Last Week in the 'Po

The year is winding down in Mokpo...My 1,225 teaching hours will soon come to a close. From February 14th to February 29th I will have spent all those hours in my little cramped desk in my little classroom doing I what I think was teaching. To the children it was probably more of a show or game of charades. All those hours added up totaled 51 days of total work. A lot of fun, but also a lot of pain and suffering. Teaching in little Mokpo has been a joy and I will come away with numerous life lessons and things I learned about myself. Perhaps most importantly, I may have learned how to not raise children...some of the students being prime examples. Nevertheless I will come away stronger, wiser and more financially stable than I was the year before.

What is the plan after the 'Po? A 6 month "sabbatical" full of studying for the dreaded GRE test and learning Korean. I will have more than a month to spend with Jeaeun when she comes to visit in the early summer. Hopefully I will secure another job in her hometown of Goyang where I would work and study for another year. None of this would have happened had I not taken a chance on this job.

Take that leap of faith...

Visiting Ilsan

The time had finally come. It was time for me to finally go to Jaeeun's hometown of Ilsan. So for the weekend before Valentin's I finally made the journey to Ilsan. The night before I had a late dinner with friends at 11 P.M., my train was at 6 A.M. After an uneasy 4 hours of sleep I managed to get onto the KTX and sleep for the majority of the 4 hour train ride to Ilsan. Ilsan is a far-cry from sleepy little Mokpo. It is considered a suburb of Seoul and is connected via the Seoul Metro. Ilsan is in fact part of the larger city of Goyang, with a total population of about 1 million people. The apartments and officetels are nicer and there is certainly more to offer than little Mokpo. For my next home, this one sounds good!

The plan while in Ilsan was to meet Jaeeun at the train station where she would take me around her hometown and eventually her home for dinner with her family. Was Kyle nervous? Perhaps. I met Jaeeun at the station still feeling a bit groggy. We went out to shabu shabu with her friend for lunch. After lunch we went to coffee (my first of four that day). Next on the agenda, the arcade, yay! Jaeeun's friend had to go to work after that and we headed of to the multi-bang (much like a noraebang but it includes movies and video games in your own private room). I destroyed Jaeeun in Mario Kart, she schooled me in golf (typical Korean). We then sang a few songs with a terrible selection of songs.

Jaeeun thought it was a good idea to rent some of Goyang's "green bikes" to ride to Ilsan Lake Park in the subfreezing temperatures. We did and we froze. Jaeeun gave me a nice narrative and tour of her city and home and then it was time for dinner. Was Kyle nervous? Perhaps.

Dinner was great! It was a meal fit for kings, quite literally! Some of the dishes were specially created for Korea's long line of kings. I managed a few lines in Korean and most of the Korean I knew seemed to have disappeared from my mind. I managed to make it through with Jaeeun and her brothers help with translation. :) After dinner it was time for bowling. We had to wait 30 minutes to finally get a lane. I was scared that my bowling skills would be inadequate. Yet somehow...somehow I bowled by second best game, a 172. Success! Bowling was followed by J taking me to her old part time job, an Izakaya restaurant. We played Connect Four on the little game tablet for our table and ate some beef sashimi. After about an hour of this it is safe to say that we are now Connect Four pros. Day 1 was complete!

We planned on going to church the next day but her parents though it best for us to stay in and relax. Jaeeun made a delicious breakfast and she suggested a movie, the Sound of Music. Instead she fell asleep in her room and I fell asleep too :(. Two hours later...

We woke up appalled that we had wasted our precious little time sleeping. We went to coffee again and picked up some 똥빵 a.k.a. "poop bread" for my trip home. This 똥빵 is actually quite marvelous, little poo shaped pastries filled with different flavors like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and *ahem* corn. We said our goodbyes at the metro station and I went to Seoul for a few hours and finally home to sleepy little Mokpo where I have been since. :(

Shabu Shabu

Ilsan Shopping Mall

Crazy Pirate arcade game!

Norae bang

Waiting for the multi room

Taking a break from video games

Ilsan Lake Park

Our rental bikes

Sticker photo!

New Year's in Busan and Gyeongju! Pt. 4

New Year's Eve didn't end on the beach, it didn't go out with a bang with fireworks.However, I didn't want the last post to end on a sour note.

After the beach and fireworks at midnight we had the urge to play darts. Me and Jaeeun have acquired a fascination for darts after her visits to Mokpo and playing darts at Moe's. Jaeeun took me to a bar she had spotted earlier that looked promising. We sat and observed and drank our nasty flavored beers (passion fruit and chocolate, not a winner). There was a dartboard with a board where you signed up to wait your turn. I wrote "Kyle" in big letters. There was another couple that came in perhaps 20 minutes later. They were clearly confused by the board and put there names before ours. We waited patiently, perhaps 30 minutes before it was our turn. The board had been messed up, my name erased by that time. We remained calm, cool and collected. The "crazy couple" consisting of a Korean girl and her European boyfriend freaked out at us. Jaeeun got a little angry :). Nevertheless I ceded and let them go first, let children be children. We played our darts eventually, I did terribly and Jaeeun cheated.

Cute as can be

The "crazy couple" as J called them

Day 4

The Plan: Wake up bright and early for the New Year's Sunrise Festival at Haeundae Beach.

The Result: We woke up late but still made it with plenty of time to spare

The Story:

A few hours of sleep later it was time for our main goal on our 4 day trip. We were destined to watch the "first sun" of 2012 make its ascent into the sky. Being in Korea we would be among the first in the world to see it. We woke up two hours late! It was still dark and as we scampered through the streets of Haeundae to the beach. We made it to the beach and Jaeeun wanted to get one of the complimentary balloons given out to be released at sunrise. We waited in line but they eventually ran out before we could get one.

We made our way through the crowded beach until we found a suitable spot to stand and wait among the hundreds of thousands of early morning spectators. It was a little chilly but I kept warm thanks to the knit hat that Jaeeun made me for Christmas. We laughed at a group of Koreans that made a plunge into the frigid ocean to celebrate New Years. It seemed like an eternity before we caught saw the orange glow on the eastern horizon, the sun was on its way. All eyes gazed east and it seemed like it was just me and Jaeeun out there on the beach, never mind the thousands huddled around us. The orange glow got brighter and brighter until at last a sliver of an orb could be seen and the huge crowd applaud. A countdown began and thousands of golden balloons were released into the sky at once with music and celebration. The sun was exceptionally big that morning, we're talking the beginning of Lion King big. It sounded silly at first, watching the sun go up on a cold beach. In reality it was one of the more special moments I could ever experience. 2012 promises to be a special year.

Waiting in the dark

Me and Jaeeun

The Korean swimmers

Waiting amongst the thousands

The first sun arrives!

Hello sun

After the sunrise we went to Starbucks which was surprisingly not crowded. It was around noon when we went to Shinsegae Centum City, the biggest department store in the world. We exited the subway station and the department city loomed before us, it was incredibly massive! We were excited as Jaeeun chased me into the store only to find...the majority of the store was closed for New Years. We settled for a visit to the bookstore, Jaeeun got me a notebook I could use for taking notes and journaling. We then went on a wild goose chase to look for a good meal. We wound up in a popular shopping and dining district. We were lost for a moment, I get cranky when I am hungry, but luckily Jaeeun puts up with me. The food was delicious! We got some snacks at a little bread shop and made our way to Busan Station for our return home on what would be a very crowded train!

Delicious food! Worth the wait and journey!

We got to the train station with perhaps 10 minutes to spare. We thought we had done well to get there early. We waited on the platform...and the mob arrived. We packed into the train with no where to sit and little room to stand. I got us a spot by the vending machine where we had to sit for 4 hours on the floor, the last hour we had to listen to two old men fighting and cussing at each other. We would eventually get to Sintanjin station again. It was biting cold in Sintanjin and we were hungry, we had to settle for Lotteria. We got in the next train to Mokpo, this one with less people but still no seats. We had to cram ourselves into one of the seats used for the pay computers for an hour or two. The closer we got to Mokpo more people left the train until we could finally get seats in one of the cars. We reached Mokpo, tired and weary but full of incredible memories.

Sardines

Me and Jaeeun on the floor

Exhausted