Advertisement
Published: August 27th 2007
Alright, to start things off I thought I would just post a few random things about my life and Korea and then go onto my beach story.....
K, we have just gone though monsoon season here in South Korea. From what I heard July is usually the month that is really rainy...but for some reason this August has been rainy too. Rainy does not mean it cools off at all though. It is just rainy and still 30 degrees. What a great combination. But anyways....the building that my school is located in is the leakiest building I think I have ever been in. From the outside, and even the inside it looks like a pretty nice place...but when it starts raining we have buckets in every single room which have to be emptied every few hours at least or else they are overflowing. High quality I tell ya. I went into the craft room in the basement and it was like a lake in there! They just mopped it up though and it was good to go. They dont seem to be too concerned of the possibility of mould growing there, but I'm pretty sure its inevitable.
Also, one
An Ajumma
There are alot of old Korean ladies, called an Ajumma, that are so used to sitting like this and working that they are more comfortable like this than standing. When they stand they have awful posture and are unable to stand straight.day at lunch we were sitting down eating and all of a sudden the fire alarm starts going off. Uhhh...ok, what do we do now? I go upstairs and the secretary is on the phone trying to figure out how to shut this thing off. I decide to walk up the 4 flights of stairs to go see what the kids are doing...shouldnt they perhaps be leaving the building? Nope...they are just sitting in the classrooms eating not even paying attention. And also...when I'm on the 4th floor my boss walks off the elevator, I guess to come and check and see what the kids are doing as well. When everythings ok....by ok I mean that no one is doing anything out of the ordinary even though the fire alarm is going off for some reason that no one knows....she gets back on the elevator and goes down. You know...call me crazy, but this doesnt seem like he safest thing. First off, the fire alarm goes off and no one does anything? The kids dont have to be evacuated or anything. I guess if there was a fire everyone just runs out screaming...and take elevator as well, I'm sure thats
Crazy Seagulls
On our ferry ride to the Island. safe too. "Ok kids, line up and wait for the elevator. Dont worry about the flames and the smoke, everything will be fine."
Anyhow....no one was doing anything out of the ordinary, so I just went back downstairs and continuued eating lunch with everyone, with the fire alarm still going off. They probably wondered where I went because they hadnt even left their seats when this all started.
Now to change the subject from my school....back in Canada I would always have a bit of a tan. I couldnt stand being super pale..which I normally am...so I would always tan. Well being here I have went back to pastey. I feel as though I glow, that is how pale I've become. I was talking to a korean teacher named Lucy. She was complaining about how her skin is getting darker. Huh...am I missing something? Your skin is getting darker and this is a bad thing how? She said that in Korea, you are more beautiful if you are more pale. Wow...then I must be drop dead gorgeous! She says that she buys this expensive cream that she puts on every night before she goes to bed that is
suppose to make her whiter. Haha, I sometimes put on fake tanning cream that make me darker. Funny how I think most people look better when they have a bit of color and how in Korea they think the more pale you are, the more beautiful you are.
Ok, now onto the beach. We decided to go to this beach that is out on this island about 3 hours away from here. We kind of had an idea of where to go, but not totally. We take a few subways, a few trains, a few buses and a few ferries. By following some people who knew where they were going, we finally came to a beach. It wasnt the original beach we were planning on going to, but this one worked out just great.
It was absolutely gorgeous outside. Not a cloud in the sky and we couldnt wait to get in the water because it was so hot. Since it took almost 3 hours to get to the beach and it was almost 4pm, we decided to stay over night. We hadn't planned on this originally, but we had our swimsuits...and thats pretty much all we needed.
They had these huts that you could stay in overnight that were right on the beach. It was just this little room on stilts that had nothing in it except for 2 blankets and 2 pillows.
We get our little hut and change into our swimsuits. Sweet, the water would feel so nice because we were sweating like crazy. We get in the water and it is warm. Very very warm. We looked out and honestly, almost a kilometer out into the ocean people were only up to their waists in water. We walked and walked, for a good 10 minutes and the water wasnt even up to our waist yet. Kind of a downer since the last beach we went to had awesome waves. But we just sat in the water and chilled out for a bit.
Since the water wasnt that much fun we just decided to do alot of laying in the sun. I usually dont have a problem with burning since I would always have a bit of a base tan so I would normally just go dark. Well, I dont know what I was thinking....but I decided, "nah, who needs sun screen, I
always lay out in the sun and get a good tan anyways, how is this any different than all the other times?!" Well, 2 days later and I can think of 2 good reasons as to how this was different than all the other times.
1- I had lost all of my tan in the previous month of being in Korea and so I was incredibly pale. Usually when I would tan I would already have a bit of a base.
2- I would lay out in the sun all day in my backyard in Edmonton. Ok, laying out in the sun in my backyard in Edmonton maybe a little different than laying on a beach all day in South Korea.
Did I think of either of these reasons as to why I should maybe use sunscreen? Nope, I just wanted a good tan and I figured laying out in the sun for hours on end with no sunscreen would be the best way to achieve this.
The sun was beginning to go down after about 3 hours of laying/sleeping on the beach and we decided maybe we should shower and have some dinner. We
bought some shampoo and soap and headed to the showers. This being Korea, it was a communal shower. I have had my first communal shower and it was not that bad at all. I dont really know how I expected it to really be that big of a deal, but it wasnt. Just go in, do your thing and your done. After that we had some dinner, did some drinking and decided to go on an adventure. It was super dark out but the moon was pretty bright and the tide had gone out so we could walk for miles in our bare feet.
We decided we should get some pictures of us jumping in the air. That should be fun..... For the first picture I do a really big jump, well I thought it was really big...and as I came back down I got a little off balance and came crashing down. Well I had my camera in one hand and a beer in the other so I *obviously* couldnt really afford to let go of either. My knee ended up breaking my fall. That hurt. Alot. Luckily though, I didnt land on a rock and so instead
of my knee being cracked, it is just badly bruised.
We continued our walk, took some more pictures...which didnt really turn out that well, but considering it was nighttime I guess its understandable. After a while we decided to come back and play some cards on the beach and just hang out. On our way back, I stepped on something...I have no idea what, but its kind of like when you step on a nail right in the middle of your foot and you dont realize youve stepped on it until after the damage is done. I'm hoping it wasnt anything too bad or that nothing too bad got in there....but it still isnt feeling so great and its been a few days since that happened.
After playing some cards and hanging out on the beach we headed to bed. We were going to sleep on the beach, but it got a big buggy so we headed to our hut and slept on the floor in there.
The next morning we got up, hung out on the beach, had some lunch and decided to go for another walk. This one in the opposite direction. The tide was
way out so we could just walk all the out to the rocks in the mud in our bare feet. We figured that if the tide came in while we were out there we could just bring our sandals and walk on the rocks to come back, no big deal. We get out to these huge rocks and we are taking some wicked pictures. I commented, as I was climbing a rock, that we didnt really come prepared with the best footwear to be doing all this climbing, as we both had cheap flipflops on. Even if we would have had expensive flip flops, they still wouldnt have been the best footwear, but if they were expensive maybe they would not have broke.
Yup, honestly a couple minutes after I said that one of my flipflops completely broke and there was no fixing that could be done. Oh and look...the tide has come in. That means I get to walk all the way back on the rocks in bare feet...or at least with one bare foot. How fun.
Anyways, we're walking back and do you want to know of 2 things that do not work well together? That
would be bare feet and barnicles. Barnicles were all over these rocks! If I had at least flip flops, this would be no problem...but bare feet?! Its not even an "Ouch this kind of hurts, but I can stand it" kind of hurt, its like a "HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL THIS EFFING HURTS!" kind of hurt. (There may have been a bit more profanity expressed at the time, but my Grandma reads these posts so I'm going to keep it PG...maybe even a little bit G rated) Now do I not only have my foot that was stabbed from something the night before, but I have my feet completely cut up from rocks and barnicles. K, well completely cut up is maybe an expression of how it felt, there wasnt blood everywhere....it was just very painful.
On this walk as well, we did not wear any sunscreen. Thus our mission of getting the "wickedest tan ever." Yes....I dont know what I was thinking, but I still thought I was going to get a great tan from all this sun and lack of sunscreen. By the end of our walk I mentioned that I think I may have burnt a
bit. You know that feeling when you think you've had a bit too much sun? I was having that feeling. We decided that maybe we should head on our way since we didnt want to "over-do" our sun exposure. Little did we know at the time...but we had already well "over-done" our sun exposure.
So we take a few buses back, a few ferries back and I'm finally heading home. The last leg of my ride home I wasnt feeling too great. I felt really sick and weak and incredibly tired. I fell asleep and woke up when I arrived back in Suwon. I caught a taxi and came home. I looked in the mirror when I walked in...and wow! I was so "over-done" I was crispy. So much for the "wickedest tan ever." I think I may have had a bit of sun stroke....or at least wayy too much sun as I was asleep by 7. I slept all the way until 7am. Granted every single time I moved or had to turn over I would wake up and have to move very carefully so I didnt scream out in pain....but I would fall right back asleep again.
I still felt awful in the morning but decided to suck it up and go to work. Well I walk in and all the teachers are like "Ohhhh...what happened?" "....Well, I may have been in the sun too long......" . They thought it was hilarious...and it actually kind of is...its just kind of a very painful hilarity.
I went into my classes today and asked the kids "What color is Kimberly teacher?" All of the classes, even my 4 year olds, yelled out "Red!" Ahhh, my kids are so smart! I actually walked into my 4 year old class and one girl looked at me and burst out into tears! Haha.... The thing is though is this kid usually always cries when one of us foreign teachers walks in...so we must look scary all the time.
That ends my beach story. I actually had a ton of fun and I am in love with the beach! Next time though I think I might be a bit smarter and wear some sunscreen!
Hope everyone is doing well. Love you all!
Kim
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 8; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0444s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
