It's Been a Long Time Coming...

Wow, I am so incredibly bad at keeping this thing up-to-date. To all my fans back home who read this, I apologize. To be honest, there's just so much happening here all the time that I can't seem to find a spare second to get on and write. Between work, friends, weekends away, and adventures around the city, there's not much time to sit down. Not that I'm complaining....

The last month and a bit has been a whirlwind. About halfway through March, I went away to a beautiful city called Busan. Busan is a port city, which means that the locals tend to be a little less freaked out by foreigners (I still have kids everyday in Gwangju who either are awed by seeing a foreigner (waygook) or are too scared to say anything). A few of my friends took advantage of a diving course you can do at the Busan aquarium and did a dive into the shark tank. I didn't get a spot (I'd waited too long) or I would have joined them. It was really freaky to see my friends swimming with sharks circling them and the fear became even more real when I rode in a glass-bottomed boat over the same pool. The sharks are not afraid of the boat and came up and bumped us a few times. After that experience, I don't know if I would have been able to handle being underwater with them. A few of us spent the rest of the weekend exploring the city, from the huge fish market to the harbor to the beautiful beach. One of my favorite moments of the trip was seeing a kite-seller's dragon kite. This is a huge chain of 50-some kites that he anchors to the ground in order to attract attention to his stand. It was pretty cool to see a huge chain just floating on the air like that. I have no idea how he got them flying in the first place!

The next few weekends were a bit more laid-back. I hiked up Mudeung Mountain just outside the city again with some friends and managed to get up and over one of the higher peaks in about two hours. It was a great time of year to do it, as the cherry blossoms were everywhere. At one point, we stopped for a group photo and you could smell the flowers as the wind wafted over the hills. By the time we got to the peak, however it was incredibly windy. The hike up was incredibly steep, since the mountains here tend to be a little craggy, and at the top we were met by an ice cream stand. After stocking up on some ice-cold treats to beat the sweat we'd worked up on the way to the top, we hit the peak and were nearly knocked off of our feet by the winds. The ice cream guy had the greatest spot: he was in a pool of sunshine just downhill from the top so that you couldn't see the people struggling to stand above you. Salespeople here are briliant.

There was also a couple of incredible temples on the mountain. The photo below is of the ceiling of the bell tower at the temple near the start of our hike. The fierce-looking guy is a Buddha guardian that we found at the temple on the other side. One cool fact that I learned on this trip is that these temple roofs have absolutely no nails in them. Each piece is specially carved and inserted in the proper position. Some of the temples in this country are hundreds of years old. Puzzle-piece construction works wonders! Also, notice in the dragon's mouth there's a ball. If you've ever heard of the cartoon Dragon Ball Z, this is the dragon ball that the name is referring to.

Now, if there's anything that I love about travelling it's the random opportunities that you get to travel the countryside. Korea has not let me down yet. Just a few weeks ago, my friend mentioned that her boss's friend had offered to take 45 foreigners (read: white people) on a bus to the first annual Slow-Walking Festival. The trip would be free and lunch would be provided. All that we would need to do would allow the festival photographers to shoot a few photos, take a couple of interviews and videos, and we'd have the rest of our day free. Since many of us are fresh out of university, as well as trying to save up money to send home on a regular basis, the 45 spots were filled up pretty quickly. The bonus part (besides the free-ness of it) was that the festival was taking place at Wando, an island off the southwest coast of Korea, three hours away.

It was a fabulous day. We had to sit through the opening ceremonies, which included a traditional calligraphist who wrote out a giant banner for the festival with an over-sized brush pen and pails of ink, and after that, we hit the beach. A few of us waded into the ocean and one friend even tried to swim, until he was kicked out of the water by the coastal authority. When I asked my students why this happened, they explained that in Korea, there are designated fishing and swimming beaches. Judging by the amount of fish we saw leaping out of the water, my friend had been trying to swim at a fishing beach. Oh well. The day was summed up well by a good friend who toasted, "To being thousands of miles from home and still amongst friends."

And that wasn't all...

The trip home was almost as, if not more, fun than the day had been. You see, in Korea, there are many opportunities to sing karaoke (or, as they call it here, norae...which literally means sing). Not much space is wasted in this country and they love to have fun here, so they've managed to come up with an ingenious thing: the Norae Bus. Imagine, if you will, a regular run-of-the-mill coach outfitted with disco lights, speakers, a wireless microphone and a large plasma screen over the driver's head that shows the words to all of your favorite songs. Now imagine a bus full of 20-somethings who have been enjoying a nice summer day on the beach with a few drinks in hand hurtling down the highway in one of these. It was insane! We made it back safely and didn't drive our driver too crazy...or so we hope. Unfortunately, I didn't capture the moment, but I think leaving it to the imagination will sum it up quite nicely. :)

Last weekend was almost as much fun as the weekend in Wando. During the spring and summer months, there's a plentitude of festivals happening all over the country and the one we chose last week was the "Miracle Sea Road" or "Parting of the Seas" Festival at Jindo (another island off the south coast....for those of you keeping track, the ending "-do" means "island). The festival takes place at a site where, a few hundred years ago, an incredible thing took place. You see, a village of people had been fending off tigers for generations and were getting pretty sick of losing a large chunk of the population to the hungry cats. In an effort to get away, they built a raft and went out to a smaller island just off-shore. Unfortunately, however, they left behind Grandma Pong. The little lady prayed and prayed to escape her sad plight and eventually, according to the legend, the Dragon King of the Sea opened a rainbow in the ocean that led to the island where her family was waiting for her. Grandma Pong made it most of the way across, where her family was heading toward her from the other side. When they met, Grandma Pong died from exhaustion, but happily, since she'd managed to see her family one last time. The festival is to celebrate family and to mourn the loss of Grandma Pong. The coolest part: the sea road really exists and you can try to cross it in the short hour or so that the sea parts to the island. Apparently, the sea parting is caused by the high and low tides meeting and crossing one another. In some parts, there's actually dry beach to walk on. The best sight of the whole thing is to see the huge amount of people trying to make their way across all at once. It actually looks like they're walking on the water.

We ended up camping at the festival and had a blast. The festival tents were great and we got to try our hands at everything from traditional drumming to calligraphy to lava bread (seaweed sheet) making. There was even face-painting, which provided more entertainment than we thought it would. A good friend, Art, was getting his face painted while my friend Joanne and I were taking pictures of him. Art was laughing so much that the man painting his face got frustrated, grabbed Art by the chin to hold him still and proceeded to write a long message in Korean down Art's face. Since Joanne and I both had 'love' and 'beauty' written on our hands, respectively, we figured that Art's was a nice message as well. Turns out, this face-painter had a sense of humour. When we asked an older Korean man who was laughing at Art what the words meant, he said that they translated to "I'm a foolish boy". It's good to know that humor translates well.

Other than that, I've been keeping busy playing tennis and wandering around the city. Now that it's warmer, I feel more inclined to get out and see what's in my neighborhood. I've mastered the bus system and reading Korean, so I feel like Gwangju is starting to become a little bit more of a home. I'm headed to Shanghai tomorrow for the long weekend and I promise that there'll be more updates coming soon.

Take care!
Peace and love,
M