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Folks, this is the real deal.
Greetings again from Busan!
This entry is leaving a lot out but I promised cherry blossom pictures so I am posting one (more to come soon on my picassaweb page) and also a few pics of some places I've visited in the last 6 weeks. Since it would be a full-time job to document all the stuff that strikes me as funny, weird and/or annoying here I am not going to. But this is a little thimble full... Since I arrived in Busan on the first day of spring I got here just as the trees began blossoming a few days thereafter. The Korean trees are different from the trees we call cherry blossoms in Portland. The Korean blossoms are much lighter both in color and weight and are short-lived, and so give the impression of being extremely delicate. They fall from the tree almost as soon as they emerge and shower the streets below with
pale confetti. Seeing them for the first time walking to school one afternoon was literally breathtaking. Koreans make annual pilgrimages out of their highrise apartments to the few places that are said to provide the best cherry blossom views.
I couldn't believe how quickly the blossoms came and went, and were then replaced by bushy, thick, green summer leaves. ***After a beach meetup with some other English teachers a few weeks ago I hosted a
spontaneous couchsurfer and took him to Dr. Fish, a cafe I had gone to with my coworker and her parents during my first weekend in Busan (after I accidentally ate a deep-fried chicken head). The main attraction at Dr. Fish, apart from the free unlimited waffles on the waffle bar, are the two communal tanks set into a raised wooden area for dipping your feet into the schools of
callus-sucking fish (flesh-eaters?!) ***In honor of Children's Day, May 2-5th was a four day weekend. I went up to Seoul and stayed with a truffle-making, Canadian CS (couchsurfing) host in her uptown studio. I had slated the weekend for pretty much doing nothing, just what I wanted to do, and did it. Although, upon my host's invitation, I went out with a large group of vegetarians to a vegan buffet and digestive evening stroll around Children's Grand Park. On Sunday, I made it to the Seoul Shambhala Meditation Group's sitting and group discussion of protector
chants followed by a social Korean dinner out. Seoul seems a lot like Busan but a bit more crowded and international and minus the awesome beaches and looming mountains (Seoul has some but they are smaller). The architecture is basically no-nonsense functionalist, streets are clean yet under construction in, seemingly, every neighborhood and are enormously wide. Because of the Confucian social structure in Korea, which lays out the types of acceptable social relationships and necessitates formal introductions as a preliminary to acknowledging or addressing anyone, Koreans rarely make eye contact with anyone in public and bump into each other a lot. ***I have been increasing the frequency with which I leave my apartment in an attempt to cover more ground after a period of mysteriously illness. Yesterday I laid on
Haeundae beach reading for hours and today I took the hour trip on the subway to the bus station across town followed by the hour bus trip to
Gyeongju, a city referred to as a "museum without walls". I wasn't able to see all Gyeongju has to offer in terms of Shilla dynasty riches in 2 hours but I did stroll around the city center's
emperial burial mounds which are
pretty cool and creepy. I saw some of the same thing a few weeks ago in Busan's airport-suburb Gimhae at a folk music and culture festival. They buried the dead king with dozens of his live attendants and who knows what happened down there... A good reference point to check in with- no matter how bad things get I can always be thankful that at least I haven't been been
buried alive... or dyed pink and green against my will like the
cute little day glow puppies I spotted on my walk around central Gyeongju after drinking incredible coffee at BUZZ cafe. The iced latte was so good in, in fact, that it overshadowed any annoyance I might have otherwise felt about the bible excerpt on the cup.
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John Light
non-member comment
I'm glad to see you are enjoying yourself
Exploring a completely different culture takes a lot of curiosity and exertion. Thank you for sharing your adventure.