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Published: April 9th 2011
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Hey all,
Time again for a new entry! After leaving the temple we made our way south to Busan where we strolled their chilly beaches, strutted around a local hot springs bath house in the buff, saundered under the cherry blossoms and assailed a small mountain in the wee hours of the night in the name of love and adventure. Oh, and I proposed too!
More on that to come though. 😊 At the moment we're actually in Beijing, having left Korea this morning. On the whole I was really impressed with S. Korea. Everything but the food that is. The BBQ is great and kimchi is fantastic every now and again, but Korean's don't really have breakfast, lunch and dinner food. It's all just food, and the same food repetatively can seriously effect one's imagination. This is in immediate contrast to China, which is not only more varied but easier on the wallet too. We had a complete meal tonight for $3 each, a danish on the way home for 15 cents and a stick of pineapple for another 30 cents on top of that. Nice.
We're due for some harder times though with respect to communication
and navigation. In Korea we never ran into too many problems, even when the chips were down because we were always able to find someone who spoke english and was super eager to help. If they didn't know the answer, they would poll any passerby till they had a collection of about 15 people, all diligently trying to figure out what you wanted. Here isn't going to be like that, and until we know some basic Mandarin we're in for a bit of a challenge. Particularly trying to catch the bus. Reading asian symbols on a sign post isn't an issue. Reading asian symbols as they fly by you at 50km/hr is. "Okay, so I'm looking for a hat on a line with a squiggle next to something that looks like a snowman using a hula hoop, and all I caught off that one was something you would see an elephant draw at the zoo... great"
Anyway, we're here for a month or so, so we'll figure it out as we go along. To wrap up Korea. As I mentioned at the beginning we headed to Busan, which is a large port city to the south of Seoul that
we gathered was a party city most of the year. While there we stayed at a different love motel each night. A love motel is a cheap hotel that locals use for a little bump and tickle if you know what I mean as culturally they live with their families for some time and don't have the same opportunities for nooky . They're very secretetive motels though. The entrances to the parking lots are obscured, the check-in desk is a small window that you pass money into and a key pops out, the hallways are darkened and so forth. When doors open in the hallway you desperately want to throw yours open too, point and yell "Gotcha"! Or, the Korean term for inappropriate contact in english "No, touch feely!". Overall they're pretty reasonable motels with a lot of ammenities and good rates .
We also went to a traditional Korean bath house that brought it's water from a local hot spring. It was nude and same sex only, so Aimee took off with the girls and I sat in smoking hot to luke warm pools, bare as the day I was born. Everyone was naked so you don't really
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Found him think about it, but I don't think many pale red heads come walking down their halls too often, so there was a lot of checking whether the curtains matched the drapes if you know what I mean, again. I didn't stay very long though because I actually had to find a lock and a ring and it was my only time to get away without drawing attention.
So with lock and ring secured in my bag Aimee and I set out the next day for Jinae and their annual cherry blossom festival. The photos do more justice then I can, so I'd look at those. As we were headed there I was confident I was going to use it as the location for asking Aimee to marry me, but I didn't actually know where specifically. It was exceedingly difficult to find information about the sites that Jinae had to offer. So, needless to say I was a bit distracted through the day. Eventually I saw a sign for Romance Bridge, an idyllic little bridge littered with cherry blossom trees. Perfect. We got there though and couldn't move an inch without crashing into someone. Ugh. So, I pushed us farther
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The bath and farther up the stream till we got out of the crowds. After a strategic photo session on the rocks of the river, and under a canopy of cherry blossoms I got down on bended knee and said the magic words. She said yes, we embraced, maybe a tear or two popped out and we got a round of applause from a small crowd of Koreans gawking from above. I'm not the mushy type but anyone who knows Aimee and I knows we love each other very much and that this was a long time coming. 😊
You're probably wondering what motivated me to also give her a lock. In Seoul there's a tower with extensive fencing around the base where tens of thousands and thousands of couples have locked locks as symbols of their unbreakable union together. I gave Aimee a lock to add to this collection and when we got back to Seoul we found a small gap, fixed it on and threw the keys into the black.
Take care everyone,
Michael
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Jim
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Congratulations
Let me be the first to offer congratulations on your engagement. I am very happy for the two of you. I can just imagine you on bended knee with an audience of local people watching...I would have loved a photo of that scene :) Welcome to our side of the family Aime!!! I know how hard it is to travel in China from my attempt years ago. I think it is better in Beijing now that the Olympics are over as there was a big push to teach English for that event but it will get worse as you move to smaller centers...by now you have probably been sucked into responding to the first dozen or so people who say "Hello" but know nothing else. When I was in Shenzhen I went to a park with an "English Corner" on a Sunday. There I was fair game for anyone who wanted to practice their English. We would play pass-the-phrase-book where I would learn the Mandarin and they would learn the corresponding English words...you can make nice temporary friends that way. From your travels, Michael I know you have tricks of your own...just pretend you are in the Amazing Race :) Again congratulations....this is one amazing trip for you both...very happy Love Dad