Advertisement
Chris with his new girlfriends!
Enjoying a coffee in PNU, Chris was asked to take part in some interviews by the university's English students!Monday was bound to arrive sooner or later and that meant Mike and Danielle go back to school and the family must fend for themselves for a few days!
As we headed off to school (still with many worries of them getting lost), we left them with an itinerary that involved a lot of the major sight seeing stops in Busan. Those included Shinsegae (largest dept store in the world) and the Busan National University (PNU) area where there is lots of shopping and plenty of bars and restaurants. Of course, our major concern was how they would manage to find food. Although its easy enough to spot a restaurant, its not too easy to choose when you don't know what is on the unfamiliar menu. And since they did not love the Korean food the day before, its not likely they would stop and indulge in some more fine Korean cuisine.
Well with the blessing of text messages and cellphones, I was able to keep in touch with them throughout the day and maintain they were safe and not starving. Once my classes were finished, my co-teacher offered to talk to my principal in hopes of letting me
go early. Of course, a call from the family concerned over how to get to the area only lead to an over exaggeration by my colleagues that my family was lost in Busan, so I must go find them. haha ... GOOD TIMES... but it was all I needed to get the rest of the day off...
So I head off to meet them in PNU (of course they were fine and found their way). When I arrived, they began with their stories of their burger king lunch and their comments regarding the ginormous department store. Of course, their best story for last was their encounter with some of the college girls they had met in PNU. Many of the college students do surveys around their area for their classes etc... many of them that are taking English courses must do these surveys in English. SO ... of course they saw the handsome duo of Chris and Uncle Larry and had to interview these foreigners... Of course for Chris it was a moment in heaven as 3 beautiful Korean girls were focused solely on him and his answers. ... For uncle Larry.. well deep down inside he probably though
the same, but I'm sure it was he normal social business as usual.
We headed to a coffee shop to wait for Danielle who was an hour behind me... and of course more beautiful surveyors passed by... and Chris (thinking with one of his brains) decided that he wanted to answer more questions... so he hunted them down and told them he was more than willing to help them out. And of course he did..
When Danielle arrived, we went to the famous Dr Fish for a little fish-nibblin' fun. They only had one foot bath open so Danielle and I watched and took pictures while the guests tried out this crazy therapy. Uncle Larry jumped right in (and may or may not have landed on a fish....poor thing...) but it only took a few seconds before the tickling began! Chris was next and of course the two guys were loving it! The women were a little slower to adjust with a certain Aunt taking almost the entire 30 minutes to get more than her heel in the water! They even got the joy of seeing some cute Korean kidlets up close when the young ones were wondering
what all the excitement was coming from our corner of the cafe!
With soft feet, we took off for dinner... the family was CRAVINGGGGG some great western cuisine, so we found a quaint Italian restaurant and headed up for some steak and pastas. With the delicious menu we all picked out our food... and anxiously waited for it to come to the table. A few of us ordered pastas (Chris with his first taste of mussels and octopus) and ladies had their quesadillas... Uncle Larry with his steak and potatoes. You could see in his eyes that he was happy to finally get his fill of meat and potatoes... and when it arrived we could only laugh to see that his steak was the size of a small plum and it was escorted by 4 small slices of potatoes. Yes indeed, it was a full course meal fit to the surviving size of a 3 year old child.
After dinner we wandered around the area and eventually called it a night... all of us being a little bit tired from our days. So Danielle and I took the bus home, and the visitors tackled the subway again in
hopes of practicing for the next day's tour.
Tuesday was much the same as Monday... the family took a bus and they toured many more sites including the great jagalchi fish market and some of the Busan coast line. When we finished school we took off to meet them in Nampo-dong to do some souvenir shopping and have dinner. We managed to come across an Outback Steakhouse which was more than appealing to our hungry, western-food deprived family. So we took a seat and indulged in a big filling meal of ribs, steaks, potatoes, and beer. Wonderful. As Nampo-dong is 1 hr subway for us, we called it an early night and headed back into Yangsan confirming with them the directions to our house and my school. Yes, they finally get to meet the children and teachers.
When they finally about to arrive at school the next day, my students were anxiously watching the windows to see if they had arrived yet. When they did, they had a great welcome and a short Q & A period, which of course they were not prepared for at all.. I thought it was funny.
I of course had to center
them out in class, and tried to involve them as much as I could. And of course being a foreigner in Korea, they were smothered with attention. They got to take photos with the students, sign autographs, they were constantly complimented. And one of my favourite things was when my principal invited us into his office for coffee, a little awkward at times since he doesn't speak English, but a great gesture to be invited in and sit with him to have coffee and a chat. AS my classes were finished and nothing else was going on, I sent them off to wander the Yangsan area. My principal was impressed with the family, and he offered to give me the rest of the week off... ya... awesome. This worked out perfectly, I could now rent a car and drive my family to our next destinations outside of Busan. That night, we had a Korean BBQ dinner with our teacher friends and got them settled in to the infamous J-Motel (the very same one Danielle's parents stayed at - and got kicked out of!), in hopes that nothing would go wrong. But it was just fine... they headed to bed and
we headed home.
The next morning I arrived with the rental car to head off to Gyeongju. I wanted to show them a lot of the places that Korea uses to teach it's history and culture. We only stayed for one day, but it was plenty as when they had finished all the sites, they were quite tired. We got a pizza and beers for dinner, and settled in with a relaxing evening. Early the next morning, we took off to the traditional village of Andong. We spent the day getting lost and trying to find the sites. Eventually we got ourselves on track and in the right direction. We stopped to see a traditional village called Hahoe Village where everyone lives in traditional housing (similar to wooden huts, but big).
After this we headed off to Seoul for the remainder of the weekend. After a fairly easy drive to the city limits, we became bombarded with traffic and off ramps. We had NO IDEA WHERE TO GO. With Chris reading the map and me driving, we managed to get ourselves way north of where we needed to be. To say it the easy way... the last 12km
to Seoul took about 1.5 hrs due to traffic and getting turned around. To say the least, I don't plan on driving to Seoul again anytime soon.
We arrived much later then Danielle (who took the train from Busan) and headed to our hotel to get settled in.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.053s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0313s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
