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Published: June 23rd 2009
The week after a great trip to Jinju flew by as I further settled into a familiar pattern and continued to really get the hang of teaching. I worked overtime every night as the final round of a speech contest was coming up on Friday. I would have thought this would make the week creep by much more slowly, but I think it contributed to it melting away as quickly as it seemed to do. Especially because overtime always means food, and I got to mess around for a little bit while me and my students (between five and seven of them) ate between speech rehearsals. It all culminated in a Friday night feast courtesy of the parents. Two of the mom's (with four of the students, lots of siblings in the school) who are very good friends with Mommy Teacher took me out (with Mommy Teacher of coarse, as well as her sister and Jade Teacher) for chicken and beer. The chicken was outstanding, even by American standards. It was like hot wings served with gooey rice cakes filled with cheese, but the sauce was like a sharper, slightly sweeter version of the Piper Inn's wings (shout out to mom and the fam! You guys would have loved them). But then we tried two other kinds of sauce, all just as good and washed down with beer and other various munchies. I wasn't really allowed to see prices, but I think it was really expensive, and I was grateful at how grateful the parents obviously were.
The next day I woke up surprisingly early with a determination to finally make it to Busan to see my friend Rob. Rob was a good friend at university in Oregon and I haven't seen him since visiting 5 months after I graduated, in May 2007. I had been meaning to see him as soon as I got out to Korea (he has been teaching in Busan for 6 months) but with getting settled, and then the many Saturday work requests from Mommy Teacher, one rainy weekend and one weekend me sick as a dog and nearly two months had passed without me fulfilling my intentions. Determined I may have been, but I was doubtful almost as much with my ability to catch a bus, pay for it and find the terminal it departed from without more than a few words of the language at my disposal. But I did a load of laundry, got some food, packed a bag and veritably forced myself out the door, all the while thinking this might be nothing more than a twenty minute stroll down to the bus station and back. When I got to the station I was relieved to find times, as well as prices posted in roman numerals (numbers are often written in Hangul, Korean script, as Korean number, il=1, ii=2, som=3, sa=4 etc...) and I was impressed with my progress of reading Hangul as I picked out Bu San. As karma would have it the next bus left in ten minutes and I was soon giddy with the feeling of accomplishment as I took and empty seat. As the bus pulled out my excitement took a hit when I tried to phone Rob, and his phone went straight to a message I could not understand. Hoping it was just turned off I sent him a text message and resigned to the fact that I may just be wandering around Busan alone for the afternoon, which I was ok with. Rob turned his phone on and rang me when I was about a half an hour outside the city, and I was relieved to know I would be able to see him, and he wasn't out of town or something. I got off the bus and onto the subway (where a young woman helped me find the right stop to push on the ticket machine). I met Rob in the subway, which actually turned out to be somewhat of a problem. I bought my ticket to the stop I met him at, yet did not get off there (out of the subway), and rode the subway quite a ways longer to go check out a new bar his friend just opened right on the beach. You have to put your subway ticket through the turn styles in order to exit the subway, and my ticket was more than a few stops short.
Me and Rob talked non stop during the almost hour long subway ride, catching up, and realizing it might be interesting trying to exit the subway station. I was going to hop the turn style, but of coarse there was a woman ticket checker there, and it took some incoherent pleading between Rob and myself to get her to open a gate and let me pass. Safely out of the subway we caught a cab to this awesome stretch of beach. Unfortunately it was cloudy, or else it would have been an amazing scene. There were people still surfing some less than giant waves despite the cloud cover, but there was a great vibe to the place, kind of hippieish, but laid back and welcoming. We found the surf shop and the bar next to it and I was introduced to several of Robs coworkers and friends. After nearly two months of just Koreans being my sole interaction it was amazing to be speaking English and laughing with other foreigners. We all immediately got along, and the jokes began to crack as we bought each other drinks. A few hours relaxing on the beach, and dipping our toes in the water (at one point Rob said, hey Grant, Oregon is that way, pointing out to sea. Kind of crazy to have been on both shores of the pacific now) brought about nightfall and a downpour of rain. We struggled to find a taxi, finally hailing one and proceeded to the groups usual haunts. I had some delicious American food; a fantastic burger for lunch, and an equally good chicken bacon bagel melt for dinner. A band Rob had seen a few weeks ago was playing across the street from where we were, an American restaurant bar called sunset where Rob does some side work on Sundays, so we stayed in the area the rest of the night. While at sunset I met a coworker of Robs named Nick. Nick had just got to Korea two weeks ago, and as it turned out, was born in the same hospital (Swedish) as me only a week after I was born!! We figured we had shared a room more than likely in the the hospital, and spent a good while musing at the mysteries of life, and the possibilities of destiny. The band across the street was equally impressive as the company I watched it with. It was just a guy and a girl and two acoustic guitars, but they hit they whole range of righteous tunes, playing some good down home blues, as well as interesting Korean hits, punk rock, some pop, everything danceable, most songs I knew. We were there till the sun came up, talking with the band when they had finished playing, shooting pool and meeting the owner. Then it was a taxi back to Robs apartment where we slept till the afternoon, until Rob had to be back at Sunset to work. I went along and met up with the same crowd from the night before with the addition of two or three people, had another drink and some more food. Luckily, one of the people there showed me a foreigner information number, which I called to find out when the last bus back to Geochang was. It turned out to be 6:40, and I found this out at 4:30 still needing to make an almost hour long subway ride. Some good-byes, quick reminiscing about the previous night and promises to definitely do it again and I was sitting on the subway, somewhat nervously checking the clock on my cell phone. I got to the bus station with not a whole lot of time to spare, and the proceeded to buy a ticket to the wrong location, Gohan instead of Geochang (really need to work on pronouncing the CH part). I figured it out after waiting in a long line, and finally reading the Korean script and noticing the H character on my ticket that shouldn't have been there. It is seriously a miracle that I could make the lady at the ticket booth understand in almost no time, and find my bus, walking on it as the driver was taking tickets a moment before departure. WHEW!!! My heart was still pounding as I shook my head with a dopey grin on my face and slipped into an empty seat, the bus jostling out of the station and city. I got back to Geochang at 9 o'clock, worn out but wholly satisfied, with new friends, some awesome experiences, and knowing it won't be hard to do again, just have to remember that CH in GeoCHang...
PS... got the results of the speech contest yesterday and two of my students placed, Lia got a silver in her age group, and Matt got a bronze, so proud! (Matt's mom and Lia's mom were also the two that bought the ridiculously good chicken meal, so it really worked out perfectly).
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GrantH5185
Grant Harmacek
Where are the pictures??
I brought my camera but forgot about the memory still in the USB reader in my computer. Hopefully some of Robs friends will send me a couple pics, but I didn't get to take any, sorry! - Grant