Saturday and Sunday: reprise

On Saturday morning we slept in until noon, when we got a call on the room phone in Korean, supposedly telling us it was check-out time. So James went and re-booked our room for one more night since we were going to leave from Busan on Sunday morning to head back to Uijeongbu.

It had taken us a good 2 hours to get transportation home on Friday. First we tried to get the KTX (Korean Transport something-or-other) train back, but there were no seats left for Sunday back to Seoul. So we asked about a bus, which we were able to book straight to Uijeongbu instead of Seoul. The only problem was the express bus terminal was miles away from the train station and they don't sell tickets over the phone, so we had to get on the subway again to get two tickets for noon on Sunday. 

We decided to take it easy on Saturday, and wandered around Busan a bit, first looking at "Foreigner's Street", which was really more like Russia street, since most of the signs were in Cyrillic. Then we headed to the Jalgachi Fish Market, the largest fish market in the country.

It's  a long street covered in colorful umbrellas with people sitting outside with every type of seafood imaginable for sale or consumption on the spot. Some of it was pretty normal; crabs, clams, etc.

Some of it was normal for Korea, such as mounds of dried little fish.

Some was a little hard to find, like shark.

And some of it was downright gross. Like the dried turtles and the dog:

The people there were very sociable; trying to get you to buy whatever they were selling. I think most of them thought since we were foreign we didn't know that you could eat the fish they had swimming around in tanks. They kept trying to tell us that they could cut up the fish and feed it to us, and it would be delicious. 

After the market, we decided to head up to Busan Tower, which is 120meters tall and has a great view of central Busan.

On the way to the base of the tower, we heard some good music (which is very rare here) and decided to check it out. About 20 minutes later, we were rewarded with a break-dancing competition with dancers and DJs from Korea, the UK, the US, France, and Germany.

James used to break-dance, so he was having a great time, and I was fascinated by some of the things these people (guys and girls) were able to do with their bodies. The setting itself was also amusing to me, as the dancers were performing in front of a traditional pavilion.

After watching for a few hours, we headed up to the tower.

It had a great view of the dancing competition we'd just been watching,

as well as the rest of Busan.

After looking around for a few minutes, we headed back down to find some dinner. We tried to find s0-galbi, but were unsuccessful, so we had samgyopsal again before heading down to Dadaepo Beach for the International Rock Festival that's held there every year. We got there rather late and only saw one band, T-Earth, which was pretty, well, boring. I think it was a bad 80's Korean rip-off of Aerosmith, but not entertaining in the least. We ended up meeting up with some other foreigners (one of which recognized me from Vinyl Underground the night before - we'd danced together for a little bit) and spent the rest of the evening with them.

After the rather disappointing concert concluded, we all headed back downtown in a couple taxis to go dancing. We ended up back at VU around midnight, where I suddenly ended my night by dislocating my knee dancing. Luckily (I think), I had dislocated my other knee back in 11th grade at the Homecoming dance, so I knew exactly what had happened and what to do - I knocked it back in to place. I had to have someone help me to the nearest chair, where I spent the rest of the evening putting ice on it, telling James I was fine and to go dance, and trying to keep a rather creepy Russian guy from hitting on me when I couldn't really move anywhere to get away from him. We got back to our hotel around 4am with a taxi, set the alarm to get up in time to catch the bus, and went straight to sleep.

Either we both slept through the alarm, or my alarm-setting skills at 4am are rather lacking, because we didn't get up until 11:42 - with 18 minutes to get packed and get to a bus station that was 45 minutes away. James was (understandably) very upset, so we packed our stuff as quickly as possible (I was hobbling pretty badly at this point) and headed to the train station near us to see if the tourist info center could help us get another ticket. They told us that we could exchange our tickets for a W10,000 fee, which was fine with us, but the next bus wasn't until 5pm. So we grabbed some food, and took the subway to the express bus terminal, where we waited for a few hours for our bus. (We waited outside because, as most public buildings in Korea, the bus terminal didn't have air conditioning, and at least there was a breeze outside). 

We left on time, but getting closer to Seoul the bus got caught in some pretty bad traffic. James and I were amazed at how many people got up out of their seats to come to the front of the bus to tell the driver where to go to avoid the traffic. There were at least 6 people sitting on the stairs and in the aisle-way trying to tell the driver what to do. He let about half the bus off somewhere outside of Uijeongbu, and we finally made it into town around 11:30, about 2 hours after our scheduled arrival. We grabbed a taxi from the bus stand and went straight to my apartment, where Cherita brought me a knee brace for my knee. We talked briefly for a bit about what our weeks had been like, and then I sent James and Cherita packing because I had work the next morning.

I'm very thankful that I didn't hurt my knee until my last night of vacation, otherwise the week would have been ruined for me. I've been going to an acupuncture clinic (on the advice and insistence of my boss) for the past week to help it, and it may be working, though I'm not completely convinced. I've also resolved next time I have a vacation to give myself at least 1 day to recover. We should have gone back to town Saturday night instead of Sunday morning, but now I know. And knowing is half the battle. 

I'm here

It’s been quite an eventful few days. I got on the plane from Daytona on time, and transferred planes with no problem. The flight from San Francisco was very long, and a bit cramped. I had wanted to at least see the US for the last time as we were flying away, but it was overcast from the moment we got in the air until we hit Alaska. I did get to see a little bit of Russia before we got to Korea – seems like a vast wasteland of frozen tundra to me. I got off the plane, and got through customs with no problem. My bags were even at the baggage claim as soon as I got there. I found the limousine bus that I needed (they’re basically like charter busses) and got on it right away. The bus driver, however, didn’t speak English. The stops were announced in Korean, and then in English. But at the City Hall stop, it didn’t say that the next stop was in Uijeongbu. So I tried to ask the driver, since I had been told that my ride would meet me at the last stop in Uijeongbu. He didn’t understand what I was asking.


 

There was a family that got off at the stop with me, who had a little girl and a little boy. I guess the girl was taking English classes because she knew a few words and tried to find out where I was trying to go. But I had conveniently forgotten the name of the school, and I hadn’t written down any of the phone numbers that my boss had given me. So they drove me about a block to the city hall, where the night watchmen were nice enough to let me use their computers to find the phone number of Lee, who was supposed to pick me up. After we finally got a hold of him, they gave me come coffee (which is actually instant coffee sold in little packets, but it wasn’t bad), and we watched soccer until Lee, the director's husband, arrived.

He got my bags into the van, and drove me though downtown Uijeongbu, passed the school that I’ll be working at, and then showed me where my apartment is. It’s right off the main road, but on a little side street so there’s no traffic, and about 10 blocks or so from the school. My apartment is on the second floor, right above a flower shop. It’s a studio, with what passes for a kitchen, a bathroom, and a “porch” where the washer is that faces another apartment building under construction. The front door doesn’t have a key; it’s a number code so I don’t need to worry about loosing my keys anymore. The kitchen has a dorm-type fridge, a microwave, a sink, and a hot plate. There’s no closet, just a metal rack with some hangers on it. There’s a desk/table with two chairs, a place near the door to put your shoes, a small table that you have to sit on the ground to use, a tv with the cable already working (My options in English include the BBC and a movie channel. That's it.), a bed (which is apparently brand new but hard as a rock), and a cubby hole-type thing. The air conditioner has a remote, but it’s been cold enough here that I’ve just left the windows open. Apparently this is spring weather, and it’s going to get much hotter in the summer.
 

 


The area itself is beautiful. The mountains are right next to the city, walking distance actually, but you’d never know it if you’re in downtown because everything is so flat, and the high-rise buildings cover them up. Since the country is so small, everything has a small footprint and goes up ridiculously high. All the apartment buildings are higher than most hotels I’ve seen. Mine is an exception, as it’s only three stories, and has shops underneath it, including a flower/plant shop. The school is on the sixth floor of one of these buildings.


I’m a few blocks from Home Plus, which is like a 24 hour Walmart, mixed with a department store. The bottom floor is a food court and the designer clothes. Each section is separate, and you have to pay the cashier for the items you want in their section – most of them are separated by brand. The second floor is the grocery section. When they run out of something, they don’t re-stock it until 5am, so when I went there tonight, they were out of bread, bananas, and a few other things I had wanted to get. There’s a little section in the middle that’s kind of like a mini restaurant, so if you get hungry while you’re food shopping you can eat. And yes, deodorant is no-where to be found. This place is much more sanitary than the downtown market-place, which has every kind of meat and seafood (squid, manta-ray, octopus, etc.) lying out in the air with no ice and flies buzzing around. The third floor is the rest of the home-type things that you would normally find in a Walmart. Of course everything is in Korean, though there’s a lot more English than I thought there would be. There’s more English on things like shirts and ads, but I think most people that wear those shirts have no idea what they say. Tax is included in the price of everything, so the price listed is what you pay.

There’s also old money and new money, referring to bills and not to people. I tried to use one of my bills in a vending machine to get a drink, but they only take the new money. I should be able to trade out the rest of my US dollars sometime this week, when I set up a bank account. Cherita, one of the other teachers who showed me around today, thinks that I’ll get paid next week for half a paycheck. She said they take your bills, like electricity and cable, out of your check. There’s a wireless set up here, but I need the password for it, which I was told I’ll get tomorrow.
Cherita took me out to lunch today around 1. I didn’t wake up until noon when she knocked on my door – and I probably should be in bed right now since I have to be at work tomorrow at 9:15. She said there are three English teachers – myself, Cherita, and James- and three Korean teachers. It’s a private school, and apparently very expensive, as I only have 6 or 7 kids per class. I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow more of what that’s going to be like.