Chuseok in Busan (Part 2)

     Hey folks.  Time to wrap up the 2nd installment of the Busan recap over the Chuseok holiday weekend.  We last left off on Sunday evening (September 11th), at which point we had just been to an awesome temple and finally fought off our lingering headaches and hangovers once and for all from the night before.  It was time to move on to equally cool touristy things, so we hit the subway again and trekked to a place on the other end of the city, a place we had heard many things about and were excited to check out: Jalgalchi Fish market.  At full running operating capacity, Jalgalchi is South Korea's busiest and largest fresh fish market.  So a Sunday night, the night before the big holiday, didn't necessarily provide the buzzing atmosphere we had associated with Jalgalchi, but it was still a great shock to the senses in every way:

Just blocks from the ocean, Jalgalchi is lined with streets like this for blocks and blocks...folks selling fresh seafood on the left all day and night.  This picture was taken around 9:00 pm, so it was amazing to see that business was still going on.

Here's a good example of what the inside of Jalgalchi looks like.  The floors are all very wet; there are points in the complex where there might be an inch or two of standing water, thus justifying the big plastic boots, ponchos, and overalls most workers here don.  This picture could have turned out better, as the lights were a little overwhelming to the lens, but Jalgalchi's interior looks much like this: yellow tables, crates, hoses and water everywhere, with any kind of seafood imaginable floating, flopping, swimming, or freshly butchered and fermenting.  

Here are some more such baskets and tanks in which seafood is kept.

Nice, fresh fillets outside the complex.  These fish, when checked out up close, don't even seem real...it's amazing to think of the skill it takes to come up with fillets that beautiful from fish who are so rail-thin and bony.  I considered just buying a fillet in sheer admiration of the meticulous work it probably took to prepare it.

It's a shame I didn't take a more up-close-and-personal picture, but these are mostly crabs, oysters, clams, and mussels.  One cool thing about the crabs is that they're all (mostly) still alive and clawing around, squirming on the table, and the mussels and clams all have that nice, strong seafood smell that tells you they came right off the boat or right out of the nets that very day. 

What's all happening in this picture is a little more difficult to explain.  I'm especially confused by the finger-shaped creatures in the middle basket of the left-hand column...they were all alive, squirming around, and to be completely honestly, did not look the least bit appetizing.  And that might be saying a lot, because I love Korean food.

Here's Zach, our buddy from Texas, saddling up and getting friendly with some fresh squid.

Again, this would have been a cooler place to see at, say, its peak at lunch-time or thereabouts.  It was, however, still really great to see at night, if for no reason other than the look of pure joy or confusion any Korean gets from observing a foreigner walk back and forth from vendor to vendor either licking his or her lips in anticipation of how delicious everything is, or standing in pure, underwhelmed disgust at the smell or sight of some of these crazy seafood options.  Jalgalchi Fish Market is a must on my list of essential spots to check out in Busan, and I'll be back someday.

After a quick shower and change at the hostel, the boys were primed to hit the town yet again.  Sunday night, we all agreed, would be a little slower and easier than Saturday; we figured we were just so excited to be in a new place on Saturday that we more or less lost track of just kicking back and having some fun.  Sunday night, although agreeably more relaxed, was, nonetheless, spent on the 14th floor of a 14-floor building overlooking all of Haeundae Beach and thus Busan, at a rocking bar full of foreigners (and really, this weekend was crawling with foreigners just about everywhere) called "Rock 'N Roll" bar.  A really cool place with some familiar drinks and even room for our backpacks.

Here are Zach, Toni, and Erik enjoying their night.  Zach and Erik, I believe, brought home the gold for the Jeolla Province teachers at a beer pong tournament in the bar.

Me and my Wisconsin brother, Aaron, digging the scene.

     Sunday night wrapped up pretty early, and I think everyone was excited to get some sleep and get ready for our last full day, the official Chuseok holiday.  Woke up at the hostel at a pretty decent hour, unlike the day prior, and caught the subway down to Haeundae Beach by noon only to find this beautiful scene waiting for me at the subway exit:

Can't even explain how clutch the weather was that day.

One cool part of it being the Chuseok holiday is that the beach was pretty empty, with the exception of foreigners dotting the sandscape.  The most logical thing to do was alternate between about half an hour of water time, and half an hour of beer drinking/frisbee/land time.

Some of the boys in the sand.  Clockwise: me, Aaron, Erik, and Monti.  Beers in hand, of course.

I'd be kicking myself if I didn't get a picture with the girls as well...I think we can all agree they were looking absolutely foxy on the beach.  In fact, when my co-teachers came across this picture, 4 of 5 more or less gasped and yelled "oh, SO SEXY!" or "Sam, you spend time with SEXY GIRLS!"  Yes I do, co-teachers, yes I do.

Cool picture of all the umbrellas under a nice 6:00 pm Busan sunset.  

I might as well have been on vacation.  One of those days where you just refuse to believe that you're in South Korea and you're actually there to work.

And what's a better way to get clean after a day at the beach than with a little bromantic tubby time?  Me and Monti at a motel where some other friends were staying at, getting cleaned up and fresh for our last night in Busan.

We hit an amazing barbecue place for dinner, because we decided we ought to reward ourselves for a great weekend thus far.  That, or we really were just starving for beef and copious amounts of booze again.  Maybe a little bit of both.  From left to right: me (in rare tomato form), Zach, our friend Gabe (not sure if I have any pictures of him yet, he's a San Francisco Bay-area native, one of the nicest people I've met here), Monti, Erik, Toni, and Julia.

After dinner, we met up with a huge gang of foreigners which brought our total to about 20.  I can't imagine how ridiculous we must have looked, taking 4-5 cabs at a time, all to the same location, in hopes of finding each other at every stop.  We decided to spend a few hours having some drinks on Gwangali Beach, which, along with Haeundae Beach (see other ocean pictures), provides some of the greatest cityscapes and nightlife in the whole city.  Here is a picture of the main street on Gwangali Beach, with some buildings, mostly hotels, in the background.

And here is Gwangali Beach looking out toward the water, with a few of some buildings and the Geoje Bridge, which is the largest and longest bridge in South Korea, coming in at just over 5 miles in length, and spanning the shallow bay from the Haeundae/Gwangali area toward the more western part of the city in which our hostel was located.  We didn't have the opportunity to take a taxi ride on the bridge, so that will be saved for next time.  But how cool does this city look when it's lit up?

Here's a parting shot of the Geoje Bridge, and this only accounts for about 5% of it.  

     So that's about all there is to say about our weekend in Busan.  We were thankful to have purchased our return tickets to Gwangju in advance, as the second we did so when we arrived in Busan that Saturday, there was only 1 remaining ticket back to Gwangju on Tuesday the 13th.  Dodged a bullet there.  Then, it was back to the Hampyeong for a short week of Wednesday through Friday classes.  And then, that following weekend of September 16th, it was time for the Wando Beach Party, which is an epically advertised gathering of foreigners around Jeolla Province and beyond.  Numbers often trend into the triple digits, as many come out for the party to drink, socialize, live it up and get some sun for a few days.  

     After the school introductions, it's probably fair to think that I do more traveling and sightseeing than I do actually working and teaching at my schools.  Just wait.  After the Wando Beach party pictures, it might blow your mind at just how much fun and beauty you can take in alongside your work here in South Korea.  But that's for a different post on a different day.  Maybe tomorrow?  You keep reading, and I'll keep blogging.  Thanks for reading.  Love to all, and all the best.

-Sam Teacher

Chuseok in Busan (Part 1)

     Alright, as promised, here's a kickoff of the cool travel stories/posts/pics.  I'm still about 2 months behind, but I'll do 2 quick posts on our long weekend in Busan to keep things moving swiftly.

     So there's this holiday that Koreans celebrate called Chuseok.  It's more or less their celebration of the coming harvest season, or what we might call our Thanksgiving, celebrated (in 2011) on September 12th. The 12th was a Monday, so the Chuseok holiday provided a long weekend this year--some schools, in fact, did not return to class until the following Thursday or Friday, which provided a 5-6 day vacation for many of us foreigners.  I had to travel back to Hampyeong starting on Tuesday and report to my main school on Wednesday, so it wasn't as long a weekend as it could have been, but it rocked regardless.

     Considering the trek to Busan is about 2 hours and change from Gwangju, getting there on Friday can be difficult.  So we decided to stay back and do what we usually do on a Friday night...stay at Aaron's pad in the city.  Erik and I caught our usual evening bus to Gwangju, stayed with Aaron for the night, and prepared to travel the following Saturday morning, the 10th.  Our tickets were, in fact, the final ones bought on our particular bus--one side note about the Chuseok holiday weekend is that traveling can be painfully slow all around the country, as folks travel back to their hometowns to spend time with family, and generally pack the roads everywhere.  This means that your typical 2-and-a-half-hour trip from Gwangju to Busan could take anywhere between 4 and 8 hours, even though the two are only about 100 miles from each other.  Luckily, our bus was really quick, and didn't take much extra time in arriving to Busan.  It still provided enough time for us to just mellow out and crash for a little while.  Here's a pic of the happy campers on the bus:

Relaxing in the back of the bus.

     The coolest thing about Busan, from the start, is that it wasn't Hampyeong and it wasn't Gwangju.  Up to this point, we had been in Korea nearly a month and hadn't really spent an extended amount of time in any other cities, let alone the 2nd largest city in South Korea.  We had a hostel booked, and were able to negotiate directions with our taxi driver on the very first try--he seemed happy as a clam to have some foreigners in his cab, and even practiced a little English with us.  We knew we were off to a great start, but hadn't anticipated the solid digs we'd committed to.  This was, admittedly, my first experience in a hostel; the stigma of that cheap, cramped, sort of sketchy living space I've been conditioned to believe in is largely the result of friends' stories from Europe and elsewhere abroad, and I must say that this hostel had anything but those qualities.  I was blown away...apparently, the guy who runs the place has some relatively deep pockets for a youngster, as well as some great English.  The hostel lies completely within the 2nd floor of a major apartment complex, and it is NICE:

Here's the main kitchen area, with plenty of food supplies around.

I'm sure I looked a little ridiculous to all the other foreigners in the place (about 5-10 other ones staying that same weekend, from what seemed like all around the globe), snapping pictures of my first real hostel experience.  This place really was a gem for about $30 a night.  

     The first order of business then, after checking into the hostel and meeting some of the other tourists, was familiarizing ourselves with transportation.  Buses to the nearest subway stop, luckily, rolled by our hostel about every 10 minutes, so that was really convenient.  A $1, 15-minute bus ride later, and we were able to go just about anywhere in Busan we desired.  I don't have any pictures of the subway system itself, but Busan's version is about the most well kept subway you'll ever see anywhere.  It's quiet, efficient, and clean; there's plenty of room to sit comfortably on any car, and plenty of English to help us navigate a bit.  

     Stop #1 off the subway was Haeundae, a popular area for the younger crowds who like good bars, restaurants, and beaches.  It's probably most famous for its spectacular beach area, which provides some nice views of the skyline...like this:

Aaron, myself, and Erik chilling on Haeundae Beach.  It was a little cold to start the weekend, as 70 degrees and overcast wasn't our idea of ideal beach weather, but we'd have our wish in about 48 hours. Really cool to just walk up and down the beach and meet foreigners--there were countless out-of-towners visiting for the holiday weekend.  As Busan largely faces ocean to the south, this picture is looking back west toward the direction of our hostel from Haeundae.

Here's a shot looking the other direction (east) toward what is more or less the very southeastern tip of South Korea.  What I immediately noticed is that, minus some of the large apartments visible here, this neighborhood in particular looks a bit like a hillside, seaside Mediterranean village might look like in, say, Greece or Italy.  Yay or nay?

Looking west again from a giant rock overlooking a fishing hole.  It's hard to spot in this picture, but our hostel is nestled somewhere between the darker mountains to the left of Erik and Aaron.  And what you see as far as giant buildings go is about 1% of Busans' understood "skyline" or "downtown" area; at 3.5+ million people, there's so much more to Busan than I can really show in these posts.  The city is so spread out, as you might be able to see, given these coastal mountain formations all around.

Here's a path just a few blocks from Haeundae Beach, on which we found a friendly dog who was nice enough to hang out with me for a few pictures but not quite nice enough to look at the camera.

One thing that's always a nice shock to the senses, rain or shine, is a market.  Busan markets, in particular, center on all kinds of seafood, so the smells in particular are wild.  This is a little bit later in the day, so things were a little quiet in Haeundae Market (which stretches on for about 4-5 blocks down this alleyway), but the next crop of pictures will give you a sense of some of the wild stuff you might see at your average market in Busan.

Here's one such example.  This dude was, and I kid you not, skinning live eels (see silver stuff on table), chopping them into about 10 pieces (see blood spatters on table), and throwing the pieces in a bowl, preparing them for the grill, which was just to his right.  Within about 5 minutes, he'd had pan-fried eel for customers.  While I've been told it's actually really delicious, I haven't yet tried it.  Something about watching the whole process go down in front of my own two eyes within my first month in Korea deterred me...

Here's another shock to the senses, but mainly just the sight.  Doesn't take much thought to figure out what you're looking at here, does it?  Again, this is something I haven't exactly tried (to the best of my knowledge) since coming to Korea, but I can't rule it out.  It's expensive...I can tell you that much.

Coolest find in the middle of Haeundae Market, just in time for the night's rain to begin, were these fly Kolping brand jackets we found for roughly $20.  We thought it best to start dressing a bit more like Koreans, so that really became the justification for these.  The friendly older ladies who sold all of this nice, affordable hiking gear (Koreans will most likely think of it as solid hiking gear, whether they hike in it or not, while we might just call it "a rain jacket"), got a kick out of some foreigners seeking a more Korean look.  We weren't complaining about it.

...But back to the more important stuff, like fresh fish staring right back at us.

Here's another look down a narrow alley of Haeundae Market.  In the foremost tubs are mostly crabs, crawfish, and oysters.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what all of this ultimately is.  Some of it I identified as beans, soybeans, different kinds of rice, and even some fresh salt and spices.  Couldn't read too much, but it just looked like it needed its own picture.

Now these are a bit more familiar.  Some peppers, most likely a little spicy, that will probably be used to make copious amounts of red pepper paste, a little splash of which tastes really good with just about all Korean food.  You see this red pepper paste, sometimes called gochujang, most commonly with barbecue restaurants.

     So that first night from Busan is a bit of a blur, and there's nothing worth noting as far as pictures go.  Suffice it to say we were so excited to be in the city that we all decided on an "all you can drink" foreigner bar between the hours of 10 pm and 1 am...which was followed by a really unorganized attempt to get to a hip district with lots of clubs around 3 am.  That didn't exactly happen, and we ended up losing a few folks for a while.  Luckily, we made it back to our hostel around 5 am, but it's difficult to remember just exactly how we did it.

     Sunday morning, then, was a little rough for everyone.  We took our time getting ready for the day, and finally got the wheels spinning around noon.  After some bumming around the subway and a few cool neighborhoods, we settled on a trip to an awesome temple around 3 pm.  

This is Yonggungsa Temple, looking toward the temple and the sharp contrast with the coast on the pathway in.  It's hard to capture in a photograph, but this was one of the most breathtaking places I'd been in my life...an awesome contrast with the waves crashing on the rocks and the much quieter area around the temple.  People take a lot of pictures, but generally don't speak much around places like this.

Here's an equally dramatic view of the temple from a lower area, closer to the water.  Here you can really see that it's absolutely dug into these rocks where the ocean crashes below.  Saw a few dudes fishing out on the very tips of these rocks, looked like some scary business.

Here's a close-up of the main temple.  The colors were cool, and again, it's difficult to show all of that with a camera, but the attention to detail in painting some of these temples is unreal.  There were doors around the temple, through which you could enter and pray, give offerings, or just take cool pictures.

Awkward touristy photo.

The interior of the main temple area.  Not pictured: offerings of soju, everywhere.

My best attempt to capture some of the detail around the roof.  Cool scenes of the Buddha everywhere, as well as the people he seemed to have inspired and learned from.  

 Oh hey there, Krishna.

     So I'll leave Part 1 of Busan there for now.  Saw some really cool stuff in just our first 24 hours, and things got equally cooler from Sunday night through Tuesday morning.  I'll leave that good stuff for the next blog post, which should possibly be up in the next 24 hours.  I may or may not have sprained or broken my ankle/foot today in volleyball with my school, so if that's the case...let's just say, you'll be caught up on my life sooner rather than later.

     Thanks for reading!  Next post will be Busan, Part 2.  Lots of love, and all the best.

     -Sam Teacher

Good Times in Gwangju and Hiking in Hampyeong

     Yikes, that might be the cheesiest alliteration I've used in a while.

     Okay, so time to get back on the horse.  My apologies, I haven't blogged for a good week, and my internet has been out in my apartment for the last 3-4 days.  So just to keep things moving swiftly, I'll try to cover a few weeks at a time.  My school introductions are finished, so here are some stories and pictures from my first weeks in Hampyeong and Gwangju!

     My blog is so out of date, it's hard to even nail down the exact weekend I took these pictures, but here are a few from another weekend with waygooks in Gwangju.  A usual Friday night rendezvous point, at least for the guys, seems to be Aaron's apartment in the northeastern part of the city.  It's about a $5 cab ride from the bus terminal, and the most popular guests have thus far been myself, Erik, and our friends Monti and Zach from Haenam--in case I hadn't mentioned these dudes yet, Monti is a big, jolly, fun-loving dude straight out of Chicago (the accent really gives it away) spending his first year in South Korea.  He's 26, I think, and had a few solid business jobs back home before starting his teaching abroad in Thailand recently.  After South Korea, he's looking at teaching in South America.  Zach is (and I mean this in as endearing a way as possible, Zach), the most prototypical and proud Texan I've ever met in my life, short of actually bringing his cowboy boots and hat along for the journey.  He's a stud graduate of Texas A&M University, and I believe he is 25 years old.  This is also his first experience in South Korea, and as far as I can tell, he's really digging it.

     So the 5 of us usually meet up at Aaron's apartment, on your average Gwangju weekend, sometime around 8:00 pm.  Erik and I are, more often than not, the last ones to roll in, as buses from Hampyeong don't roll into Gwangju as early and often as we'd like.  But here's a sample of the shenanigans we partake in before heading out for the night, and a solid introduction to our man Monti:

Here's Monti getting an impromptu taekwondo lesson from our friend, E.T., a University student studying solar physics in Gwangju.

     Here are a few pictures taken when we meet up with some of the waygook ladies, who more often than not teach in the Suncheon/Gwangyang area, about 50 miles southeast of Gwangju near the sea.  These first few were taken at First Nepal, which boasts of downtown Gwangju's finest Indian food.  Even though I got a little sick after this meal, everyone else seemed to really enjoy it.  And it was pretty damn good, I must say:

'Da boys.  This is our Texan friend Zach on the left, Hampyeong stud Erik Gray in the middle, and Master of Ceremonies in Gwangju, Aaron on the right.  And that is a large mug of beer.

Here's most of the gang at First Nepal.  From left to right: E.T., our buddy Mike from Ottawa, Julia, Sam (lady Sam), Sam (me Sam), Zach, Erik, Aaron, Nichole, Toni, Mackenzie (friend from California), Megan, and Monti.

     About half of our usual nights out in Gwangju on the weekends start this very way--dudes drinking at Aaron's, followed by a nice dinner with other fine folks in town for the weekend, and eventually a few bars or clubs of our choosing (although, to be fair, as you've seen...we're found our few that we tend to stick to).  Here's a good look at what downtown Gwangju might look like on your average Friday or Saturday night:

Oh yeah, and on this particular occasion, there happened to be a parade of costume-clad serial killer look-a-likes.  Standard procedure downtown.

     Here is a picture from a nice Saturday evening in the city.  We found out about some live music, some traditionally Korean and some more Western-oriented, not far from this whole busy downtown area, and decided to check it out:

Digging the tunes and some outdoor drinking.  From left to right: Zach, Erik, myself, Nichole, Toni, Megan, Sam, and Julia.

     Hopefully this will show up on my blog, but here is a sample of some of the music.  This ditty happened to sound familiar, and it just might to you as well: it's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" by Journey.  Could've sworn I was home for 5 minutes:

Again, this might not work, so I'll figure out a way to make that happen at a later date.

     There's a little bit about a quick, average weekend in Gwangju--this is more characteristic of those first days, as many of us still hadn't figured out all the cool places to go, all the easy ways to get around, all the hot nightlife spots, etc.  I promise to keep the weekend descriptions more exciting as the blog moves along, but there are other cool things to get to!

     ...Like showing you a little bit more about where I live.  Here are some photos from a hike we took in Hampyeong after school one evening in September.  Erin, Erik and myself decided we needed a little exercise and needed to explore our surroundings a bit while the sun was still high enough in the sky to hike around after work.  And we saw some pretty cool stuff, all on the edge of town.

We started walking down one of about 3 main streets that all lead out of town, and came across some cool things.  This first one was a little gazebo structure that closely resembles what Korean houses looked like as far back as the 17th and 18th centuries.  Nice.

Dinner.

Some great looking kimchi pots.  If these really are kimchi pots, and they certainly could be, I was a little too scared to open them up and smell the STANK.  Or the deliciousness.

Here's something that might surprise people about Korea, or might not: there are generally dogs running around everywhere.  On a typical 15-minute walk to the bus terminal in the morning, I can see up to about 10 random dogs digging around garbage or old food.  These two were, strangely enough, chained up and pissed off.

We started walking up a very steep path about the width of a bike path, where we were certain no cars could actually travel.  We came across lots of stone posts like this, the descriptions of which are all in Chinese characters.  Erin, being the resident East Asian language expert, helped translate a bit for us.

This was a very private residence we came across at the top of this hill.  We wanted to continue hiking, as the yard turned uphill a bit more, but we figured there was someone very important that lived in this beautiful complex, and decided pictures would suffice.

Here's a nice little pond and tree at the base of the beautiful yard.

And this picture, for whatever reason, just feels AWESOME.  We hiked up about 200 tiny stone steps to get to another place we probably shouldn't have been...what seemed to be a private family tomb.  There were some cool burial mounds and, as usual, plenty of exclusive Chinese characters, so we couldn't fully understand what we'd stumbled upon, but it was really cool.  Erik and I felt like studs.

Some of the beautiful September foliage on our hike.

Here's the very edge of town, looking down on a windy road that marks the beginning of my bus's trek to Sonbul and Sonbul Seo every Wednesday and Friday.  There is a terraced farm, with a nice pond at the bottom and the beginning of Hampyeong's larger mountains in the background.

My camera was a trooper.  Here is a nice moonlight shot of a flower in the front yard of a shop in Hampyeong.  

     I'll leave it at that for now...since my internet is out, I'm on a nice routine of spending a few hours each night at a local coffee shop and borrowing some wireless, so I'll be back tomorrow with at least a post or two about weekends later in September.  Soon enough, folks, you will be up to date.  It's kinda nice being behind, though, because it reminds me of all the cool stuff I've done and seen so far, and surprisingly how much I can remember from all these great experiences.  At the same time, I think of what I have yet to do, and the list builds and builds.  

     Cheers to all, especially family and friends, as we get closer to the holiday season.  It's only going to get more awkward here in Hampyeong as the holidays draw closer and the weather gets colder.  Hope everyone is happy and healthy back home.  

     The last thing I thought of is this: I have been here, as of tonight, more or less, exactly 3 months.  I am over 25% finished, folks!  How wild is that?  Time's flying here, but it's not, but it totally is, but it totally isn't.  Still so many new things happening every day, good and bad, but I wouldn't trade it.  

Lots of love, and all the best,

Sam Teacher