So much has happened since my last blog, I don’t even know where to start. I suppose I’ll just start with how hectic of a schedule I’ve found myself with. Actually, It’s a really nice routine, to be honest. I don’t have a TV at my apartment, nor do I want one. So, it’s good to keep busy. I teach Monday through Friday, until 5pm. Then, as if my day isn't long enough, I run for thirty minutes, do an hour of Kumdo, or Korean language classes (alternating days), shower, eat, then tutor my friend in English until 9pm. For all of this, I usually end up asleep by 10:30 at night. Then I'm up at the crack of dawn to do it all over again. I’m really happy with this schedule because before I left I was doing just the opposite—I was a true night owl, sleeping until 2pm and staying awake until sunrise. Now let me introduce you to my beautiful, scheduled, hectic, but not to hectic life on the weekends.
They usually start just after 5pm on Fridays, and end as I’m walking into school the following Monday, feeling like a zombie. Every weekend there has been some new festival to crash. Seriously, every single weekend since I’ve been here I’ve gone to one festival, or another. There was the Mask Festival in Andong, then Global Gathering (electronic music from around the globe, bumping until 5am) in Seoul, then the Rock Music Festival in Daejeon, and finally the Fireworks Festival this weekend in Busan. I can’t really explain what all happens during the weekends, partly because I don’t remember, and partly because my family reads this. For these reasons, I’ll just let my pictures explain that part of the experience.
On a more appropriate note, I finally got my Alien Registration Card. This means that I am officially registered as an English teacher, the Government officially knows where I live, and I was able to get an ATM card. Also, tomorrow I am getting my first paycheck, and a cell phone. I’m going to be a millionaire (roughly 800 dollars is one million won)! I would get my cell phone tomorrow during the day since I don’t have to teach classes due to school wide testing. However, it’s in my contract that I have to “desk warm”, meaning I still have to go into work, even though there is absolutely nothing for me to do. I don’t mind, though. I’d rather go in and get paid, than not work and have them deduct the hours from my paycheck. So, I’ll get a phone after work, jump on the KTX, and be in Busan by nightfall. My co-teacher is taking me to get my cell phone because there is no way in hell I would understand what I was signing. She needs one anyway, so it’s two birds with one stone. She actually might meet me in Busan this weekend for the fireworks festival—she really wants to hang out with some foreigners. The only part that concerns me is that she is not even the slightest bit a drinker. She might be in for an early Halloween scare.
It’s now Monday, and the weekend in Busan has past. It was yet another one for the record books, with the News Team in full-effect. I’ve gotten pretty close with a good group of foreigners (we call ourselves the News Team—a spin off the movie Anchor Man). We always manage to find each other on the weekends, even though our apartments are all around Korea. There are South Africans, Americans, Canadians, Irish, English, and the occasional Kiwi in the group. I think I am the youngest of the bunch, and everyone seems to treat me like his or her younger brother. I love it. It started on Friday night. I arrived around ten o’clock, and we started drinking at a bar called Crossroads. We ended up having a little too much fun and the bartender pretty much asked us to leave because we scared everyone away. We left, going to this bar and that bar, and by mid-night I realized I had lost the hat my little brother gave me before I left. Malcolm, who is pretty much my Irish brother, helped me trace our steps while everyone else found food for their beer munchies. We literally went into every bar we had been to that night, and no one had seen the hat. After an hour of looking, I had given up and was feeling pretty down about it. I had lost the hat before, but only to find it after a few minutes of looking. This time we had searched an entire block and had no such luck. Just when I thought my luck had run out, Malcolm pulled the luck of the Irish out from nowhere. He walked over to what looked like every other piece of trash in the gutters of Korean alleyways, picked up my hat, and raised it above his head. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. There it was: my dirty, grungy, little brothers spare baseball cap. It was a miracle. We then found our way back to the group, showed them the prize, drank up the rest of the booze, then everyone ended up wrestled in the bushes. By the end of it all, Malcolm had fallen asleep in the back of a random pick-up truck—great start to the weekend.
The next day we met everyone by the beach. By the time we got downtown it was mid-afternoon, and most of our friends were already hanging out. There were over a million people on one stretch of beach, so I don’t know how we managed to find everyone. We were all pretty hungry, so we decided to grab some pizza. We sat on the porch of a very nice restaurant overlooking the beach, eating pizza and drinking more beer. While there, I tried my heart out to impress my newly found Peruvian Queen. She’s 34 years old, though, and seems to think I’m too young for her. It didn't detour me, as I still tried for many more hours. The fireworks didn’t help my situation either (crazy I know), and by the end of it all I had given up on my Latin romance in Korea. Even if they didn’t help me solidify a relationship with the woman of my dreams, the fireworks were amazing. Busan has held this festival for eight years now, and attendance has increased every year. The city spent five million dollars on it this year, with the big-daddy firework costing one hundred thousand dollars alone. I swear it blew every firework show I’ve ever seen out of the water. One of the teachers in our program invited us all to his place because it overlooked the beach, and the bridge. Imagine the News Team, assembled on an apartment rooftop, overlooking a million people on a beach below us, with the best fireworks you can imagine in the background. Still, though, there was no dice with my Peruvian Queen.
A few hours after the fireworks—probably close to two in the morning—Malcolm and me needed to find somewhere to crash. We ended up staying at our friends “Love Motel” for the night. (Love motels are little shoebox-size motels that couples go to when they want to spend the night together. Koreans live at home until they are married, and often don’t introduce one another to the parents until they are engaged. So, when they need some alone time, they go to a "Love Motel". We however didn’t partake in the ordinary traditions of the Love Motel. We just wanted to sleep.) I feel sorry for our Kiwi friend that let Malcolm and I stay. I jumped in the bed as soon as I got in the room, and Malcolm slept on the floor. This put her was stuck between two drunken twenty-something-year-olds having a snoring competition all night. When I woke up she looked pissed, claiming not to sleep a wink all night. Needless to say, we said goodbye and started walking.
Tiahna’s wasn’t too far from the area, so we rendezvoused there. Jezebel met us, and we took naps before the evening festivities (Yes, Sunday, and it’s still not over). It just so happened that the Korean FA Finals was the same weekend as the fireworks festival. I had never seen a professional football (soccer) match in person, so I was pretty excited. Busan, South Korea hosted the World Cup in 2002 and the stadium they built for the event was serious business. We arrived at the stadium thirty minutes before the game started, and I was in line to buy everyone tickets. We met some other teachers from Yangsan, so there were eleven of us in total. Randomly, a Korean man walked up to one of our friends, asked how many were in our party, and handed her eleven free tickets. We tried to give him a beer, but he politely refused, smiled, bowed, and walked away. Koreans truly are the nicest people in the world. We then got in the gate line, and wouldn’t you know it, more free stuff. As soon as we passed the gate, there were boxes full of free Busan Football scarves. We all grabbed a few, I bought a jersey, and just like that, we were Busan hooligans, with standing seats right behind the goal. We yelled a lot, drank a lot, and I’m pretty sure we got on TV. I know our picture was taken for the newspaper. Nuts!
I hope this paints a decent (no pun intended) picture to what my weekends are like in Korea. I’m going to end this post with a few quotes from the weekends thus far:
“This gum tastes like Man!”
“You were making long, complicated jokes in an emergency.”
“It’s raining glitter! Are you guys seeing this?”
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