the restroom so bad and the bus driver took his sweet time getting there. After our break we reloaded and about ten minutes into the ride Sammy throws up, luckily I see it coming and dump out an old ziplock with toys in it to catch his puke. I thought we were in the clear until the bag of vomit began seeping and leaking all over my hands and down one leg, I almost lost it. After cleaning up and rubbing his head, he puked up the rest of his stomach contents, this time in a sealed bag about five minutes later. We finally arrived in Tongdo Fantasia amusement park. We rode the carousal, balloons, some other circle ride, and mini rollercoaster. We attended a 3-D dinosaur show which was hysterical in his awfulness. These small terrible glasses made me sick so I watched without. The entire movie was about a dinosaur who’s egg was beamed up onto a spaceship so he has to save it from the alien robot dinosaurs. The whole thing was without any dialogue and it contained more sound effects than every action movie I have ever seen put together. When he blinked there was a sound effect. After a tiring bus ride back, I sat next to Keyona who was hyper on life for an hour before crashing hard, we left work and Devin, James and I went out to dinner at some BBQ chicken place. They had the spiciest wings available and cried openly at the dinner table, why would you want to eat something that physically causes you pain. After dinner we all piled into James room, Jesa included to watch thank you for smoking, which was pretty funny.
Friday was a generally good day at camp. We had Camp A presents and the Musical theater camp had their big performance. You should have seen the kids freak out in the hour before club time, the pressure of the performance must have been getting to them because I had four different kids crying in the separate corners. The day dragged on and I anxiously waited four thirty, when cream the counselor would be over and I would be free at last, at least for two days. After work Jesa and I decided to spend some quality time together and go downtown for some shopping while the boys headed to a baseball game with a staff member. This girl time was much needed. We stopped in Baskin Robbins and enjoyed the taste of home. We then spent too much time and too much money shopping the streets of Daegu, trying to find the best deals and think of gift ideas. We are also trying to Korean ourselves up before leaving the country so we are desperately trying to copy the dress of one of our coworkers Miss Moon with little success. We returned enjoyed a relaxing night of staying up late, chatting, watching a movie, and braiding hair.
The next morning came very early and I was not excited to hear the 7 am alarm chime. We met up with the boys and headed for the bus stop where we caught the 8:30 hour long bus to Gyeong ju. Gyeong ju is the historical tourist attraction of South Korea. It has a bunch of history and artifacts from the Silla period and we were looking forward to a traditional, educational weekend. We discovered that none of us really get along till after two pm so the morning was argument after argument and very tension filled, but that won’t bring me down. Our first stopped were the Royal mound tombs. We walked for about ten minutes and were surrounded by grassy hills, right between buildings and next to gas stations. These hills were old burial mounds during the Silla dynasty and have been excavated to reveal some of the nation’s most prized national treasures. We found a small park, Daeneungwon, and spent time wandering around the mounds, lotus ponds, and taking pictures of the many dragon flies. Next we headed back to the bus stations, after failing at figuring out the bus schedule, to ask the tourist information desk how to get to Bulguk-san temple. We were overly confident with our transportation skills coming into this weekend and karma several times spit in our face and made us problem solve and wait patiently. After finding the bus and boarding we enjoyed a short bus ride to the temple. The temple was incredible and I am so glad we were able to find it. This temple is the best known in all Korea and we were able to spend a few relaxing hours in it. Oh I also completely forgot to mention that this was the hottest day I have ever experience in South Korea. There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was beating down on us in this 100+ weather. So obviously we were shade seekers and wandered around the lotus pond and shadows of the temples. We were asked to pose with Korean military men in a picture, and took a picture with our camera too. We found a ton of pagodas, small rocks stacked on top of each other to make a tower, behind a tower and enjoyed seeing their different shapes and stacking strategies. We decided to next head out to the coast and see the Underwater Tomb of King Munmu. We have heard so much about this tomb that we figured it was a must see, people have said you have to get there at low tide to see it and it’s so beautiful so we were determined. We sat at a bus stop for an hour, we were seeking bus 150 and we sat and watched bus 100 pass by 3 times and bus 10 taunt us 5 times. Eventually an impatient Devin decided we should get on bus 100, heading in the direction of the coast and work with what we get. So we bused and got off in a strange town on the coast, north of where we wanted to be. There were tents everywhere, Korean camping is very weird and different, and we began our search for a connecting bus down to the tombs. After walking in one direction, turning around and walking back, and looking confused I popped into a convenient store to ask the shop owner directions to the tombs. He said one block, said ten minutes, and pointed straight. We wandered and he came huffing and puffing after us pointing that we had traveled too far. We boarded a questionable bus that rolled in right at the ten minute mark and it fortunately took us right to the tombs. We got off the bus and were instantly disappointed. Our two hours of problem solving and patient waiting had gotten us to a pebble beach and a small rock formation off the coast, where supposedly, possibly his ashes remained. After a good laugh we ouched and oohhed our way across the pebbles to the water. We spent a good our rock collecting, everything was covered in water and smooth like it had just gotten out of a rock tumbler and they were made up of magnificent colors. Obviously I brought home around four handfuls. We met a tall, skinny, red headed, British boy that was just traveling around South Korea alone for two months. I enjoyed his accent, especially when talking about “contraband activities.” Finally it was leaving time and we were all in high hopes that the buses would be much easier to figure out. We found the stop and waited 45 minutes for the fabled bus 150 to pull up. The bus took us back to the bus station and we bused back to Daegu. On our way back to our hotel we stopped at a rest and hof and spent the rest of the evening chatting and winding down. All in all it was a relaxing, spectacular, hot, great day.
Sunday morning I woke up bright and early to hit up church before moving onto our festivities. We decided to head out to Busan, beach, for potentially our last ocean excursion. It was another hot day and busan is just a 7000 won hour and a half train ride and 30 minute subway ride away. We played Euker on the train down, stressful as always. James and I vs. Devin and Jesa, and the boys don’t like when you lose. The subway was packed which was clue enough for how the beach would be. If you will recall back to the first time we visited Busan it rained the entire time and we were four of 75 people on the beach. Take that number and add about three zeros to the end and that is still less people than those on the beach. All you could see were people laying out under rows and rows of umbrellas and people stretching down the beach playing in the ocean as far as you could see. We were luckily able to find a small patch of sand to lay our towels on. Jesa sunned and read while the boys and I went out to play in the huge crashing waves. They yelled their catch phrase, como se dice, and we drank our fair share of sea water. After about three hours of playing on the beach and laying in the sun it was time to head home. We got back on the long subway ride and grabbed some burger king before boarding our train home. Unfortunately we were all in separate cars on the way back but we were able to relax and read alone. That night back in our hotel we hung out and prepared for the next week of camp, the weekend was very refreshing and relaxing and exactly what the doctor ordered. I can’t believe I only have three more weeks left in this beautiful country, poo poo.
Miss you,
Elizabeth
Tuesday was a better day, thank goodness, still rough though. The kids realized the way small group would be this week and have accepted it more or less. In musical theater camp we continued to sing from the nine songs I printed out lyrics for. I had all the song lyrics in stapled packets and as we sang I had them go to the back table and put a smiley face next to three songs they would like to perform on Friday in Camp A presents. I thought they would put simple little smiley faces, but to my delight I noticed when I picked up the paper and tallied the marks they had intricate, unique faces with hair styles and it was really cool to see their inventiveness without specific instructions. That afternoon we went to the pool and enjoyed lots of fun times swimming and having them hang on me. I probably hear my name 15 times a minute, miss smartie wanna watch me float, miss smartie dunk me to the bottom, miss smartie how long can I hold my breath, miss smartie watch this, miss smartie will you pick me up, miss smartie watch me swim, stand there miss smartie and I’ll swim to you. I’m constantly moving in a circle applauding small swimming accomplishments and pretending to be interested in how long they can hold their breath. Closing was fun, swimming tires them out so when it’s time to sit in a circle and sing songs I put my legs out straight in front of me and four kids will be asleep on my thighs by the end. After work Tuesday night I convinced Jesa to skip our work out and instead go for a long walk off post down by the river. We walked about fifteen minutes to find the river we taxi past all the time, we walked and talked and jogged for about two and half hours enjoying the Koreans and fountains and amazing environment. We got slightly lost and had to do a bit of wandering to find base. We often get to chatting and don’t realize how far we have gone. On our way back we walked through a small forest grove around the sidewalk between the main road and the river. The cicadas were so plentiful and loud that we literally couldn’t hear each other talking, they were deafening. We would look at the trees and they were covered with exoskeletons and living cicadas climbing up and down the trees, in my opinion it was one of my favorite Korea experiences. I have never heard them so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else, or seen so many up close with their claws and wings.
Wednesday was a fun day at camp. We practiced very hard in musical theater camp and we were trapped inside due to rain for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon we went bowling and I again sat in the lane with a bunch of first grade boys and Jirah and Kalisha. We again played crack the egg and tickle monster while they bowled around a 60. Wednesday night one of our campers families, Dawson, invited us over for dinner. We enjoyed a delicious steak, cuscus, Asian pear, salad, desert home cooked meal that my mouth was salivating over with delight. They were the cutest married couple ever and had been all over the world. Their living room was littered with trinkets from far off lands and she had the most incredible stories to share.
Thursday was a long exhausting day, field trip day. We loaded the buses bright and early, eight thirty, Devin and I with our 18 kids, 57 total kids that day. The bus had one small TV screen in the front and we decided to play the lion king. First problem, the kids sitting in the window seats were too short to see above the seats in front of them, thus we entered into a tear fest for the first twenty minutes. The bus ride was our longest one yet, two hours, and of course we had to make an emergency bathroom break. One of my little trouble makers Sammy, who happened to be sitting next to me, was crying because he had to use the restroom so bad and the bus driver took his sweet time getting there. After our break we reloaded and about ten minutes into the ride Sammy throws up, luckily I see it coming and dump out an old ziplock with toys in it to catch his puke. I thought we were in the clear until the bag of vomit began seeping and leaking all over my hands and down one leg, I almost lost it. After cleaning up and rubbing his head, he puked up the rest of his stomach contents, this time in a sealed bag about five minutes later. We finally arrived in Tongdo Fantasia amusement park. We rode the carousal, balloons, some other circle ride, and mini rollercoaster. We attended a 3-D dinosaur show which was hysterical in his awfulness. These small terrible glasses made me sick so I watched without. The entire movie was about a dinosaur who’s egg was beamed up onto a spaceship so he has to save it from the alien robot dinosaurs. The whole thing was without any dialogue and it contained more sound effects than every action movie I have ever seen put together. When he blinked there was a sound effect. After a tiring bus ride back, I sat next to Keyona who was hyper on life for an hour before crashing hard, we left work and Devin, James and I went out to dinner at some BBQ chicken place. They had the spiciest wings available and cried openly at the dinner table, why would you want to eat something that physically causes you pain. After dinner we all piled into James room, Jesa included to watch thank you for smoking, which was pretty funny.
Friday was a generally good day at camp. We had Camp A presents and the Musical theater camp had their big performance. You should have seen the kids freak out in the hour before club time, the pressure of the performance must have been getting to them because I had four different kids crying in the separate corners. The day dragged on and I anxiously waited four thirty, when cream the counselor would be over and I would be free at last, at least for two days. After work Jesa and I decided to spend some quality time together and go downtown for some shopping while the boys headed to a baseball game with a staff member. This girl time was much needed. We stopped in Baskin Robbins and enjoyed the taste of home. We then spent too much time and too much money shopping the streets of Daegu, trying to find the best deals and think of gift ideas. We are also trying to Korean ourselves up before leaving the country so we are desperately trying to copy the dress of one of our coworkers Miss Moon with little success. We returned enjoyed a relaxing night of staying up late, chatting, watching a movie, and braiding hair.
The next morning came very early and I was not excited to hear the 7 am alarm chime. We met up with the boys and headed for the bus stop where we caught the 8:30 hour long bus to Gyeong ju. Gyeong ju is the historical tourist attraction of South Korea. It has a bunch of history and artifacts from the Silla period and we were looking forward to a traditional, educational weekend. We discovered that none of us really get along till after two pm so the morning was argument after argument and very tension filled, but that won’t bring me down. Our first stopped were the Royal mound tombs. We walked for about ten minutes and were surrounded by grassy hills, right between buildings and next to gas stations. These hills were old burial mounds during the Silla dynasty and have been excavated to reveal some of the nation’s most prized national treasures. We found a small park, Daeneungwon, and spent time wandering around the mounds, lotus ponds, and taking pictures of the many dragon flies. Next we headed back to the bus stations, after failing at figuring out the bus schedule, to ask the tourist information desk how to get to Bulguk-san temple. We were overly confident with our transportation skills coming into this weekend and karma several times spit in our face and made us problem solve and wait patiently. After finding the bus and boarding we enjoyed a short bus ride to the temple. The temple was incredible and I am so glad we were able to find it. This temple is the best known in all Korea and we were able to spend a few relaxing hours in it. Oh I also completely forgot to mention that this was the hottest day I have ever experience in South Korea. There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was beating down on us in this 100+ weather. So obviously we were shade seekers and wandered around the lotus pond and shadows of the temples. We were asked to pose with Korean military men in a picture, and took a picture with our camera too. We found a ton of pagodas, small rocks stacked on top of each other to make a tower, behind a tower and enjoyed seeing their different shapes and stacking strategies. We decided to next head out to the coast and see the Underwater Tomb of King Munmu. We have heard so much about this tomb that we figured it was a must see, people have said you have to get there at low tide to see it and it’s so beautiful so we were determined. We sat at a bus stop for an hour, we were seeking bus 150 and we sat and watched bus 100 pass by 3 times and bus 10 taunt us 5 times. Eventually an impatient Devin decided we should get on bus 100, heading in the direction of the coast and work with what we get. So we bused and got off in a strange town on the coast, north of where we wanted to be. There were tents everywhere, Korean camping is very weird and different, and we began our search for a connecting bus down to the tombs. After walking in one direction, turning around and walking back, and looking confused I popped into a convenient store to ask the shop owner directions to the tombs. He said one block, said ten minutes, and pointed straight. We wandered and he came huffing and puffing after us pointing that we had traveled too far. We boarded a questionable bus that rolled in right at the ten minute mark and it fortunately took us right to the tombs. We got off the bus and were instantly disappointed. Our two hours of problem solving and patient waiting had gotten us to a pebble beach and a small rock formation off the coast, where supposedly, possibly his ashes remained. After a good laugh we ouched and oohhed our way across the pebbles to the water. We spent a good our rock collecting, everything was covered in water and smooth like it had just gotten out of a rock tumbler and they were made up of magnificent colors. Obviously I brought home around four handfuls. We met a tall, skinny, red headed, British boy that was just traveling around South Korea alone for two months. I enjoyed his accent, especially when talking about “contraband activities.” Finally it was leaving time and we were all in high hopes that the buses would be much easier to figure out. We found the stop and waited 45 minutes for the fabled bus 150 to pull up. The bus took us back to the bus station and we bused back to Daegu. On our way back to our hotel we stopped at a rest and hof and spent the rest of the evening chatting and winding down. All in all it was a relaxing, spectacular, hot, great day.
Sunday morning I woke up bright and early to hit up church before moving onto our festivities. We decided to head out to Busan, beach, for potentially our last ocean excursion. It was another hot day and busan is just a 7000 won hour and a half train ride and 30 minute subway ride away. We played Euker on the train down, stressful as always. James and I vs. Devin and Jesa, and the boys don’t like when you lose. The subway was packed which was clue enough for how the beach would be. If you will recall back to the first time we visited Busan it rained the entire time and we were four of 75 people on the beach. Take that number and add about three zeros to the end and that is still less people than those on the beach. All you could see were people laying out under rows and rows of umbrellas and people stretching down the beach playing in the ocean as far as you could see. We were luckily able to find a small patch of sand to lay our towels on. Jesa sunned and read while the boys and I went out to play in the huge crashing waves. They yelled their catch phrase, como se dice, and we drank our fair share of sea water. After about three hours of playing on the beach and laying in the sun it was time to head home. We got back on the long subway ride and grabbed some burger king before boarding our train home. Unfortunately we were all in separate cars on the way back but we were able to relax and read alone. That night back in our hotel we hung out and prepared for the next week of camp, the weekend was very refreshing and relaxing and exactly what the doctor ordered. I can’t believe I only have three more weeks left in this beautiful country, poo poo.
Miss you,
Elizabeth
Monday, July 26, 2010
난 집에 가고 싶지 않아요
Eoragegan manimnida (It’s a long time since we’ve met)
So another week has flown by faster than I knew possible! I’m trying to live it up in Korea as much as I can but camp is exhausting and I find myself wanting to relax in the evening, unacceptable! So hopefully, fingers crossed I can really jam pack these next few weeks. Monday started out very average, this week’s camp theme is Viking sails and dragon tails so we have themed a lot of things around the new how to train your dragon movie and the kids love it. Monsoon season is evidently coming to a close, though we have been told like eight times now that it has started and ended so who knows, but the sun has been out and shining and the temperature is rising. We normally do an all camp activity outside around eleven o’clock where all the kids play a big game then we have free time with balls, jump ropes, Frisbees etc. but this week has been hot. You can see the heat waves more than normally rising off the field and the kids go into lunch covered in sweat. My club this week is arts and crafts club so Monday we attempted to make our own kits out of construction paper, straws, and string. It worked better than I imagined but only one kid finished his kite. I think the important part though is that it occupied the kids for about fifty minutes, success. We did rotating activities in the afternoon and my activity was suppose to be sock puppets but the socks were MIA so we settled on printing out a Viking and a separate sheet with all his clothes and armor. You colored the Viking and the clothes then glued the clothes on, like a paper doll, best activity ever. I don’t know why but the kids were very into it and practically colored silently for each forty minute rotation. Needless to say I will be making more of those for activities. Monday night we went swimming then had a long meeting where we programmed two week’s worth of camp programming and evaluations. Tuesday I made paper maché with my camp, messy but fun, and very much enjoyed swimming with the Kinders and first graders. Wednesday was hot, this week as a whole was smoldering, but Wednesday particularly was hot. I got to take the Kinders and first graders bowling which was adorable. I watched Shaquan, Judae, Sean, Alijah, Jaylan, and Haylee bowl. Between turns we played the crack the egg on your head game and try not to laugh and spiders crawling up your back. They were so well behaved and cute until Judae bowled Shaquans ball and you would have thought Judae murdered his puppy the way he was crying. The boys in that group have also taken to calling me mommy and kissing me whenever I’m not paying attention. We have to have a talk almost every day about how it’s not ok to lick or kiss Miss Smartie and she is a counselor not your mom. On Thursday we had a field trip to Camp Carroll pool, another military base about forty minutes away. They have a big outdoor swimming pool with two water slides. The kids were so much fun that day. Whenever a counselor went down the water slide the kids would chant their name and hang out down in the splash zone, especially when one of the boys went. During one of the pool breaks we went into the kiddy zone, which is basically a bunch of sprinkles and fountains to run in. The kids started singing camp songs at the top of their lungs all by themselves and it was funny to watch the older kids lead them. One of my favorite campers Alex who is only five and very small for his age needs to be held in his lifejacket whenever he’s in the pool, I was holding him for a while and he was singing camp songs in my ear as I played with other kids. We put on sunscreen at every pool break, lunch, and before we left in the morning, and everyone still got fried. My whole back and shoulders were bright red and still hurt today. On the bus ride home all the kinders, and Devin fell asleep. They were so cute passed out on each other and against the windows. Thursday night a mom took us out to dinner at TGIF which was delicious. She is the mom of one of my kinders Taygan and gave us three options, Korean, Outback, or TGIF and it was unanimous that American food should be eaten. Taygan was really cute at dinner and she brought her seven month old baby so we each got to take a turn holding baby Taylor. She had the fattest legs I have ever seen and when I was holding her and sitting next to Taygan he would rub her back and be such a good big brother. Friday was a pretty fun day at camp. Saturday was Devin’s birthday so during small group I made him a happy birthday poster and they decorated it and wrote him messages. When he came back for lunch they were lined up with the poster and so excited to show him what they had drawn. Before cream the counselor that afternoon Mr. Rick thought it would be a good idea to fill up a ton of water balloons and have the kids throw them at Devin. We all turned around thinking the kids were lining up behind the counselor they wanted to cream when suddenly they were throwing water balloons at all the counselors not just Devin. These water balloons would not break and I took several to the face that just bounced off, painful.
Friday night we headed downtown around seven and found a little restaurant to eat dinner. I have something meat, with a brown sweet sauce, and rice, it was decent. We wandered around downtown for a while till around 9:30 then headed to the movie theater to see inception. The movie was pretty good, the boys thought it was the best thing they had ever seen and Jesa slept. After we came back and packed up for mudfest the next morning. I was pleasantly surprised my siblings were on skype and I was able to see their beautiful faces for about an hour. Saturday morning we woke up very tired and met up in our room. We had gotten Devin a birthday cake and made him blow out his candles before we left for the day. He hates his birthday so there were limited things we were allowed to say and do. We trained over at 8:05 and arrived at 10:45 in Boryeong. We had planned to meet up with some Yongsan people this weekend, Kristine, Amanda, Emily, and one other girl and luckily they were on our train. They were hungry and decided to go eat while the rest of us wanted to head straight to mudfest. We arrived to a huge blue banner and about ten blow up activities covered in mud. We walked through; mouths open in amazement, and found the free lockers to put our stuff in. We brought our brightly colored, rubber rafting shoes and enjoyed running around in our swimsuits and shorts. Our first activity was the mud painting station. They had little vanities and bucket things filled with mud and paint brushes and you could paint yourself and your friends. There was tons of Korean press there that took a million pictures of all the Americans, one guy told me to hold very still and put a grasshopper on my head after I was covered in mud and took about fifty pictures. After we were covered we decided to try our luck at an obstacle course. James, Jesa, Devin and I raced through this blow up maze jumping through holes, running through mud puddles, and crawling out. Devin won every time. Next we went to the mud prison where you stand in a little cave like thing with bars and Koreans throw buckets of mud on you. Next we decided to go to the mud wrestling ring. This is where the day got temporarily sour. We were all splashing mud and tackling each other when James took a huge wad of mud to the eye, he said I did it but who really knows. He couldn’t open his eyes and refused to do anything about it for about fifteen minutes. When the pain didn’t go away I took him down to the beach where he tried to clean it out with salt water and had me picking pieces of dirt out of his eye. We were down there for like forty five minutes, I felt really bad the poor kid was crying and his eye was swelling up. Eventually I convinced him to go to the first aid station where they had a long line of eye injured people and huge syringes full of saline solution. He felt a little better after that but not a ton. I felt guilty and quiet for about the next hour but luckily after that his spirits were better and I didn’t feel guilty having fun again. We went down a huge slip in slide next. It went straight down to the beach, Jesa and I went together and enjoyed smashing into each other and rolling down. We hung out at the beach for a while after that, there were a ton of people there, a lot of tourist and it was fun swimming in the brown dirty water. We decided to do some more “mud rides” it was basically like an amusement park in that you stood in line for about thirty minutes then slid down a slide, but we didn’t mind there was mud everywhere so we would just keep recoating from the floor as we waited. We rode another slide then returned to the beach for a little more swimming. Around four we decided to be cleaning up but we wanted some pictures totally covered in mud. We got back in line for mud wrestling, covered ourselves again and took many pictures on Jesa’s very muddy underwater camera (who knows if those will turn out) and a couple on James’s digital camera. We headed to the ocean one last time to clean up then went back to the lockers to change and find a place to eat dinner. We settled on a second floor restaurant down the street from the beach and Jesa and I enjoyed the best Korean meal of our lives. We had sweet and sour pork and fried rice. It was absolutely phenomenal. We ate more Korean food at that meal than probably all our other Korean meals combined. After dinner the entire Yongsan group left for their train and Jesa, James, Devin, and I headed back to the station. Our first train left around 7:45 and we were all sitting in different cars, a first for us. Everyone was super tired and I was slightly concerned that someone would forget to get off the train. Our second train we sat family style. Devin and James had bought Soju and some Korean wine and were already pretty far gone. We played Euker again, James and me vs. Devin and Jesa, day camp vs. aquatics. James and I were victorious much to Devin and Jesa’s demise. We chit chatted and Devin and James were absolutely hysterical. We made it back to base where they decided we just had to watch Juno even though Jesa and I were tired, they made it through about a third of the movie before Jesa and I were both asleep and they left. Devin said he had a very successful birthday and thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Sunday morning I woke up around eight and headed off to mass. I sat around a bunch of my campers and they were really cute to see in their Sunday best. After mass Jesa, Devin, and I headed back to Seomun Market for a little browsing, it was hot so we only poked around for about an hour. We bought some popsicles and headed back. The afternoon was spent very lazily napping and hanging out then early to bed.
I cannot believe it is almost August and how fast my time here is winding down. I can’t wait to see everyone in less than a month.
Love,
Elizabeth
So another week has flown by faster than I knew possible! I’m trying to live it up in Korea as much as I can but camp is exhausting and I find myself wanting to relax in the evening, unacceptable! So hopefully, fingers crossed I can really jam pack these next few weeks. Monday started out very average, this week’s camp theme is Viking sails and dragon tails so we have themed a lot of things around the new how to train your dragon movie and the kids love it. Monsoon season is evidently coming to a close, though we have been told like eight times now that it has started and ended so who knows, but the sun has been out and shining and the temperature is rising. We normally do an all camp activity outside around eleven o’clock where all the kids play a big game then we have free time with balls, jump ropes, Frisbees etc. but this week has been hot. You can see the heat waves more than normally rising off the field and the kids go into lunch covered in sweat. My club this week is arts and crafts club so Monday we attempted to make our own kits out of construction paper, straws, and string. It worked better than I imagined but only one kid finished his kite. I think the important part though is that it occupied the kids for about fifty minutes, success. We did rotating activities in the afternoon and my activity was suppose to be sock puppets but the socks were MIA so we settled on printing out a Viking and a separate sheet with all his clothes and armor. You colored the Viking and the clothes then glued the clothes on, like a paper doll, best activity ever. I don’t know why but the kids were very into it and practically colored silently for each forty minute rotation. Needless to say I will be making more of those for activities. Monday night we went swimming then had a long meeting where we programmed two week’s worth of camp programming and evaluations. Tuesday I made paper maché with my camp, messy but fun, and very much enjoyed swimming with the Kinders and first graders. Wednesday was hot, this week as a whole was smoldering, but Wednesday particularly was hot. I got to take the Kinders and first graders bowling which was adorable. I watched Shaquan, Judae, Sean, Alijah, Jaylan, and Haylee bowl. Between turns we played the crack the egg on your head game and try not to laugh and spiders crawling up your back. They were so well behaved and cute until Judae bowled Shaquans ball and you would have thought Judae murdered his puppy the way he was crying. The boys in that group have also taken to calling me mommy and kissing me whenever I’m not paying attention. We have to have a talk almost every day about how it’s not ok to lick or kiss Miss Smartie and she is a counselor not your mom. On Thursday we had a field trip to Camp Carroll pool, another military base about forty minutes away. They have a big outdoor swimming pool with two water slides. The kids were so much fun that day. Whenever a counselor went down the water slide the kids would chant their name and hang out down in the splash zone, especially when one of the boys went. During one of the pool breaks we went into the kiddy zone, which is basically a bunch of sprinkles and fountains to run in. The kids started singing camp songs at the top of their lungs all by themselves and it was funny to watch the older kids lead them. One of my favorite campers Alex who is only five and very small for his age needs to be held in his lifejacket whenever he’s in the pool, I was holding him for a while and he was singing camp songs in my ear as I played with other kids. We put on sunscreen at every pool break, lunch, and before we left in the morning, and everyone still got fried. My whole back and shoulders were bright red and still hurt today. On the bus ride home all the kinders, and Devin fell asleep. They were so cute passed out on each other and against the windows. Thursday night a mom took us out to dinner at TGIF which was delicious. She is the mom of one of my kinders Taygan and gave us three options, Korean, Outback, or TGIF and it was unanimous that American food should be eaten. Taygan was really cute at dinner and she brought her seven month old baby so we each got to take a turn holding baby Taylor. She had the fattest legs I have ever seen and when I was holding her and sitting next to Taygan he would rub her back and be such a good big brother. Friday was a pretty fun day at camp. Saturday was Devin’s birthday so during small group I made him a happy birthday poster and they decorated it and wrote him messages. When he came back for lunch they were lined up with the poster and so excited to show him what they had drawn. Before cream the counselor that afternoon Mr. Rick thought it would be a good idea to fill up a ton of water balloons and have the kids throw them at Devin. We all turned around thinking the kids were lining up behind the counselor they wanted to cream when suddenly they were throwing water balloons at all the counselors not just Devin. These water balloons would not break and I took several to the face that just bounced off, painful.
Friday night we headed downtown around seven and found a little restaurant to eat dinner. I have something meat, with a brown sweet sauce, and rice, it was decent. We wandered around downtown for a while till around 9:30 then headed to the movie theater to see inception. The movie was pretty good, the boys thought it was the best thing they had ever seen and Jesa slept. After we came back and packed up for mudfest the next morning. I was pleasantly surprised my siblings were on skype and I was able to see their beautiful faces for about an hour. Saturday morning we woke up very tired and met up in our room. We had gotten Devin a birthday cake and made him blow out his candles before we left for the day. He hates his birthday so there were limited things we were allowed to say and do. We trained over at 8:05 and arrived at 10:45 in Boryeong. We had planned to meet up with some Yongsan people this weekend, Kristine, Amanda, Emily, and one other girl and luckily they were on our train. They were hungry and decided to go eat while the rest of us wanted to head straight to mudfest. We arrived to a huge blue banner and about ten blow up activities covered in mud. We walked through; mouths open in amazement, and found the free lockers to put our stuff in. We brought our brightly colored, rubber rafting shoes and enjoyed running around in our swimsuits and shorts. Our first activity was the mud painting station. They had little vanities and bucket things filled with mud and paint brushes and you could paint yourself and your friends. There was tons of Korean press there that took a million pictures of all the Americans, one guy told me to hold very still and put a grasshopper on my head after I was covered in mud and took about fifty pictures. After we were covered we decided to try our luck at an obstacle course. James, Jesa, Devin and I raced through this blow up maze jumping through holes, running through mud puddles, and crawling out. Devin won every time. Next we went to the mud prison where you stand in a little cave like thing with bars and Koreans throw buckets of mud on you. Next we decided to go to the mud wrestling ring. This is where the day got temporarily sour. We were all splashing mud and tackling each other when James took a huge wad of mud to the eye, he said I did it but who really knows. He couldn’t open his eyes and refused to do anything about it for about fifteen minutes. When the pain didn’t go away I took him down to the beach where he tried to clean it out with salt water and had me picking pieces of dirt out of his eye. We were down there for like forty five minutes, I felt really bad the poor kid was crying and his eye was swelling up. Eventually I convinced him to go to the first aid station where they had a long line of eye injured people and huge syringes full of saline solution. He felt a little better after that but not a ton. I felt guilty and quiet for about the next hour but luckily after that his spirits were better and I didn’t feel guilty having fun again. We went down a huge slip in slide next. It went straight down to the beach, Jesa and I went together and enjoyed smashing into each other and rolling down. We hung out at the beach for a while after that, there were a ton of people there, a lot of tourist and it was fun swimming in the brown dirty water. We decided to do some more “mud rides” it was basically like an amusement park in that you stood in line for about thirty minutes then slid down a slide, but we didn’t mind there was mud everywhere so we would just keep recoating from the floor as we waited. We rode another slide then returned to the beach for a little more swimming. Around four we decided to be cleaning up but we wanted some pictures totally covered in mud. We got back in line for mud wrestling, covered ourselves again and took many pictures on Jesa’s very muddy underwater camera (who knows if those will turn out) and a couple on James’s digital camera. We headed to the ocean one last time to clean up then went back to the lockers to change and find a place to eat dinner. We settled on a second floor restaurant down the street from the beach and Jesa and I enjoyed the best Korean meal of our lives. We had sweet and sour pork and fried rice. It was absolutely phenomenal. We ate more Korean food at that meal than probably all our other Korean meals combined. After dinner the entire Yongsan group left for their train and Jesa, James, Devin, and I headed back to the station. Our first train left around 7:45 and we were all sitting in different cars, a first for us. Everyone was super tired and I was slightly concerned that someone would forget to get off the train. Our second train we sat family style. Devin and James had bought Soju and some Korean wine and were already pretty far gone. We played Euker again, James and me vs. Devin and Jesa, day camp vs. aquatics. James and I were victorious much to Devin and Jesa’s demise. We chit chatted and Devin and James were absolutely hysterical. We made it back to base where they decided we just had to watch Juno even though Jesa and I were tired, they made it through about a third of the movie before Jesa and I were both asleep and they left. Devin said he had a very successful birthday and thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Sunday morning I woke up around eight and headed off to mass. I sat around a bunch of my campers and they were really cute to see in their Sunday best. After mass Jesa, Devin, and I headed back to Seomun Market for a little browsing, it was hot so we only poked around for about an hour. We bought some popsicles and headed back. The afternoon was spent very lazily napping and hanging out then early to bed.
I cannot believe it is almost August and how fast my time here is winding down. I can’t wait to see everyone in less than a month.
Love,
Elizabeth
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
행복한 HalfWay Mark 슬픈
Can you believe I am half way through my stay here in South Korea? I know I can’t! Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future and I can’t make it slow down! This week’s camp theme is Wild Things and Warm Fuzzies and I am in charge of craft camp. Monday was fun; we made comic books in my club and had fun painting our own monsters in rotating activities. That night we had a brief staff meeting, basically a meeting to postpone our meeting till Thursday, then Jesa and I watched My Sisters Keeper and cried ourselves to sleep. On Tuesday we made paper cup monsters, aka glued a mess to a Styrofoam cup. That afternoon I got to take the kinders and the first graders swimming, which is probably my very favorite part of the day. These kids are so cute playing games and holding on to you in the water. Devin’s pretty lenient about letting us wrestle around with kids and letting them hang on me. Keyona, one of the major troublemakers held onto me the whole time and laid with her head on my shoulder and was actually behaved, best hour ever. That night Devin bought us pizza for having to put up with him and Jesa and I sneakily tried to make them let us watch Kristin’s bootleg version of the new twilight movie. That failed and we ended up watching Sweeny Todd and I feel asleep about 20 minutes in. Let me just take this brief minute to tell you about my very favorite kinders. So Aniyah is a gorgeous girl who is the most mature of all the kinders, and probably my favorite. She is the sweetest thing and always wants to sit in my lap during closing. Summer is another adorable kid, actually probably the cutest child I have ever seen. She was adopted from china and her face is basically like a pug dog in that it gets all scrunched up when she smiles. Oh and all the kids do this dance move called the Jerk, basically when they jump and walk backwards at the same time but without moving, pretty complicated but summer is the best. Kalisha is Summers best friend and she is also cute with two little buck teeth and always on her best behavior. Alex is the smallest kinder boy I have ever seen. He is so small and loves to lean on people and sit in laps and whenever you say his name he just looks up and smiles. Taygan is the man, he’s the cutest mix Caucasian-Korean that I have ever seen and he loves causes little problems but then tells me that he is sorry with his little eyes that I can’t stay mad at (common problem they are all too cute.) Andre is this little black boy that is just the man, but who still likes to hold hands, he gave me a legit play-by-play of the movie toy story three today. The rest are decent kids and the three trouble makers are Sammy, Keyona, and Joycelyn they are going to be extra trouble for the rest of my time here. Wednesday we made finger puppets, a fairly boring idea but they ate it up for fifty minutes. I got to go swimming again with the 2nd-5th graders which is still fun but not as good as the kinders. There is one little boy Matthew who has ADHD among other things who likes to climb on my back and play bumper cars with other people and pick up other kids, he demands I turn and go straight. It’s fun for about 0.2 seconds. Wednesday night Jesa, Kristin, and I headed downtown to see Twilight on the big screen and ended up arriving about an hour early so I had to buy two purses to pass the time, not too shabby for 25,000 won. Thursday was a field trip day, gruesome. We went to Woobang land and kept the kinders in the kiddy section much to their dismay. “Miss Smartie I wanna ride the big roller coaster, Miss Smartie this ride is for babies, Miss Smartie it’s hot!” Oh it was an interesting day, probably my longest camp day thus far. They all got ice cream at the end of the day, just twists on a cone and we were kind of standing on a hill when one kinder, Lanea drops her ice cream and it is so hot out that the entire mass just slides, melting, all the way down the hill kids on either side watching. That night two of our campers, Summer and Caitlin, took us out to eat with a couple other staff members. We had duck, family style/cook it yourself, and enjoyed a free meal then sitting around a camp fire outside after. Friday was a really good day, the kids were well behaved and the day flew by, I didn’t even have to yell until the afternoon.
Our plan for Friday night was to head into town for a baseball game then hang out downtown for a while. Well it was raining pretty hard, James no longer wanted to go to the game but Devin wanted to prove our loyalty by sticking it out with several trash sacks, these two never agree on anything. Jesa and I decided to look up movie times for downtown while the boys walked over to the PX to get money out. Jesa and I brainstormed and decided to see if Daegu had a Dr. Fish. After much googling and searching we found one and decided to make it our destination. We met up with Kristin and the boys and told them we had a surprise for them, they were not pleased. After much badgering and threatening and a long interrogating taxi ride we arrived downtown. Now the hard part, locating our secret Dr. Fish, the directions online said it was on the same street as Gap so we were searching in the pouring rain for gap. People were getting crabby but luckily after about fifteen minutes of walking and asking about four strangers we saw the sign. It was still in Korean so they were still in the dark about our final destination. We walked into a coffee shop like room and told them our plan, all were satisfied. We ordered the self service bar and fish. The self service bar was bread and jam, delicious, sometimes the best meals are purely bread. Finally it was fishy time. We all took our shoes off and walked up to the bath area, we had to go three and two so Jesa, James, and Kristin went first while Devin and I sat to the side. You put your feet in a little tub and there are probably a hundred fish in there that eat away all the dead skin on your feet, pretty Asian if you ask me. After watching them squirm and laugh for about twenty minutes I was more than ready for my turn. It tickles so much. My little legs couldn’t reach the bottom of the tubs like Devin’s so the fish were under my feet and it was an interesting sensation. You get use to it after a while and it feels like your feet have fallen asleep or your holding them against the jets of a Jacuzzi. I really like enjoyed it and would highly recommend the Dr. Fish experience. After our thorough cleaning it was still raining so we decided to just run across the street and poke around in a few stores. Sadly the rain still hadn’t let up and Jesa wasn’t feeling 100% so she, James, and Kristin decided to call it a night. Devin and I decided to view a traditional Korean movie. We thought we would be able to decipher at least part of the movie, even if it wasn’t in English by watching and figuring out the story. False, I still have no idea what went on that whole movie. There were underground passages, a group of four friends with one mentally handicap member, people killing each other, evil villains with moustaches, it was interesting though. We returned to base and fell asleep. Jesa woke me up at seven am Saturday morning to help her get ready for her shopping trip. Miss Mary, a lady we work with at the center, had offered to take the girls on a shopping trip to Osan all day Saturday. Kristin and Jesa wanted to check out the black market purse section and headed off.
James, Devin, and I left around ten am for the subway then Seobu bus terminal to head to Gaya-San national park. After an hour bus ride we arrived right at the gate of the national park, convenient. The rain had let up and it was turning out to be a very, very humid day. Unbeknownst to us, Gaya-san is a unique national park. It house one of the three most important temples in Korea. We walked to the temple, about 1 km away and found a huge temple area with several buildings and statues. The temple is called Haein-Sa and was founded in 802 by monks. We wandered around taking pictures, James finally found the statue of the laughing Buddha he had been looking for and bought it. We continued to make our way around the compound and eventually stumbled upon the Koreana Tripitaka. We walked up these stairs into a wooden bar like room with wooden bar like windows and doors and you looked in and saw a ton of blocks carved with Korean symbols, 81,258 to be exact. It smelled wonderful, like an old library and it really was an awesome site to see. James pulled out my travel book and we read all about the blocks and learned their history. These wood printing blocks were created in the 11th century. They were created during a war and the tribes who created them thought this would inspire the Buddha to divinely intervene. These were the first set of Buddhist canon printing blocks ever, pretty sweet. After staring in awe and be baffled by what we were seeing, stored openly behind wood fences we decided to continue our hike. We found the trail around 1:30 and were greeted by two rangers curiously asking where we were going, we told them we wanted to summit the peak and they said we were very late but they would let us go anyway. They said the trail was very wet and slippery but believed we would be able to summit and return to that spot by five o’clock. We began our hike, which was gorgeous, through lush bamboo and other plants next to a raging river that was almost deafening. The trail started to get a little muddy and wet but we didn’t think too much of it and continued to trek on. After about ten minutes the trail turned into a small shallow stream and that was our trail almost the entire way up the mountain. We were covered in mud and our shoes sopping wet. The humidity really set in and we were dripping in sweat. The hike was a total of about 4.9 km to the top, not bad you would think. The first two km were pretty flat and wet but after that things changed. Up, up, up hiking up boulder stairs that were slippery.
Generally I do pretty well with the hiking keeping up with the boys and all but not in this humidity. They would call down from like an eighth of a mile up asking if I was coming and I would shout back slow but steady. (Mind you I was the first one down, because I conserved energy!) I missed having Jesa there to chat with but I did enjoy my little bit of hiking alone time and encountering friendly Koreans. I had my hair in two braided piggy tails and they loved them, stroking them and saying beautiful. Great ego boaster if you ask me. So after falsely thinking we had made it to the top oh about four times, then getting really angry when I realized we hadn’t made it we found the peak and a sea of clouds again. The wind was blowing really hard and we were walking across some smooth slick walk, a little bit frightening at times. We all felt really accomplished though when all was said and done and enjoyed a long break hanging out and trying to get a clear picture when the wind blew the clouds away. The decent wasn’t as easy as you would think. Jumping down boulder to slippery boulder gets old and is especially hard when your legs are shaking. After slip and sliding down mud, and not encountering any Koreans for about a half hour we made it back to the flat land. It started to pour so we waited it out a little in a tree canopy before heading back to town. Walking back in we bought popsicles and hand painted fans from monks. We checked out the sketchy camp grounds but ultimately decided to get on a bus for the hour long trip back to Daegu. As soon as we boarded the bus the clouds opened up to reveal blue skies, whoops too late. We arrived in Daegu muddy and hungry, well the boys; I had eaten two peanut butter sandwiches on the bus. So we decided to stop for dinner outside of base at a restaurant James had wanted to try. We ordered pork of sorts and one was marinated then cooked them ourselves. I enjoyed meat, rice, and potatoes avoiding all spicy vegetables. We returned to our rooms, showered then met up with Jesa. Devin wanted us to watch a documentary on sustainability, and we were all asleep within the first fifteen minutes only to be woken up an hour later by a very disappointed Devin.
Sunday Morning I woke up at eight and walked to nine o’clock mass on base. I saw a ton of my kids and co-workers there. After mass I hung out till Jesa was done with her service at 10:30. Once all praising was complete, Jesa, Devin, and I headed out to Mount Apsan again, the place we went on the first weekend on Sunday that is literally five minutes from base. It was a hot but beautiful day. The sun was out and beating down hard. Devin has a big macro lens and is very into taking pictures of bugs, frogs, etc. so he had recruited Jesa to be his bug herder and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her try to swat bees and dragon flies towards him. We hiked about half way up the mountain, suppose to be looking for bugs, but Jesa and I were too busy socializing. We got half way up and realized there was no need to over exert ourselves today since we had already hiked to the top before. There is a big stream that runs next to the trail so we decided we should mosey our way back down and spend a long time playing in the stream. Jesa lay in the sun while I hid in the shade, I still have a sun burn, and we dangled our legs and feet in the water talking and laughing. Reluctantly we left when we realized suddenly that every other Korean had left. We bought popsicles and headed back to base where Jesa and I went for a swim then all the girls decided to give each other haircuts. I am the proud new owner of swishy bangs, which I like when they are straight but when they are a curly mess on top of my head I can’t decide. Our big boss Kristine, our project coordinator, came Sunday night to check up on things. She goes to UNI and is super nice, we each had an individual meeting to see how we were feeling, then we were up really late looking at Devin’s Africa pictures and making fun of James.
All in all the weekend was pretty fun! Next weekend is Mud feast, I am so excited! I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, there isn’t too much left!
I love you more than Koreans love weird food,
Elizabeth
Our plan for Friday night was to head into town for a baseball game then hang out downtown for a while. Well it was raining pretty hard, James no longer wanted to go to the game but Devin wanted to prove our loyalty by sticking it out with several trash sacks, these two never agree on anything. Jesa and I decided to look up movie times for downtown while the boys walked over to the PX to get money out. Jesa and I brainstormed and decided to see if Daegu had a Dr. Fish. After much googling and searching we found one and decided to make it our destination. We met up with Kristin and the boys and told them we had a surprise for them, they were not pleased. After much badgering and threatening and a long interrogating taxi ride we arrived downtown. Now the hard part, locating our secret Dr. Fish, the directions online said it was on the same street as Gap so we were searching in the pouring rain for gap. People were getting crabby but luckily after about fifteen minutes of walking and asking about four strangers we saw the sign. It was still in Korean so they were still in the dark about our final destination. We walked into a coffee shop like room and told them our plan, all were satisfied. We ordered the self service bar and fish. The self service bar was bread and jam, delicious, sometimes the best meals are purely bread. Finally it was fishy time. We all took our shoes off and walked up to the bath area, we had to go three and two so Jesa, James, and Kristin went first while Devin and I sat to the side. You put your feet in a little tub and there are probably a hundred fish in there that eat away all the dead skin on your feet, pretty Asian if you ask me. After watching them squirm and laugh for about twenty minutes I was more than ready for my turn. It tickles so much. My little legs couldn’t reach the bottom of the tubs like Devin’s so the fish were under my feet and it was an interesting sensation. You get use to it after a while and it feels like your feet have fallen asleep or your holding them against the jets of a Jacuzzi. I really like enjoyed it and would highly recommend the Dr. Fish experience. After our thorough cleaning it was still raining so we decided to just run across the street and poke around in a few stores. Sadly the rain still hadn’t let up and Jesa wasn’t feeling 100% so she, James, and Kristin decided to call it a night. Devin and I decided to view a traditional Korean movie. We thought we would be able to decipher at least part of the movie, even if it wasn’t in English by watching and figuring out the story. False, I still have no idea what went on that whole movie. There were underground passages, a group of four friends with one mentally handicap member, people killing each other, evil villains with moustaches, it was interesting though. We returned to base and fell asleep. Jesa woke me up at seven am Saturday morning to help her get ready for her shopping trip. Miss Mary, a lady we work with at the center, had offered to take the girls on a shopping trip to Osan all day Saturday. Kristin and Jesa wanted to check out the black market purse section and headed off.
James, Devin, and I left around ten am for the subway then Seobu bus terminal to head to Gaya-San national park. After an hour bus ride we arrived right at the gate of the national park, convenient. The rain had let up and it was turning out to be a very, very humid day. Unbeknownst to us, Gaya-san is a unique national park. It house one of the three most important temples in Korea. We walked to the temple, about 1 km away and found a huge temple area with several buildings and statues. The temple is called Haein-Sa and was founded in 802 by monks. We wandered around taking pictures, James finally found the statue of the laughing Buddha he had been looking for and bought it. We continued to make our way around the compound and eventually stumbled upon the Koreana Tripitaka. We walked up these stairs into a wooden bar like room with wooden bar like windows and doors and you looked in and saw a ton of blocks carved with Korean symbols, 81,258 to be exact. It smelled wonderful, like an old library and it really was an awesome site to see. James pulled out my travel book and we read all about the blocks and learned their history. These wood printing blocks were created in the 11th century. They were created during a war and the tribes who created them thought this would inspire the Buddha to divinely intervene. These were the first set of Buddhist canon printing blocks ever, pretty sweet. After staring in awe and be baffled by what we were seeing, stored openly behind wood fences we decided to continue our hike. We found the trail around 1:30 and were greeted by two rangers curiously asking where we were going, we told them we wanted to summit the peak and they said we were very late but they would let us go anyway. They said the trail was very wet and slippery but believed we would be able to summit and return to that spot by five o’clock. We began our hike, which was gorgeous, through lush bamboo and other plants next to a raging river that was almost deafening. The trail started to get a little muddy and wet but we didn’t think too much of it and continued to trek on. After about ten minutes the trail turned into a small shallow stream and that was our trail almost the entire way up the mountain. We were covered in mud and our shoes sopping wet. The humidity really set in and we were dripping in sweat. The hike was a total of about 4.9 km to the top, not bad you would think. The first two km were pretty flat and wet but after that things changed. Up, up, up hiking up boulder stairs that were slippery.
Generally I do pretty well with the hiking keeping up with the boys and all but not in this humidity. They would call down from like an eighth of a mile up asking if I was coming and I would shout back slow but steady. (Mind you I was the first one down, because I conserved energy!) I missed having Jesa there to chat with but I did enjoy my little bit of hiking alone time and encountering friendly Koreans. I had my hair in two braided piggy tails and they loved them, stroking them and saying beautiful. Great ego boaster if you ask me. So after falsely thinking we had made it to the top oh about four times, then getting really angry when I realized we hadn’t made it we found the peak and a sea of clouds again. The wind was blowing really hard and we were walking across some smooth slick walk, a little bit frightening at times. We all felt really accomplished though when all was said and done and enjoyed a long break hanging out and trying to get a clear picture when the wind blew the clouds away. The decent wasn’t as easy as you would think. Jumping down boulder to slippery boulder gets old and is especially hard when your legs are shaking. After slip and sliding down mud, and not encountering any Koreans for about a half hour we made it back to the flat land. It started to pour so we waited it out a little in a tree canopy before heading back to town. Walking back in we bought popsicles and hand painted fans from monks. We checked out the sketchy camp grounds but ultimately decided to get on a bus for the hour long trip back to Daegu. As soon as we boarded the bus the clouds opened up to reveal blue skies, whoops too late. We arrived in Daegu muddy and hungry, well the boys; I had eaten two peanut butter sandwiches on the bus. So we decided to stop for dinner outside of base at a restaurant James had wanted to try. We ordered pork of sorts and one was marinated then cooked them ourselves. I enjoyed meat, rice, and potatoes avoiding all spicy vegetables. We returned to our rooms, showered then met up with Jesa. Devin wanted us to watch a documentary on sustainability, and we were all asleep within the first fifteen minutes only to be woken up an hour later by a very disappointed Devin.
Sunday Morning I woke up at eight and walked to nine o’clock mass on base. I saw a ton of my kids and co-workers there. After mass I hung out till Jesa was done with her service at 10:30. Once all praising was complete, Jesa, Devin, and I headed out to Mount Apsan again, the place we went on the first weekend on Sunday that is literally five minutes from base. It was a hot but beautiful day. The sun was out and beating down hard. Devin has a big macro lens and is very into taking pictures of bugs, frogs, etc. so he had recruited Jesa to be his bug herder and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her try to swat bees and dragon flies towards him. We hiked about half way up the mountain, suppose to be looking for bugs, but Jesa and I were too busy socializing. We got half way up and realized there was no need to over exert ourselves today since we had already hiked to the top before. There is a big stream that runs next to the trail so we decided we should mosey our way back down and spend a long time playing in the stream. Jesa lay in the sun while I hid in the shade, I still have a sun burn, and we dangled our legs and feet in the water talking and laughing. Reluctantly we left when we realized suddenly that every other Korean had left. We bought popsicles and headed back to base where Jesa and I went for a swim then all the girls decided to give each other haircuts. I am the proud new owner of swishy bangs, which I like when they are straight but when they are a curly mess on top of my head I can’t decide. Our big boss Kristine, our project coordinator, came Sunday night to check up on things. She goes to UNI and is super nice, we each had an individual meeting to see how we were feeling, then we were up really late looking at Devin’s Africa pictures and making fun of James.
All in all the weekend was pretty fun! Next weekend is Mud feast, I am so excited! I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, there isn’t too much left!
I love you more than Koreans love weird food,
Elizabeth
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
서울, 카드, 그리고 인자 Seoul
Eoddeoge Jinaeseumnikka? (how have you been)
Well family another week has come and passed and I am here to do my best in giving you full, vivid report. Tuesday obviously began with another exciting week of camp; we got Monday off for fourth of July. This week’s theme was Looking through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland) and my club was photography club. Tuesday morning the kinders made their own rabbits to hang on the door and they learned their six new words of the week. In photography club I found out as we gathered for club that the centers cameras were m.i.a so I had fourteen kids trying to share the three digital cameras I could borrow from counselors, not pleasant. Our all camp activity was playing parachute games out on the field which was pretty fun. One of the main games is called sharks and lifeguards when one person is crawling around under the parachute while everyone else sits in a circle with their legs underneath shaking it. A lifeguard stands on the outside and when the shark tries to pull someone under the lifeguard runs over and pulls them back out. Easy enough normally but James was the shark and I was the lifeguard, he ripped those under the parachute so fast I didn’t even have time to see them fall down, it was pretty funny. Our regular center director, who is not the kindest of all women, is on leave for two weeks and we have had a stand in. The stand in is taking over the director’s job in August and used her leave to change everything in the center, she rearranged every room and bought a ton or new things. We predict drama when she returns at the end of this week. Tuesday afternoon I took the kinders to the pool and had a lot of fun swimming around with them, one little boy Alex isn’t very big so he has to be held and Devin, Jesa, and I just pass him around for the hour. I have huge bruises on my shoulders and arms from kids tackling me. We finished the day with closing and crashed pretty early. Wednesday was basically the same. I swam again with the 2nd-5th graders who are far more vicious. That night we all hung out and had a staff meeting and planned our future weekend. Thursday we went on a field trip to herb hills. Herb hills is literally on the side of a mountain and very hilly, the kids did not enjoy that much hiking. They made their own soap first which consisted of a small Korean woman trying to explain directions in broken English over a microphone to 56 loud American kids. They were suppose to use knives to cut up their soap to melt down. Not a good idea, kids were swinging knives it was slightly chaotic. So after a stressful soap making session, Devin and I took the kinders to ride the merry-go-round and the kiddy Viking ship. Then we returned to the soap place to make candles which consisted of poring layers of sand into a cup then putting wax on top, safer. We ate lunch with the kids then were pleasantly surprised when the new lady in charge told us she bought us all traditional meals up at the restaurant and we had a long break. After our Korean meal we took the kinders up to the petting zoo where they where the kids when bananas. They were flipping out over geese and a pony. One of our trouble makers, Keyona, had to be physically restrained after she tried to ride the pony. Oh and it wasn’t even a petting zoo because the animals were in open cages but the kids weren’t suppose to touch them, though every kid tried. We decided to stay for the animal show at 2:30, unfortunately at this time it was only one o’clock. We had to really kick our camp training into gear singing songs and playing games the whole time. We taught them iggle wiggle (a dance battle song) and played the game black magic. Finally it was time for the animal show. We walked them all in, oh and we are all wearing matching t-shirts, we we all pile in with other Korean families and take our seats for the show. We are about ten minutes early so James decides he wants to get a wave going and involves the entire crowd. Eventually the show gets started and it’s a Korean lady and man dressed in Tarzan attire speaking loudly in Korean. The ten Korean kids we have were dying of laughter so it must have been good. They had pigs, dogs, seals, monkeys, and birds that flew out over the crowd. One of the seals was being disobedient and refused to get out of the pool so that was pretty funny. Finally we packed up to go home and spent the rest of the night hanging out. My throat started hurting Thursday night and I was pretty sick when I woke up on Friday morning. Friday was a long terrible day. I was not feeling well and the kids were NOT on their best behavior. We have a new boy this week, Sammy, who is the most awful child I have ever met. He is always pushing and hitting and ignoring directions and of course he is a kinder. We had a “special treat” of going to the teen center and watching a movie, so the kinders and I watched fox and the hound in a freezing cold room on the floor, I had about ten kids crowded around me for warmth. In the afternoon we played with bubbles and did cream the counselor.
Friday night we packed up our bags and were out the door by seven, Jesa had to run back to the room half way through our walk to the taxi because she forgot something, then when we reached the taxi she realized she forgot her passport and we had to go back again. But eventually we made it to the train station and we were en route to Seoul. We picked the fast train which are really nice and got a family car with a table in the middle. The boys really wanted to teach us to play Euker which I still am not sure if that was a good plan or not. So after a long direction section we commenced play, Jesa and James vs. Devin and I. We picked it up fairly quickly but I have never played cards so competitively before or been yelled at for the way I played, it was a tense ride. We arrived at ten and took the subway to Itaewon and area right outside of base where my friend Amanda was going to pick us up and lead us back to Yongsan, the military base she is staying on. We got off the subway to a street of Baskin Robbins, Texas Road House, McDonalds, Burger King and a ton of embarrassing Americans. We called Amanda and didn’t get an answer. She called back about twenty minutes later saying she was watching the new twilight that she bought a bootleg version of for 3,000 won. She, Emily, and Kristine (our big boss lady) picked us up at the Burger King and led us back to base. Jesa and I shared a room that night and James and Devin shared a room. We stayed up swapping camp stories and rummaging to find jeans. Amanda got us all DMZ tickets from the hotel on base for 41,000 won and she just then read the dress code that required closed toes, jeans, and collared shirts. I borrowed a girl’s pants who were there, luckily James and Jesa brought a pair, and Devin had to borrow a pair of Kristine’s, pretty funny. We woke up the next morning bright and early at 6:45 and headed to the bus at 7:30. The bus driver was in a snazzy suit and tie so we knew the tour would be legit. Our guide had awful jokes and I spent most of the hour bus ride chit chatting with the group and arguing with Devin. We stopped at a park first for fifteen minutes that was erected for those Koreans whose families have been separated by the war. Then we stopped for fifteen minutes at an abandoned train station. Evidently South Korea asked North Korea if they would be interested in building a train up through to china and Russia. North Korea agreed and South Korea spent a ton of money building up this railway only to have North Korea change their minds when South Korea finished building. So they just have this abandoned train station. Next we drove to the border. It was pretty cool you walk up and there is a yellow painted line on the floor and you aren’t allowed to take pictures past it. If you put your camera away you can walk up to the line and look out over North Korea. I was expecting to see something, you could make out a city in the distance but really it was just a bunch of trees. We hung out there for about fifteen minutes then headed to the tunnels. Evidently after the war and the drawing of the 38th parallel they found a tunnel that North Korea had dug underneath the DMZ heading to Seoul. After further investigation they have uncovered four tunnels and recently discovered sixteen more, that’s a total of twenty tunnels heading to Seoul and apparently 30,000 soldiers can get through each tunnel in one hour. After watching an informational video and looking at a few replicas and Korean soldier mannequins frozen in war like positions it was time to enter the tunnel. We all put on yellow hard hats and walked down a steep 14 degree hill. It got colder and colder with each step and eventually we were down in a mine shaft like thing. We walked straight for a long time; fortunately my height is perfect for not ducking. At the end of the tunnel you can look through a small window and that opens to another section of the tunnel and another window and you can see through to the North Korea side. It was pretty cool, we headed back bought popsicles and bandanas and boarded the bus. Our next stop he said was Seoul Amethyst, we arrived and he said we would spend thirty minutes here. We spent less time in the DMZ than we did in this jewelry store. It was a fairly interesting tour but it got the job done. We returned to meet up with the people who didn’t go on the tour and headed into town for a little lunch and shopping. Kristine is half Korean and dinning with someone who knows what they are doing and how to order is a way better experience. We had pork and other things whose names and spelling I won’t even attempt. After lunch Jesa and I stayed around town to do some shopping and planned on meeting up with everyone else at the base in about an hour. I got some t-shirt and stuff and Jesa bought some gifts as well. We packed up our bags, James, Devin, Jesa, Amanda, Emily, and I, and headed to Mr. Kim’s Friends guesthouse. After getting incredibly lost, eating popsicles, getting lost again, we finally found Mr. Kims. We were actually picked up. Mr. Kim’s was pretty cool, we stayed in an eight person dorm with four sets of bunk beds, and one stranger who we never spoke to. It had roof access and we immediately ran up there and chit chatted for hours. The four of us have been getting along really well and maybe it’s just the spending ever second of everyday together thing but this weekend we did a lot of arguing and had one very large argument on the roof that night while the other two girls were off getting food. But we are always able to get along again about thirty minutes after any argument. Around midnight Jesa and I, the sick ones, went to bed and the other four decided to go clubbing. The next morning we woke up early to hang out on the roof alone and say our prayers before waking up the rest of the group they had some pretty funny dancing stories from the night before. We once again packed up our bags and headed back to base. The boys were really hungry and needed some greasy food so we decided to eat at the same restaurant in the hotel we ate in that first morning.
Jesa and I knew we needed to make their bellies happy if we wanted them to do anything we wanted today. So after overeating at the breakfast buffet they were ready to go and the four of us headed to Seoul Tower. The taxi took us almost all the way to the top of the hill but we had to hike up last section, which was the steepest hill I have ever climbed, right after breakfast. We eventually made it to the top and paid our 8,000 won and rode the elevator up. The view was crazy. Seoul is the fourth largest city in the world and it stretches out as far as the eye can see, and there are gorgeous mountains in the background. We hung out for a while then decided to hike back down the hill we were fortunate enough to ride up and find a metro station to take us back to the train station. The distance between us and the metro was much further than anticipated but everyone was getting along at this point so there wasn’t a problem. We have been playing the yellow game (which has become the pink game since that’s how the game always ends, there are a lot of pink cars) everywhere we go and we have added a few other games that earn points. The first game is spotting pregnant Koreans, who are few and far between and finding Koreans with moustaches, also a rare treat. We played a lot this weekend and it’s pretty fun. We bought our tickets and sat in another family section with a table. Immediately we had to play euker again and they were both getting really pissy about Jesa and my lack of attention and side chit chat. So after an argument, five minutes of not speaking we decided to just talk, a much better decision. Unfortunately it was raining when we returned so we ran back in the rain and Jesa and I spent the night relaxing and watching slum dog millionaire. It was a really relaxing weekend all in all and it was very pleasant to just hang out and chat every once and a while. I am having a lot of fun here and I am so sad that we are almost half way through our stay. I hope all is well at home and I can’t wait to see everyone!
Love and pregnant moustached Koreans,
Elizabeth
Oh and P.S. I finally have an address, address the envelope to this man, my boss and put my name in the return address!
Rick Silva
Unit 15746
Box 382
APO AP 96218
Well family another week has come and passed and I am here to do my best in giving you full, vivid report. Tuesday obviously began with another exciting week of camp; we got Monday off for fourth of July. This week’s theme was Looking through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland) and my club was photography club. Tuesday morning the kinders made their own rabbits to hang on the door and they learned their six new words of the week. In photography club I found out as we gathered for club that the centers cameras were m.i.a so I had fourteen kids trying to share the three digital cameras I could borrow from counselors, not pleasant. Our all camp activity was playing parachute games out on the field which was pretty fun. One of the main games is called sharks and lifeguards when one person is crawling around under the parachute while everyone else sits in a circle with their legs underneath shaking it. A lifeguard stands on the outside and when the shark tries to pull someone under the lifeguard runs over and pulls them back out. Easy enough normally but James was the shark and I was the lifeguard, he ripped those under the parachute so fast I didn’t even have time to see them fall down, it was pretty funny. Our regular center director, who is not the kindest of all women, is on leave for two weeks and we have had a stand in. The stand in is taking over the director’s job in August and used her leave to change everything in the center, she rearranged every room and bought a ton or new things. We predict drama when she returns at the end of this week. Tuesday afternoon I took the kinders to the pool and had a lot of fun swimming around with them, one little boy Alex isn’t very big so he has to be held and Devin, Jesa, and I just pass him around for the hour. I have huge bruises on my shoulders and arms from kids tackling me. We finished the day with closing and crashed pretty early. Wednesday was basically the same. I swam again with the 2nd-5th graders who are far more vicious. That night we all hung out and had a staff meeting and planned our future weekend. Thursday we went on a field trip to herb hills. Herb hills is literally on the side of a mountain and very hilly, the kids did not enjoy that much hiking. They made their own soap first which consisted of a small Korean woman trying to explain directions in broken English over a microphone to 56 loud American kids. They were suppose to use knives to cut up their soap to melt down. Not a good idea, kids were swinging knives it was slightly chaotic. So after a stressful soap making session, Devin and I took the kinders to ride the merry-go-round and the kiddy Viking ship. Then we returned to the soap place to make candles which consisted of poring layers of sand into a cup then putting wax on top, safer. We ate lunch with the kids then were pleasantly surprised when the new lady in charge told us she bought us all traditional meals up at the restaurant and we had a long break. After our Korean meal we took the kinders up to the petting zoo where they where the kids when bananas. They were flipping out over geese and a pony. One of our trouble makers, Keyona, had to be physically restrained after she tried to ride the pony. Oh and it wasn’t even a petting zoo because the animals were in open cages but the kids weren’t suppose to touch them, though every kid tried. We decided to stay for the animal show at 2:30, unfortunately at this time it was only one o’clock. We had to really kick our camp training into gear singing songs and playing games the whole time. We taught them iggle wiggle (a dance battle song) and played the game black magic. Finally it was time for the animal show. We walked them all in, oh and we are all wearing matching t-shirts, we we all pile in with other Korean families and take our seats for the show. We are about ten minutes early so James decides he wants to get a wave going and involves the entire crowd. Eventually the show gets started and it’s a Korean lady and man dressed in Tarzan attire speaking loudly in Korean. The ten Korean kids we have were dying of laughter so it must have been good. They had pigs, dogs, seals, monkeys, and birds that flew out over the crowd. One of the seals was being disobedient and refused to get out of the pool so that was pretty funny. Finally we packed up to go home and spent the rest of the night hanging out. My throat started hurting Thursday night and I was pretty sick when I woke up on Friday morning. Friday was a long terrible day. I was not feeling well and the kids were NOT on their best behavior. We have a new boy this week, Sammy, who is the most awful child I have ever met. He is always pushing and hitting and ignoring directions and of course he is a kinder. We had a “special treat” of going to the teen center and watching a movie, so the kinders and I watched fox and the hound in a freezing cold room on the floor, I had about ten kids crowded around me for warmth. In the afternoon we played with bubbles and did cream the counselor.
Friday night we packed up our bags and were out the door by seven, Jesa had to run back to the room half way through our walk to the taxi because she forgot something, then when we reached the taxi she realized she forgot her passport and we had to go back again. But eventually we made it to the train station and we were en route to Seoul. We picked the fast train which are really nice and got a family car with a table in the middle. The boys really wanted to teach us to play Euker which I still am not sure if that was a good plan or not. So after a long direction section we commenced play, Jesa and James vs. Devin and I. We picked it up fairly quickly but I have never played cards so competitively before or been yelled at for the way I played, it was a tense ride. We arrived at ten and took the subway to Itaewon and area right outside of base where my friend Amanda was going to pick us up and lead us back to Yongsan, the military base she is staying on. We got off the subway to a street of Baskin Robbins, Texas Road House, McDonalds, Burger King and a ton of embarrassing Americans. We called Amanda and didn’t get an answer. She called back about twenty minutes later saying she was watching the new twilight that she bought a bootleg version of for 3,000 won. She, Emily, and Kristine (our big boss lady) picked us up at the Burger King and led us back to base. Jesa and I shared a room that night and James and Devin shared a room. We stayed up swapping camp stories and rummaging to find jeans. Amanda got us all DMZ tickets from the hotel on base for 41,000 won and she just then read the dress code that required closed toes, jeans, and collared shirts. I borrowed a girl’s pants who were there, luckily James and Jesa brought a pair, and Devin had to borrow a pair of Kristine’s, pretty funny. We woke up the next morning bright and early at 6:45 and headed to the bus at 7:30. The bus driver was in a snazzy suit and tie so we knew the tour would be legit. Our guide had awful jokes and I spent most of the hour bus ride chit chatting with the group and arguing with Devin. We stopped at a park first for fifteen minutes that was erected for those Koreans whose families have been separated by the war. Then we stopped for fifteen minutes at an abandoned train station. Evidently South Korea asked North Korea if they would be interested in building a train up through to china and Russia. North Korea agreed and South Korea spent a ton of money building up this railway only to have North Korea change their minds when South Korea finished building. So they just have this abandoned train station. Next we drove to the border. It was pretty cool you walk up and there is a yellow painted line on the floor and you aren’t allowed to take pictures past it. If you put your camera away you can walk up to the line and look out over North Korea. I was expecting to see something, you could make out a city in the distance but really it was just a bunch of trees. We hung out there for about fifteen minutes then headed to the tunnels. Evidently after the war and the drawing of the 38th parallel they found a tunnel that North Korea had dug underneath the DMZ heading to Seoul. After further investigation they have uncovered four tunnels and recently discovered sixteen more, that’s a total of twenty tunnels heading to Seoul and apparently 30,000 soldiers can get through each tunnel in one hour. After watching an informational video and looking at a few replicas and Korean soldier mannequins frozen in war like positions it was time to enter the tunnel. We all put on yellow hard hats and walked down a steep 14 degree hill. It got colder and colder with each step and eventually we were down in a mine shaft like thing. We walked straight for a long time; fortunately my height is perfect for not ducking. At the end of the tunnel you can look through a small window and that opens to another section of the tunnel and another window and you can see through to the North Korea side. It was pretty cool, we headed back bought popsicles and bandanas and boarded the bus. Our next stop he said was Seoul Amethyst, we arrived and he said we would spend thirty minutes here. We spent less time in the DMZ than we did in this jewelry store. It was a fairly interesting tour but it got the job done. We returned to meet up with the people who didn’t go on the tour and headed into town for a little lunch and shopping. Kristine is half Korean and dinning with someone who knows what they are doing and how to order is a way better experience. We had pork and other things whose names and spelling I won’t even attempt. After lunch Jesa and I stayed around town to do some shopping and planned on meeting up with everyone else at the base in about an hour. I got some t-shirt and stuff and Jesa bought some gifts as well. We packed up our bags, James, Devin, Jesa, Amanda, Emily, and I, and headed to Mr. Kim’s Friends guesthouse. After getting incredibly lost, eating popsicles, getting lost again, we finally found Mr. Kims. We were actually picked up. Mr. Kim’s was pretty cool, we stayed in an eight person dorm with four sets of bunk beds, and one stranger who we never spoke to. It had roof access and we immediately ran up there and chit chatted for hours. The four of us have been getting along really well and maybe it’s just the spending ever second of everyday together thing but this weekend we did a lot of arguing and had one very large argument on the roof that night while the other two girls were off getting food. But we are always able to get along again about thirty minutes after any argument. Around midnight Jesa and I, the sick ones, went to bed and the other four decided to go clubbing. The next morning we woke up early to hang out on the roof alone and say our prayers before waking up the rest of the group they had some pretty funny dancing stories from the night before. We once again packed up our bags and headed back to base. The boys were really hungry and needed some greasy food so we decided to eat at the same restaurant in the hotel we ate in that first morning.
Jesa and I knew we needed to make their bellies happy if we wanted them to do anything we wanted today. So after overeating at the breakfast buffet they were ready to go and the four of us headed to Seoul Tower. The taxi took us almost all the way to the top of the hill but we had to hike up last section, which was the steepest hill I have ever climbed, right after breakfast. We eventually made it to the top and paid our 8,000 won and rode the elevator up. The view was crazy. Seoul is the fourth largest city in the world and it stretches out as far as the eye can see, and there are gorgeous mountains in the background. We hung out for a while then decided to hike back down the hill we were fortunate enough to ride up and find a metro station to take us back to the train station. The distance between us and the metro was much further than anticipated but everyone was getting along at this point so there wasn’t a problem. We have been playing the yellow game (which has become the pink game since that’s how the game always ends, there are a lot of pink cars) everywhere we go and we have added a few other games that earn points. The first game is spotting pregnant Koreans, who are few and far between and finding Koreans with moustaches, also a rare treat. We played a lot this weekend and it’s pretty fun. We bought our tickets and sat in another family section with a table. Immediately we had to play euker again and they were both getting really pissy about Jesa and my lack of attention and side chit chat. So after an argument, five minutes of not speaking we decided to just talk, a much better decision. Unfortunately it was raining when we returned so we ran back in the rain and Jesa and I spent the night relaxing and watching slum dog millionaire. It was a really relaxing weekend all in all and it was very pleasant to just hang out and chat every once and a while. I am having a lot of fun here and I am so sad that we are almost half way through our stay. I hope all is well at home and I can’t wait to see everyone!
Love and pregnant moustached Koreans,
Elizabeth
Oh and P.S. I finally have an address, address the envelope to this man, my boss and put my name in the return address!
Rick Silva
Unit 15746
Box 382
APO AP 96218
Thursday, July 8, 2010
산들 번지mountains bungee white water rafting 하 얀 물 래프팅
Hello again,
This week in camp was fourth of July week and was naturally spent doing too many red, white and blue activities. Monday was pretty fun, the camp I am in charge of this week is called Kids, Inc. and involves the kids creating their own inventions on paper then building them. Nothing too exciting happened, I really like being in the kinder room where they fight to sit on your lap and ask them to read you stories. Tuesday was a long day, the kids were not well behaved and poor James had his first terrible camp day experience. After work Jesa, James, Devin, and I decided it was time to attend a professional baseball game. The Daegu Samsung Lions now hold any ounce of baseball loyalty I ever possessed. The game was ridiculously fun, Koreans are absolutely crazy. We all bought shirts and other Lion garb and Devin embarrassed everyone with his loud screaming. The mascots were hysterical and I truly believe people attend the games to laugh at the lions instead of watch the game. After a fun night of blowing off steam and stopping at seven eleven for exotic Korean popsicles we called it a night. Wednesday was also fairly uneventful at camp, I got to go swimming twice this week since Kristin fell and scrapped up her leg, so Tuesday I took the kinders and Wednesday took the rest of the camp. I was taking the fourth and fifth graders to the pool and was sad when no one reached up to hold my hand. This little boy Jordan is in fifth grade and discovered I was ticklish and I literally spent the entire hour swimming away from it. Lately Jesa has been making me run with her and swim with her after camp so I have been in the pool like six times already this week, ridiculous. So Wednesday night we watched old school because the boys said Jesa and I were required to see it to be considered and adult. Thursday we went on a field trip to Sue-song world which was terrible. The worst organization I have seen in a field trip ever, we went put putting, pottery making, pressed flower making, and wandering around the deserted theme park (actually it was more like a rundown carnival) trying to find a ride with seat belts so we could let our kids ride the ride. Friday was pretty fun we had a sock hop in the afternoon and the kids enjoyed dancing and sweating, really sweating the humidity is unbearable. We had cream the counselor on Friday and I officially know the stink of shaving cream in your eyes, and it doesn’t help when James secretly tells the kids to really shove it in your hair for the walk home.
Friday after work we hung out until around ten p.m. then Jesa, James, Devin and I grabbed a taxi and headed to Dongdaegu train station. We had about an hour to kill before our 11:23 night train to Gangneung. We were in the very last car Devin and I sat in front while Jesa and James sat behind. Devin and I have very few similar opinions and we spent most of the night loudly debating topics of every importance until getting yelled at by James and Jesa. Around 3:30 we discovered that the empty seats in front of us could be swivled around and we instantly had more foot room, but I still wasn’t very comfortable. All in all I think I got about an hour’s worth of sleep before the alarm went off at five a.m. because “wouldn’t it be just great to see the sun rise over the mountains as we started a new day!” Ya maybe it would be if I wasn’t the only one to wake up. But I shouldn’t complain I really am glad I saw all that I could out the train window. I know I have attempted to describe the natural beauty of South Korea on more than one occasion and I will try again. I thought I had seen a beautiful countryside, I was wrong. This weekend we traveled up to the north eastern part of South Korea and saw the rural beauty of the country. The country is roughly the size of Virginia and is 70% mountainous, that’s a lot of hills. The mountains in Daegu are nothing compared to what we trained through. The travel book describes this part of South Korea as the most beautiful and I would have to agree. When you picture Asia, or at least when I do, I picture lush mountains with an oriental twist and I finally fell like I found that here. We trained up along the coast between ocean and mountains and life doesn’t get better from a 23,000 won train seat. So eventually, after much confusion and almost exiting the train we found our stop at 6:30 am in Gangneung. We exited the train and walked through the station where a live band was playing, and Koreans were excitedly greeting us, it was a fun wake up call. After changing and enjoying a quick peanut butter sandwich we walked on. Our original plan was to find a bus to Sokcho the largest city on this side of the coast and enter the national park, Seorak-San and camp there for the night. After finding the bus station and realizing that the bus didn’t leave till late that night our plans changed. Devin had heard about the cool town of Inje and so we sought ways to get there. There was a bus leaving in about fifteen minutes to the town of Chuncheon, which then according to my travel book had many buses to Inje. So after looking out the window and watching the onset of rain we decided to bus and see where it took us. The bus ride was about two hours and was just what the doctored ordered after a sleepless night. We arrived in Chuncheon around ten, after again debating numerous times what stop was our stop, and the bus for Inje was scheduled to leave at 11:30 so we had a little bit of time to kill. The bus station was connected to E-Mart the Korean version of Wall-Mart so the hour passed faster than I would have liked. Jesa and I went straight for the clothing section while the boys ran for the food. Koreans are super skinny and we had been wondering if we would be able to wear/purchase any Korean clothing, glad to report we can. We enjoyed trying on about ten outfits each then settling on cheap vests, we aren’t ready yet to crack open the pocket book too much. We added Korean popsicles to our purchase and met up with the boys to catch the bus. The bus ride to Inje was beautiful. The rain cleared and the sun shone through the clouds onto the mountains. We arrived in Inje around one and began walking. It was our first rural town so we were stumped how to operate at first without the luxury of a subway or taxi. We saw in the distance a tall bungee jumping platform and headed off for it. After walking next to rice patties, amazing, we found a huge 63 meter (like 180 feet) metal structure that read the words bungee jump. James demanded someone accompany him, and after much pleading and influencing he recruited Jesa. Devin and I were not ready and chickened out, maybe by the end of the summer. So they signed their names paid their 30,000 won and got suited up. Devin and I stood above and watched and it was hysterical to see Jesa panic and James talk her back into it. These twelve year old boys suited them up in loose harness and lowered the cages. James went up first on the left side and Jesa followed on the right. I was so nervous watching them go, and I wasn’t even participating. James was up first, he walked out onto the small ledge, pressed his hands against his chest like he was praying, then spread them out like a bird and jumped. He whoohoooed the whole way down and had about three good bounces back up. By this time a small crowd of Koreans had gathered to watch the crazy loud Americans, I was taking pictures the whole time as Devin was quietly whispering “don’t die, don’t die, don’t die” as he jumped. After successfully lowering down a beaming boy, Jesa was up. We were a little more nervous for little Jesa. She stepped out and back in about three times before placing her toes on the edge, putting her hands out like a bird, and pushing off with all her might. Jesa bungee was a lot more frightening than James because she literally fell straight down. She had also lost most her voice that week at camp so her scream down was raspy and barely audible, hilarious. After she was lowered the two emerged with completion certificates and the biggest smiles I have ever seen. I was so proud.
The bungee man promised to take us to the river rafting office, after we bungeed of course, so we were off on about a five minute walk up the hill to another man. He offered to take us white water rafting that day for 30,000 won and buying some pretty sweet plastic shoes for 5,000 won. (sidenot: 1,000 won equals about eighty cents) So it was a pretty good deal. While we were there we had a true small world moment. As we were sitting in his office in our bright shoes and swimming apparel, in walked a group of Americans and one guy wearing a Hawkeyes t-shirt, Devin was convinced he had seen him before and asked him where he was from. He said he graduated from UNI last year and that I looked really familiar. Devin finally realized he lived in the house behind him last year and they use to steal stuff from his back porch all the time. He and his girlfriend were taking a year off to teach Korean right outside of Seoul, small world. But anyway we then left all of our stuff there, we are maybe too trusting, in his office and hopped in his BMW as he drove us up river to his companies drop off point. He also offered us his campsite that night for 5,000 won each and promised to pick us up after our ride. We arrived at the drop off spot to find around 300 Koreans just roaming around and several rafting companies. We sat around for a while and finally were suited up in our lifejackets and yellow helmets. We were with another timid Korean couple who were not pleased with our excited smiles and loud laughter. So our guide didn’t speak a word of English and was dressed in a bright pink mess jacket, blue flip flops, swim trunks, pink life jacket, and orange helmet. We carried our raft down to the water and he began to instruct us in Korean. The lifeguard in our raft spoke a little English so we figured when he said forward we paddled forward with his count 1,2,3 then a loud STOP! And we repeated the same with rackward (instead of backward) and reft (left) and right. It was pretty funny. So we all had to practice bobbing in the water and getting wet to get use to the river, which was pretty low because they haven’t fully entered monsoon season yet, anyway James thought the strange Korean lady was me from behind, short and wearing a pink shirt also and dunked her in the water. Eventually after a lot of hooting and hollering we were off, James and Devin in the front, Jesa and I in the middle, Korean family behind and guides in the back. We were stronger than they expected and kept pointing to James saying “power, power” we paddled on, encountering other Korean boats and getting into splash battles. There were probably around thirty boats in a long line going down the river. The water was so low we were constantly getting stuck on boulders and having to bounce our way out of them. We were able to get out and swim for a while too, we all stood up on our seats in the raft and rocked back and forth trying to make each other fall off, and I was victorious. After dunking each other and being splashed by oncoming Koreans we got back in the boat and continued down the river talking and laughing. We wrapped around a rock once, which was interesting, every boat wrapped and so there were like fifteen people standing on top of this little boulder in the middle of the river, you know it’s bad when your non-English speaking guide gets out the word dangerous. So eventually we got back in our boat and headed to the pull out point. The whole rafting thing was around two hours, worth 30,000 won in my opinion. We emerged soaking wet and covered in sand. We had to sit around for 45 minutes waiting for our ride to pick us up, who we presumed left us behind to steal our money and passports. Eventually a van turned up, after some lovely Korean men Jesa met called for us. So we went back to his office packed our bags and reloaded into his car with groceries. The campsite was packed full of Americans in the grassy section so we wandered down a ways to the beach on the river we had just rafted. We set up camp, well James set up camp, and we took a million pictures of the sun set and rock formations. It got dark pretty fast after that and we only managed to stay up chit chatting till nine when we all crashed. It wasn’t a pleasant sleep though, it was absolutely freezing and the night seemed to last forever. We got up around seven am on Sunday and ate breakfast and packed up camp, I realized the bag that held all my peanut butter sandwiches had been contaminated by baby powder and tasted horrible. We walked up to meet our taxi around eight and rode back to Inje bus station where we caught a bus to Sokcho the largest city north of Seoul. In Sokcho we walked to the local bus stop to catch a bus to Seorok-San national park. You would be so proud of our efficient traveling and navigating of the bus systems. We arrived at the park and had to pay the 2,500 won entrance fee. It was so foggy that you weren’t able to see the tops of any peaks. We found the cable car and bought our tickets up to the top of the peak where the views were supposedly incredible and we assumed the cloud would just go away by the power of our hopes for sunshine. We ascended into the clouds and the temperature instantly dropped from blistering hot to chilly. It was sprinkling up there and you couldn’t see three feet in front of you.
We decided to follow the crowds anyway as they hiked up and up on wooden stairs with rubber nailed to it. I was reading in my book that we had to be super careful on the rock face up top because there were no guardrails and it literally is just a slick slightly slanted smooth rock. We found it and we amazed. When you looked off over the edge all you could see was fog and clouds. The ground wasn’t visible and James insisted on getting awfully close. After getting lost and feeling unsafe we decided he had risked enough and headed back towards the cable car. We found another route to a temple that was about ten minutes away and took it trying to image what the beautiful views would look like. We cable cared back down, much to our disappointment, after only an hour and decided we would just see what the rest of the park had to offer. Best decision ever. After wandering we found a HUGE Buddha that was in my book that was about 60 feet tall and was recently created to encourage peace in the country. We continued on to find a gorgeous boulder river with rapids and Korean symbols carved into the stone. The sky was starting to clear up a bit, not enough for blue skies, but the rain had stopped and we were enjoying our hike. We followed the river a long ways, which was surrounded by black bamboo, until we found a sign informing us there, was a cave on the trial 0.6 km up. We decided we wanted to go for it and began our hike. It was the longest most difficult hike of my life. We once again found ourselves faces boulder stairs, steeper than anything we have been through before. We were all drenched in sweat, and I mean drenched and breathing heavily. Finally we made it out of the boulder stairs, only to find metal stairs. These metal staircases were attached to the side of the mountain rock face, just bolted in. We hiked up a bunch of those, thinking were were there only to find more stairs bolted to literally the straight vertical side of a mountain. These stairs where so steep it was like hiking up a thick ladder, finally we emerged from the clouds and found our cave. Ha, when I say cave I mean small pore on the side of the mountain. There was Buddhist monks in there selling things and a small alter. We all collapsed on the floor. We noticed after about thirty seconds that we were steaming from the cool mountain air and the body heat, it was pretty amazing. Finally it was time to hike back down and Devin began freaking out. He had to talk himself down the mountain out loud and was super mad when we took pictures of him and made fun of him. My little feet came in handy again as they each fit perfectly on the steps and I descended with no problem. We hiked back and caught the bus back to Sokcho. I was starving from my lack of sandwiches situation and Jesa and I refused to eat the traditional Korean food they wanted. We settled on a fried chicken wing restaurant and enjoyed a platter of hot, mild, sweet, and something else plus a tray of fruit. Devin was appalled at our American behavior but I was starving. We walked over to the harbor after and hung out playing cards and talking till around ten when we walked back to the bus station to await our night bus at 11:23 to Daegu. We enjoyed popsicles and conversation then crashed on the bus, which was a night deluxe and much more comfortable than the previous train ride. I slept a ton and we returned early 6:30 am. We taxied back to base; unfortunately Kristin had friends staying in our room so Jesa and I slept in Devins room till around noon while Devin and James stayed in James’ room.
The people staying in our rooms were from Red cloud, Jen, Nick, and Kevin. Jen was my small group leader this past semester in camp so it was really good to catch up and chat with her for a while. James and Jesa requested a lazy day so Devin and I walked to the subway station, about fifteen minutes, and found Seomun Market. This market was huge and amazing. A couple of our coworkers had talked about it before and told us it’s something we definitely needed to check out. The first street we found was sock street, and as the name lets on it is a full street of any type of sock you could ever imagine or desire. Then we got into some fruit and fish. We bought the famous Daegu apples, huge and delicious, and a bunch of raspberries. The fish market wasn’t as elaborate as the one in Busan but it was still huge and smelly. We found a ton of vintage clothes shops and Devin had a field day trying on the strangest outfits. I will definitely be returning for some souvenir shopping with Jesa in the future. It was a hot day, and I mean hot, beating sun and all so we were only out for about two hours. We refreshed with double popsicles and caught the subway back to base. My new goal now is to get through every type of Korean Popsicle, which are all unique in not only flavor but packaging. That night we hung out, James and I taught Devin to sew Korean patches onto the vintage hats he bought his brothers. All in all it was a fabulous three day weekend and a great way to celebrate our independence, by venturing around in a foreign country? I hope the fourth treated everyone else well and I look forward to hearing from you!
Love and mountaineering,
Miss Smartie (Elizabeth)
This week in camp was fourth of July week and was naturally spent doing too many red, white and blue activities. Monday was pretty fun, the camp I am in charge of this week is called Kids, Inc. and involves the kids creating their own inventions on paper then building them. Nothing too exciting happened, I really like being in the kinder room where they fight to sit on your lap and ask them to read you stories. Tuesday was a long day, the kids were not well behaved and poor James had his first terrible camp day experience. After work Jesa, James, Devin, and I decided it was time to attend a professional baseball game. The Daegu Samsung Lions now hold any ounce of baseball loyalty I ever possessed. The game was ridiculously fun, Koreans are absolutely crazy. We all bought shirts and other Lion garb and Devin embarrassed everyone with his loud screaming. The mascots were hysterical and I truly believe people attend the games to laugh at the lions instead of watch the game. After a fun night of blowing off steam and stopping at seven eleven for exotic Korean popsicles we called it a night. Wednesday was also fairly uneventful at camp, I got to go swimming twice this week since Kristin fell and scrapped up her leg, so Tuesday I took the kinders and Wednesday took the rest of the camp. I was taking the fourth and fifth graders to the pool and was sad when no one reached up to hold my hand. This little boy Jordan is in fifth grade and discovered I was ticklish and I literally spent the entire hour swimming away from it. Lately Jesa has been making me run with her and swim with her after camp so I have been in the pool like six times already this week, ridiculous. So Wednesday night we watched old school because the boys said Jesa and I were required to see it to be considered and adult. Thursday we went on a field trip to Sue-song world which was terrible. The worst organization I have seen in a field trip ever, we went put putting, pottery making, pressed flower making, and wandering around the deserted theme park (actually it was more like a rundown carnival) trying to find a ride with seat belts so we could let our kids ride the ride. Friday was pretty fun we had a sock hop in the afternoon and the kids enjoyed dancing and sweating, really sweating the humidity is unbearable. We had cream the counselor on Friday and I officially know the stink of shaving cream in your eyes, and it doesn’t help when James secretly tells the kids to really shove it in your hair for the walk home.
Friday after work we hung out until around ten p.m. then Jesa, James, Devin and I grabbed a taxi and headed to Dongdaegu train station. We had about an hour to kill before our 11:23 night train to Gangneung. We were in the very last car Devin and I sat in front while Jesa and James sat behind. Devin and I have very few similar opinions and we spent most of the night loudly debating topics of every importance until getting yelled at by James and Jesa. Around 3:30 we discovered that the empty seats in front of us could be swivled around and we instantly had more foot room, but I still wasn’t very comfortable. All in all I think I got about an hour’s worth of sleep before the alarm went off at five a.m. because “wouldn’t it be just great to see the sun rise over the mountains as we started a new day!” Ya maybe it would be if I wasn’t the only one to wake up. But I shouldn’t complain I really am glad I saw all that I could out the train window. I know I have attempted to describe the natural beauty of South Korea on more than one occasion and I will try again. I thought I had seen a beautiful countryside, I was wrong. This weekend we traveled up to the north eastern part of South Korea and saw the rural beauty of the country. The country is roughly the size of Virginia and is 70% mountainous, that’s a lot of hills. The mountains in Daegu are nothing compared to what we trained through. The travel book describes this part of South Korea as the most beautiful and I would have to agree. When you picture Asia, or at least when I do, I picture lush mountains with an oriental twist and I finally fell like I found that here. We trained up along the coast between ocean and mountains and life doesn’t get better from a 23,000 won train seat. So eventually, after much confusion and almost exiting the train we found our stop at 6:30 am in Gangneung. We exited the train and walked through the station where a live band was playing, and Koreans were excitedly greeting us, it was a fun wake up call. After changing and enjoying a quick peanut butter sandwich we walked on. Our original plan was to find a bus to Sokcho the largest city on this side of the coast and enter the national park, Seorak-San and camp there for the night. After finding the bus station and realizing that the bus didn’t leave till late that night our plans changed. Devin had heard about the cool town of Inje and so we sought ways to get there. There was a bus leaving in about fifteen minutes to the town of Chuncheon, which then according to my travel book had many buses to Inje. So after looking out the window and watching the onset of rain we decided to bus and see where it took us. The bus ride was about two hours and was just what the doctored ordered after a sleepless night. We arrived in Chuncheon around ten, after again debating numerous times what stop was our stop, and the bus for Inje was scheduled to leave at 11:30 so we had a little bit of time to kill. The bus station was connected to E-Mart the Korean version of Wall-Mart so the hour passed faster than I would have liked. Jesa and I went straight for the clothing section while the boys ran for the food. Koreans are super skinny and we had been wondering if we would be able to wear/purchase any Korean clothing, glad to report we can. We enjoyed trying on about ten outfits each then settling on cheap vests, we aren’t ready yet to crack open the pocket book too much. We added Korean popsicles to our purchase and met up with the boys to catch the bus. The bus ride to Inje was beautiful. The rain cleared and the sun shone through the clouds onto the mountains. We arrived in Inje around one and began walking. It was our first rural town so we were stumped how to operate at first without the luxury of a subway or taxi. We saw in the distance a tall bungee jumping platform and headed off for it. After walking next to rice patties, amazing, we found a huge 63 meter (like 180 feet) metal structure that read the words bungee jump. James demanded someone accompany him, and after much pleading and influencing he recruited Jesa. Devin and I were not ready and chickened out, maybe by the end of the summer. So they signed their names paid their 30,000 won and got suited up. Devin and I stood above and watched and it was hysterical to see Jesa panic and James talk her back into it. These twelve year old boys suited them up in loose harness and lowered the cages. James went up first on the left side and Jesa followed on the right. I was so nervous watching them go, and I wasn’t even participating. James was up first, he walked out onto the small ledge, pressed his hands against his chest like he was praying, then spread them out like a bird and jumped. He whoohoooed the whole way down and had about three good bounces back up. By this time a small crowd of Koreans had gathered to watch the crazy loud Americans, I was taking pictures the whole time as Devin was quietly whispering “don’t die, don’t die, don’t die” as he jumped. After successfully lowering down a beaming boy, Jesa was up. We were a little more nervous for little Jesa. She stepped out and back in about three times before placing her toes on the edge, putting her hands out like a bird, and pushing off with all her might. Jesa bungee was a lot more frightening than James because she literally fell straight down. She had also lost most her voice that week at camp so her scream down was raspy and barely audible, hilarious. After she was lowered the two emerged with completion certificates and the biggest smiles I have ever seen. I was so proud.
The bungee man promised to take us to the river rafting office, after we bungeed of course, so we were off on about a five minute walk up the hill to another man. He offered to take us white water rafting that day for 30,000 won and buying some pretty sweet plastic shoes for 5,000 won. (sidenot: 1,000 won equals about eighty cents) So it was a pretty good deal. While we were there we had a true small world moment. As we were sitting in his office in our bright shoes and swimming apparel, in walked a group of Americans and one guy wearing a Hawkeyes t-shirt, Devin was convinced he had seen him before and asked him where he was from. He said he graduated from UNI last year and that I looked really familiar. Devin finally realized he lived in the house behind him last year and they use to steal stuff from his back porch all the time. He and his girlfriend were taking a year off to teach Korean right outside of Seoul, small world. But anyway we then left all of our stuff there, we are maybe too trusting, in his office and hopped in his BMW as he drove us up river to his companies drop off point. He also offered us his campsite that night for 5,000 won each and promised to pick us up after our ride. We arrived at the drop off spot to find around 300 Koreans just roaming around and several rafting companies. We sat around for a while and finally were suited up in our lifejackets and yellow helmets. We were with another timid Korean couple who were not pleased with our excited smiles and loud laughter. So our guide didn’t speak a word of English and was dressed in a bright pink mess jacket, blue flip flops, swim trunks, pink life jacket, and orange helmet. We carried our raft down to the water and he began to instruct us in Korean. The lifeguard in our raft spoke a little English so we figured when he said forward we paddled forward with his count 1,2,3 then a loud STOP! And we repeated the same with rackward (instead of backward) and reft (left) and right. It was pretty funny. So we all had to practice bobbing in the water and getting wet to get use to the river, which was pretty low because they haven’t fully entered monsoon season yet, anyway James thought the strange Korean lady was me from behind, short and wearing a pink shirt also and dunked her in the water. Eventually after a lot of hooting and hollering we were off, James and Devin in the front, Jesa and I in the middle, Korean family behind and guides in the back. We were stronger than they expected and kept pointing to James saying “power, power” we paddled on, encountering other Korean boats and getting into splash battles. There were probably around thirty boats in a long line going down the river. The water was so low we were constantly getting stuck on boulders and having to bounce our way out of them. We were able to get out and swim for a while too, we all stood up on our seats in the raft and rocked back and forth trying to make each other fall off, and I was victorious. After dunking each other and being splashed by oncoming Koreans we got back in the boat and continued down the river talking and laughing. We wrapped around a rock once, which was interesting, every boat wrapped and so there were like fifteen people standing on top of this little boulder in the middle of the river, you know it’s bad when your non-English speaking guide gets out the word dangerous. So eventually we got back in our boat and headed to the pull out point. The whole rafting thing was around two hours, worth 30,000 won in my opinion. We emerged soaking wet and covered in sand. We had to sit around for 45 minutes waiting for our ride to pick us up, who we presumed left us behind to steal our money and passports. Eventually a van turned up, after some lovely Korean men Jesa met called for us. So we went back to his office packed our bags and reloaded into his car with groceries. The campsite was packed full of Americans in the grassy section so we wandered down a ways to the beach on the river we had just rafted. We set up camp, well James set up camp, and we took a million pictures of the sun set and rock formations. It got dark pretty fast after that and we only managed to stay up chit chatting till nine when we all crashed. It wasn’t a pleasant sleep though, it was absolutely freezing and the night seemed to last forever. We got up around seven am on Sunday and ate breakfast and packed up camp, I realized the bag that held all my peanut butter sandwiches had been contaminated by baby powder and tasted horrible. We walked up to meet our taxi around eight and rode back to Inje bus station where we caught a bus to Sokcho the largest city north of Seoul. In Sokcho we walked to the local bus stop to catch a bus to Seorok-San national park. You would be so proud of our efficient traveling and navigating of the bus systems. We arrived at the park and had to pay the 2,500 won entrance fee. It was so foggy that you weren’t able to see the tops of any peaks. We found the cable car and bought our tickets up to the top of the peak where the views were supposedly incredible and we assumed the cloud would just go away by the power of our hopes for sunshine. We ascended into the clouds and the temperature instantly dropped from blistering hot to chilly. It was sprinkling up there and you couldn’t see three feet in front of you.
We decided to follow the crowds anyway as they hiked up and up on wooden stairs with rubber nailed to it. I was reading in my book that we had to be super careful on the rock face up top because there were no guardrails and it literally is just a slick slightly slanted smooth rock. We found it and we amazed. When you looked off over the edge all you could see was fog and clouds. The ground wasn’t visible and James insisted on getting awfully close. After getting lost and feeling unsafe we decided he had risked enough and headed back towards the cable car. We found another route to a temple that was about ten minutes away and took it trying to image what the beautiful views would look like. We cable cared back down, much to our disappointment, after only an hour and decided we would just see what the rest of the park had to offer. Best decision ever. After wandering we found a HUGE Buddha that was in my book that was about 60 feet tall and was recently created to encourage peace in the country. We continued on to find a gorgeous boulder river with rapids and Korean symbols carved into the stone. The sky was starting to clear up a bit, not enough for blue skies, but the rain had stopped and we were enjoying our hike. We followed the river a long ways, which was surrounded by black bamboo, until we found a sign informing us there, was a cave on the trial 0.6 km up. We decided we wanted to go for it and began our hike. It was the longest most difficult hike of my life. We once again found ourselves faces boulder stairs, steeper than anything we have been through before. We were all drenched in sweat, and I mean drenched and breathing heavily. Finally we made it out of the boulder stairs, only to find metal stairs. These metal staircases were attached to the side of the mountain rock face, just bolted in. We hiked up a bunch of those, thinking were were there only to find more stairs bolted to literally the straight vertical side of a mountain. These stairs where so steep it was like hiking up a thick ladder, finally we emerged from the clouds and found our cave. Ha, when I say cave I mean small pore on the side of the mountain. There was Buddhist monks in there selling things and a small alter. We all collapsed on the floor. We noticed after about thirty seconds that we were steaming from the cool mountain air and the body heat, it was pretty amazing. Finally it was time to hike back down and Devin began freaking out. He had to talk himself down the mountain out loud and was super mad when we took pictures of him and made fun of him. My little feet came in handy again as they each fit perfectly on the steps and I descended with no problem. We hiked back and caught the bus back to Sokcho. I was starving from my lack of sandwiches situation and Jesa and I refused to eat the traditional Korean food they wanted. We settled on a fried chicken wing restaurant and enjoyed a platter of hot, mild, sweet, and something else plus a tray of fruit. Devin was appalled at our American behavior but I was starving. We walked over to the harbor after and hung out playing cards and talking till around ten when we walked back to the bus station to await our night bus at 11:23 to Daegu. We enjoyed popsicles and conversation then crashed on the bus, which was a night deluxe and much more comfortable than the previous train ride. I slept a ton and we returned early 6:30 am. We taxied back to base; unfortunately Kristin had friends staying in our room so Jesa and I slept in Devins room till around noon while Devin and James stayed in James’ room.
The people staying in our rooms were from Red cloud, Jen, Nick, and Kevin. Jen was my small group leader this past semester in camp so it was really good to catch up and chat with her for a while. James and Jesa requested a lazy day so Devin and I walked to the subway station, about fifteen minutes, and found Seomun Market. This market was huge and amazing. A couple of our coworkers had talked about it before and told us it’s something we definitely needed to check out. The first street we found was sock street, and as the name lets on it is a full street of any type of sock you could ever imagine or desire. Then we got into some fruit and fish. We bought the famous Daegu apples, huge and delicious, and a bunch of raspberries. The fish market wasn’t as elaborate as the one in Busan but it was still huge and smelly. We found a ton of vintage clothes shops and Devin had a field day trying on the strangest outfits. I will definitely be returning for some souvenir shopping with Jesa in the future. It was a hot day, and I mean hot, beating sun and all so we were only out for about two hours. We refreshed with double popsicles and caught the subway back to base. My new goal now is to get through every type of Korean Popsicle, which are all unique in not only flavor but packaging. That night we hung out, James and I taught Devin to sew Korean patches onto the vintage hats he bought his brothers. All in all it was a fabulous three day weekend and a great way to celebrate our independence, by venturing around in a foreign country? I hope the fourth treated everyone else well and I look forward to hearing from you!
Love and mountaineering,
Miss Smartie (Elizabeth)
Friday, July 2, 2010
캠프 첫 주 First Week of Camp and Busan, 부산
캠프 첫 주 First Week of Camp and Busan, 부산
Ciao Bella,
Monday night was the first day of official camp adventure. We have the same basic morning schedule each day, except field trip days on Thursday. Blitz, small group time, club time, all camp activity, and lunch make up the morning then Monday and Friday are rotating activities, Tuesday is swimming and Wednesday is bowling. Each day we end camp with snack and closing, when we sing more relaxing songs to calm the kids down before their parents pick them up. We begin at nine o’clock with all camp blitz on the patio, blitz is singing songs to get the kids ready for a fun filled day. After singing and introducing ourselves we broke into our first small groups, the kinders all sat in a circle and we said our names and our favorite candy. They are too cute, sixteen little adorable faces and some with evil personalities. I was pretty concerned when I found out I was in the kinder room, it has a bad rep, but they just need a little structure and discipline and their behavior has already been improving.
The club I was in charge of this week for space week was science camp. On Monday we talked about the sun and played electricity and telephone, on Tuesday we made paper airplane rocket ships and had a contest to see who could throw their closest to the “moon,” on Wednesday we made mobiles of the planets and stars, and on Friday we presented what we had learned that week to the rest of the center. Lunch time is also always very interesting. We get to eat with the kids every day, yay free food, but its family style dinning so you have to walk around to each table to serve them, boo taking forever. The food is pretty good and I am learning to eat fast standing up after I serve the kids but before anyone needs seconds. Last summer I never had the chance to work with kindergarteners because they were still at the child development centers but here they put them in the same building. It’s pretty cute that someone is always holding my hand or sitting on my lap, or falling asleep on me during closing. Which is pretty common, they don’t have nap time anymore so around three thirty down they go as we are sitting in a circle singing. There is one little girl in particular, Keyona, who really struggles with following directions and she was sitting up in the circle and kept falling asleep and bobbing down and then waking up and bobbing down and waking up, it was pretty funny.
On Thursday we took the kids on our first field trip. It went a lot better than I expected. We departed for wobang world, and amusement park, early that morning. Devin is normally the one who helps me with the kinders when he isn’t teaching swim lessons so we sat with the kinders behind us on the bus and spent the whole bus ride handing out coloring books and toys. These buses have complicated seat belts which is nice because they are stuck in their seats. Xavier and Andre were partnered to be walking buddies and weren’t very happy about it, in the first fifteen minutes of the bus ride they fought, cried, then fell asleep on each other. The park was a lot of fun, nothing like the danger zones we went to in Italy. The kinders are pretty height limited so we kept it to merry-go-round, kiddy rides, and the log flume. The log flume was a lot of fun but you really had to hold these little kids down so they wouldn’t fly out. After breaking for lunch we found a ball room and played for over an hour. It was a room with thousands of soft balls all over the floor and an upper balcony that looked over the ground. There were a ton of different cannons that you put the soft balls in and other shooting things. They had ball bags that you could fill then put them on a pulley system and crank them to the top of the upper balcony. Devin was a slave driver and had all the kids down filling bags up for him then sending them to him so he could shoot down at them. It really took up a lot of time, thank goodness. On the bus ride home everyone passed out on their partner and Devin and I battled it out in the yellow game, there are a million pink cars here.
So all in all camp was pretty fun this week, exhausting but fun. We were all ready for a break come Friday evening around four thirty so we hustled back to the hotel to pack up our bags for Busan. We taxied to the train station and bought five tickets on the train. The train was an hour long and we were able to sit family style with a table between us and we traveled through gorgeous mountains. We arrived in Busan around eight thirty and exited the train station to find a peace rally and live concert. We walked in the direction that we thought was the subway station, and eventually found it. Our hostel directions were to take the subway get off at exit seven, walk to the family mart, go under a tunnel, and we would be there. Oh brother was it more complicated. We bought our tickets and exited correctly then we were greeted by a nice Korean woman who spoke English and she offered to help us, Devin and James were drooling and claiming her as their future wife. She led us out of the tunnel and we walked in the direction she pointed. She was wrong. After passing three family marts and finding no tunnels we called the hostel and asked for directions. She told us to walk to the 42st hotel and she would pick us up there. This lovely Korean lady picked us up and walked us across the street to the mini mart and under a tunnel, we were so close. We stayed at blue backpacker’s hostel in a dorm for six people, three bunk beds, and a private bathroom. We changed and went out for the evening James, the bar connoisseur leading the way. We stopped in our first bar and much to Devin’s despair James and Jesa ordered French fries and tater tots. NOT KOREAN FOOD! They did give us Korean bar food though, which instead of pretzels and peanuts consists of weird popcorn and fish scales, no lie! After hanging out and chit chatting for awhile we decided it was time to move on and found and underground bar called M. We sat at the bar where they displayed every known type of alcohol and James, the bartender, spent the evening teaching me anything and everything about booze. After M we decided to turn in for the night and walked back to the hostel. James, Kristin, and Devin stopped at a family mart to each get a different beer then we spent the evening sitting in our hostel laughing and chatting till Jesa yelled at us to go to bed.
Saturday morning we decided we would wake up around eight and start the day, however, Jesa and I were up and ready to go by six thirty. We were up on the top bunks and I crawled over to her bunk and we were chatting and laughing until both boys got out of their beds to smack us with their pillows and demand we shut up. We headed down to the common room to use the internet and plan our day. When eight finally did roll around certain people were not happy to be getting up, but they did and we went up on the roof to enjoy our free breakfast of toast and hot chocolate. It was raining, though I assured everyone it would stop. After breakfast we packed up and headed out, our first stop Haundae beach. We jumped on the subway and began our thirty minute ride. It had stopped raining temporarily so we threw our stuff on the beach and dove into the east sea. Koreans don’t wear bathing suits here; they wear wet suits or clothes so we stuck out a little. We swam next to a surf contest and enjoyed jumping over waves and riding them in. The rain started to pick up again and people were starting to get cold so we decided to head in for some grub. We packed up, found interesting ways to change out of our swim suits and headed to an overhanging roof to plot our next moves. There aren’t really a ton of indoor activities to do in Busan so we stood around for about ten minutes eating snacks and peanut butter sandwiches until I made everyone walk to the distant lighthouse declaring they wouldn’t melt. Four unhappy counselors followed and purchased rain gear at a local stand. (we were already soaked so why they bought it I am unsure) we walked and walked and walked towards the lighthouse right on the shore. We were walking around some of the coolest rocks I have ever seen. We made it to the lighthouse and were engulfed in a torrential down pour. Luckily there was a gazebo up the hill so we hung out and ate more sandwiches for a while. After sitting four about forty five minutes taking in the scenery etc Devin declared that we should just go swim in the rain since we were all drenched anyway and there was nothing better to do. So we hiked back down to the beach, where the rain had worsened and shoved all our stuff under James’ umbrella and dove into the ocean. The Korean word for thank you is Kamsahamnida which Devin and James thinks sounds like Como se dice (which in Spanish means how do you say..) so they are yelling como se dice all the time. They say it so often that I have accidently told kind Koreans como se dice in attempt to thank them more than once. But anyway, it became our large wave catch phrase, we saw a big one rolling in and Devin would shout como se dice and we would attempt to body surf in. This went on for about an hour and a half until freezing we decided to head back to the hostel, change, and go out for the night. The same thirty minute subway ride is much more unpleasant when you are drenched. We made it back to the hostel and took rotating quick showers to get the sand off. We ended up taking naps and hanging out until about seven when we finally decided to head out for the evening. It was still raining a lot but the hostel let us borrow three umbrellas so we were off. Jesa and James were in charge of picking dinner, (I only plan daytime activities) so naturally we ended up walking into three restaurants and walking around for an hour before one angry James Gulley demanded she make a decision. We settled on a soupy restaurant where we each enjoyed a bowl of pork and rice soup, with other questionable floaters. They gave us plates of vegetables, garlic, spices, and baby shrimp for flavor. (Jesa and I added none.) James, again, ate a pepper and cried, when will he learn. After dinner James wanted to head back to the first bar we went to the night before and watch the Korean world cup soccer game that started at eleven. We hung out for a long time just talking and eating the weird popcorn. James made friends with the bar owners son and they chatted it up at the bar for a long time. About half-way through our stay there a very drunk, and possibly pregnant, Korean woman walked in with her “not boyfriend” and sat at the table behind us. She first told Devin he was very handsome and kissed his hand and demanded he kiss hers. Then about fifteen minutes later when James rejoined us she came over with chop sticks full of food and wanted to feed him, this whole time the “not boyfriend” is sitting at their table apologizing. This lady was really laying it on thick with James and it looked like she was trying to kiss him. After repeatedly telling him it probably wasn’t a good idea, aka mad girlfriend, she fed him and left. Kristin got the whole thing on tape and you can hear Devin and me in the background telling him no while Kristin egged her on. So eventually Jesa grew weary and I walked with her back to our hostel to turn in for the night around 1145. I warned everyone before we left we were waking up at eight am the next day and complaining was forbidden. (they will get used to it eventually) Jesa and I crashed and were attacked later that evening when they returned with pillows. We woke up right at eight the next day and after rolling James out of bed we were off to the roof to enjoy our toast and hot chocolate! The rain had died down so I drank my hot coco overlooking the city! We decided that our first stop of the day would be the famous Busan fish market. It did not disappoint. I wish you could smell it, gag! We subwayed to the harbor and found a million stalls of any sea creature you could ever imagine! Fish I have never seen before stared back at me alive through glass tanks and octopuses were thrown out on the ground. After walking around outside for a while we found the indoor market, now that was cool! Stalls and stalls of live fish splaying water out of their tanks and crazy shelled fish stuck to the side of the glass. We walked out to the harbor and watched the seagulls and huge boats. We decided to keep walking and happened across a lotte department store, big deal here, and noticed they had a free observation tower on the top floor. We rode the escalators up to the twelfth floor, I still vote elevators would have been more logical. The deck was gorgeous and one half over looked the harbor and the other half overlooked the city. After taking a million pictures we decided to try our luck at a tour boat that goes all around the many small islands off the coast. Unfortunately after a long search and eventually finding it all ferries were cancelled due to the weather, it wasn’t even raining yet. We were close to the train station so we just decided to head back to Daegu early. Jesa and I were hoping to catch the Lutheran service that apparently at four thirty, not five like the sheet said, so we ended up sitting outside the chapel for two hours talking about religion and praying on our own. That night we all hung out and watched a movie and prepared for camp the next day!
I hope everyone’s summer is going swimmingly and I hope to hear about what you’re up to too!
Rain, rain go away,
Elizabeth
Ciao Bella,
Monday night was the first day of official camp adventure. We have the same basic morning schedule each day, except field trip days on Thursday. Blitz, small group time, club time, all camp activity, and lunch make up the morning then Monday and Friday are rotating activities, Tuesday is swimming and Wednesday is bowling. Each day we end camp with snack and closing, when we sing more relaxing songs to calm the kids down before their parents pick them up. We begin at nine o’clock with all camp blitz on the patio, blitz is singing songs to get the kids ready for a fun filled day. After singing and introducing ourselves we broke into our first small groups, the kinders all sat in a circle and we said our names and our favorite candy. They are too cute, sixteen little adorable faces and some with evil personalities. I was pretty concerned when I found out I was in the kinder room, it has a bad rep, but they just need a little structure and discipline and their behavior has already been improving.
The club I was in charge of this week for space week was science camp. On Monday we talked about the sun and played electricity and telephone, on Tuesday we made paper airplane rocket ships and had a contest to see who could throw their closest to the “moon,” on Wednesday we made mobiles of the planets and stars, and on Friday we presented what we had learned that week to the rest of the center. Lunch time is also always very interesting. We get to eat with the kids every day, yay free food, but its family style dinning so you have to walk around to each table to serve them, boo taking forever. The food is pretty good and I am learning to eat fast standing up after I serve the kids but before anyone needs seconds. Last summer I never had the chance to work with kindergarteners because they were still at the child development centers but here they put them in the same building. It’s pretty cute that someone is always holding my hand or sitting on my lap, or falling asleep on me during closing. Which is pretty common, they don’t have nap time anymore so around three thirty down they go as we are sitting in a circle singing. There is one little girl in particular, Keyona, who really struggles with following directions and she was sitting up in the circle and kept falling asleep and bobbing down and then waking up and bobbing down and waking up, it was pretty funny.
On Thursday we took the kids on our first field trip. It went a lot better than I expected. We departed for wobang world, and amusement park, early that morning. Devin is normally the one who helps me with the kinders when he isn’t teaching swim lessons so we sat with the kinders behind us on the bus and spent the whole bus ride handing out coloring books and toys. These buses have complicated seat belts which is nice because they are stuck in their seats. Xavier and Andre were partnered to be walking buddies and weren’t very happy about it, in the first fifteen minutes of the bus ride they fought, cried, then fell asleep on each other. The park was a lot of fun, nothing like the danger zones we went to in Italy. The kinders are pretty height limited so we kept it to merry-go-round, kiddy rides, and the log flume. The log flume was a lot of fun but you really had to hold these little kids down so they wouldn’t fly out. After breaking for lunch we found a ball room and played for over an hour. It was a room with thousands of soft balls all over the floor and an upper balcony that looked over the ground. There were a ton of different cannons that you put the soft balls in and other shooting things. They had ball bags that you could fill then put them on a pulley system and crank them to the top of the upper balcony. Devin was a slave driver and had all the kids down filling bags up for him then sending them to him so he could shoot down at them. It really took up a lot of time, thank goodness. On the bus ride home everyone passed out on their partner and Devin and I battled it out in the yellow game, there are a million pink cars here.
So all in all camp was pretty fun this week, exhausting but fun. We were all ready for a break come Friday evening around four thirty so we hustled back to the hotel to pack up our bags for Busan. We taxied to the train station and bought five tickets on the train. The train was an hour long and we were able to sit family style with a table between us and we traveled through gorgeous mountains. We arrived in Busan around eight thirty and exited the train station to find a peace rally and live concert. We walked in the direction that we thought was the subway station, and eventually found it. Our hostel directions were to take the subway get off at exit seven, walk to the family mart, go under a tunnel, and we would be there. Oh brother was it more complicated. We bought our tickets and exited correctly then we were greeted by a nice Korean woman who spoke English and she offered to help us, Devin and James were drooling and claiming her as their future wife. She led us out of the tunnel and we walked in the direction she pointed. She was wrong. After passing three family marts and finding no tunnels we called the hostel and asked for directions. She told us to walk to the 42st hotel and she would pick us up there. This lovely Korean lady picked us up and walked us across the street to the mini mart and under a tunnel, we were so close. We stayed at blue backpacker’s hostel in a dorm for six people, three bunk beds, and a private bathroom. We changed and went out for the evening James, the bar connoisseur leading the way. We stopped in our first bar and much to Devin’s despair James and Jesa ordered French fries and tater tots. NOT KOREAN FOOD! They did give us Korean bar food though, which instead of pretzels and peanuts consists of weird popcorn and fish scales, no lie! After hanging out and chit chatting for awhile we decided it was time to move on and found and underground bar called M. We sat at the bar where they displayed every known type of alcohol and James, the bartender, spent the evening teaching me anything and everything about booze. After M we decided to turn in for the night and walked back to the hostel. James, Kristin, and Devin stopped at a family mart to each get a different beer then we spent the evening sitting in our hostel laughing and chatting till Jesa yelled at us to go to bed.
Saturday morning we decided we would wake up around eight and start the day, however, Jesa and I were up and ready to go by six thirty. We were up on the top bunks and I crawled over to her bunk and we were chatting and laughing until both boys got out of their beds to smack us with their pillows and demand we shut up. We headed down to the common room to use the internet and plan our day. When eight finally did roll around certain people were not happy to be getting up, but they did and we went up on the roof to enjoy our free breakfast of toast and hot chocolate. It was raining, though I assured everyone it would stop. After breakfast we packed up and headed out, our first stop Haundae beach. We jumped on the subway and began our thirty minute ride. It had stopped raining temporarily so we threw our stuff on the beach and dove into the east sea. Koreans don’t wear bathing suits here; they wear wet suits or clothes so we stuck out a little. We swam next to a surf contest and enjoyed jumping over waves and riding them in. The rain started to pick up again and people were starting to get cold so we decided to head in for some grub. We packed up, found interesting ways to change out of our swim suits and headed to an overhanging roof to plot our next moves. There aren’t really a ton of indoor activities to do in Busan so we stood around for about ten minutes eating snacks and peanut butter sandwiches until I made everyone walk to the distant lighthouse declaring they wouldn’t melt. Four unhappy counselors followed and purchased rain gear at a local stand. (we were already soaked so why they bought it I am unsure) we walked and walked and walked towards the lighthouse right on the shore. We were walking around some of the coolest rocks I have ever seen. We made it to the lighthouse and were engulfed in a torrential down pour. Luckily there was a gazebo up the hill so we hung out and ate more sandwiches for a while. After sitting four about forty five minutes taking in the scenery etc Devin declared that we should just go swim in the rain since we were all drenched anyway and there was nothing better to do. So we hiked back down to the beach, where the rain had worsened and shoved all our stuff under James’ umbrella and dove into the ocean. The Korean word for thank you is Kamsahamnida which Devin and James thinks sounds like Como se dice (which in Spanish means how do you say..) so they are yelling como se dice all the time. They say it so often that I have accidently told kind Koreans como se dice in attempt to thank them more than once. But anyway, it became our large wave catch phrase, we saw a big one rolling in and Devin would shout como se dice and we would attempt to body surf in. This went on for about an hour and a half until freezing we decided to head back to the hostel, change, and go out for the night. The same thirty minute subway ride is much more unpleasant when you are drenched. We made it back to the hostel and took rotating quick showers to get the sand off. We ended up taking naps and hanging out until about seven when we finally decided to head out for the evening. It was still raining a lot but the hostel let us borrow three umbrellas so we were off. Jesa and James were in charge of picking dinner, (I only plan daytime activities) so naturally we ended up walking into three restaurants and walking around for an hour before one angry James Gulley demanded she make a decision. We settled on a soupy restaurant where we each enjoyed a bowl of pork and rice soup, with other questionable floaters. They gave us plates of vegetables, garlic, spices, and baby shrimp for flavor. (Jesa and I added none.) James, again, ate a pepper and cried, when will he learn. After dinner James wanted to head back to the first bar we went to the night before and watch the Korean world cup soccer game that started at eleven. We hung out for a long time just talking and eating the weird popcorn. James made friends with the bar owners son and they chatted it up at the bar for a long time. About half-way through our stay there a very drunk, and possibly pregnant, Korean woman walked in with her “not boyfriend” and sat at the table behind us. She first told Devin he was very handsome and kissed his hand and demanded he kiss hers. Then about fifteen minutes later when James rejoined us she came over with chop sticks full of food and wanted to feed him, this whole time the “not boyfriend” is sitting at their table apologizing. This lady was really laying it on thick with James and it looked like she was trying to kiss him. After repeatedly telling him it probably wasn’t a good idea, aka mad girlfriend, she fed him and left. Kristin got the whole thing on tape and you can hear Devin and me in the background telling him no while Kristin egged her on. So eventually Jesa grew weary and I walked with her back to our hostel to turn in for the night around 1145. I warned everyone before we left we were waking up at eight am the next day and complaining was forbidden. (they will get used to it eventually) Jesa and I crashed and were attacked later that evening when they returned with pillows. We woke up right at eight the next day and after rolling James out of bed we were off to the roof to enjoy our toast and hot chocolate! The rain had died down so I drank my hot coco overlooking the city! We decided that our first stop of the day would be the famous Busan fish market. It did not disappoint. I wish you could smell it, gag! We subwayed to the harbor and found a million stalls of any sea creature you could ever imagine! Fish I have never seen before stared back at me alive through glass tanks and octopuses were thrown out on the ground. After walking around outside for a while we found the indoor market, now that was cool! Stalls and stalls of live fish splaying water out of their tanks and crazy shelled fish stuck to the side of the glass. We walked out to the harbor and watched the seagulls and huge boats. We decided to keep walking and happened across a lotte department store, big deal here, and noticed they had a free observation tower on the top floor. We rode the escalators up to the twelfth floor, I still vote elevators would have been more logical. The deck was gorgeous and one half over looked the harbor and the other half overlooked the city. After taking a million pictures we decided to try our luck at a tour boat that goes all around the many small islands off the coast. Unfortunately after a long search and eventually finding it all ferries were cancelled due to the weather, it wasn’t even raining yet. We were close to the train station so we just decided to head back to Daegu early. Jesa and I were hoping to catch the Lutheran service that apparently at four thirty, not five like the sheet said, so we ended up sitting outside the chapel for two hours talking about religion and praying on our own. That night we all hung out and watched a movie and prepared for camp the next day!
I hope everyone’s summer is going swimmingly and I hope to hear about what you’re up to too!
Rain, rain go away,
Elizabeth
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