The Other Side

Dear Busan,
Thank you for your department stores, markets, water fountain show, sunset, efficient city transportation, western restaurants, beaches, sand art and Baywatchy lifeguards ;)

Prepare yourself for a plethora of pictures. I probably should not have included this many, but I figured I'll write less and just show you more of Elizabeth and I's mini vacation to the other side of the peninsula. More pictures will go up on facebook soon.

Last week was not all that interesting, but then again I wasn't really focusing on the everyday hilariousness of my students because I was in great anticipation for the weekend! Elizabeth and I had decided awhile back that we would spend the weekend of July 11 and 12 in Busan, South Korea.

Gunsan is on the west side of South Korea on the Yellow Sea, so we face China. Busan is on the east side and is on the Sea of Japan/East Sea and it faces Japan. Since it's a 4 hour bus ride, we figured that it would be worth it to stay a night and enjoy 2 days over there. So, we booked a room at a guesthouse near the beach, well, so we thought. Turns out, they overbooked, but they said they would "upgrade," us since it was their mistake. We had high hopes for this "upgrade." (more to come about this a little later)

We set off Saturday morning on the 9:05 a.m. bus. (I love Korea, I could basically go to any city in this country by bus)


You see, Elizabeth and I don't usually see or talk to each other during the week since our lives are completely consumed by work Monday through Friday, so when we see each other on the weekend, we tend to jabber away about work, friends, going home, God, our frustrations with the loogys every other person (especially old men) spit on the sidewalks, underground subway stations, etc. So we were just chatting, maybe mixed with some giggling, but nothing too loud or obnoxious because we know Koreans like to sleep on the bus. Take note that it was 10 a.m. NOT like 4 a.m. This man in front of us turns around and just says something really nasty in Korean to us and then stared me down for a solid 4 seconds. I'm sure he was telling us to be quiet, but it was said in such a rude tone. My reaction was that of shock and confusion and then refusal to stop talking. Every other time he would be looking around the bus, I made sure to stare at him with a look that communicated, "You are a very rude old man and how dare you talk to two other humans like that!" This situation brought me back to my Subway days when customers would just be extremely rude and I would have to go down in the basement to shake it off.

Anyhow, we reached Busan about 4.5 hours later without any further situation with the drama king in front of us. We were ready to see where we'd be staying. (O.k. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to explain our accommodations without you thinking we are two extremely naive and stupid 20 something girls, but stick with me, and remember this is Korea not the South side of Chicago...and mom, I'm back, safe and sound in little Gunsan, just remember that)

Elizabeth had been talking to the owner of the guesthouse through email. The name was Genie, so we were supposed to call her when we got in and she would give us directions to another place a little farther from the beach which was supposedly an "upgrade." So, we did just that, and it turns out Genie was a man. A very small, skinny, glasses-wearing, single man probably in his early to mid 30's. And the "upgrade" was actually his apartment on the 32nd floor of a building called "Trump Building." I feel like you just read that and were like, "You better not have stayed with him, you're asking for it if you did." Let me further explain. From the looks of the apartment, an extremely nice,modern, 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment (the bedrooms had locks on the door), he bought his apartment with the intention of renting out rooms for overflow from the guesthouse (Each room had many beds in them..it was set up just like a guesthouse). And to give us more reassurance that this was not some "CSI: Miami" episode waiting to happen, there was a family that also stayed in one of the other rooms as well. So, although I did have scenes from the movie "Taken" playing through my head on the subway ride back to the apartment, it really was not creepy at all, and Genie was a very good host, he even provided breakfast muffins for us :)


And we took a few precautions like telling my coworker our location and giving her Genie's number. AND we obviously made it through with a good night sleep and a beautiful view of the Sea.

Moving on, Saturday we spent a lot of time traveling around the city. Our first stop was at Shinsegae department store, which just so happens to be the biggest department store in the whole world. They had just about everything in here, movie theatre, ice rink, grocery store, restaurants, food court, clothes, jewelry, bags and much much more.

Don't believe me that it's the largest in the world? Well then, feast your eyes on this!

We didn't do much in the department store because we wanted to be outside and enjoy the nice weather, but we did grab some dinner at a little cafe and got a sandwich and a bread bowl filled with soup! Hit the spot.

Next we were off to Gukje Market where there were many many people (foreigners too) and many many things. Here's Elizbaeth:

It was exciting, but it was a little crowded and it just seemed like too much. So, we wandered around a little bit and then decided to go check out the fish market. At first, I was like "why would we go to a fish market when I basically live in one over in Gunsan?" But after all the hustle and bustle of the Gukje Market area, this felt comforting to us country bumpkins.


Hardly any people.

Hard working ajummas..these ladies are separating the shells from the innards.

And this is just feels like home to me.

After the world famous fish market, Jagalachi, feeling refreshed, and then feeling stressed when Elizabeth had a sandal full of chewed gum, we headed over to Dadaepo Beach where Genie told us is Asia's largest water fountain. I did believe Genie up until about 2 minutes ago when I googled "asia's largest water fountain," and a whole bunch of stuff came up about a specific water fountain in China...of course China would have the biggest water fountain show. Anyhow, the water fountain was awesome and there was a light show with music and some sort of routine. It was very cool and took every ounce of self restraint to not go darting past the security guards and into the fountain. (Brooke, you know how I love fountains)


Before we watched the fountain music/light show. We were finally able to get to the beach and see the sun set. It was so beautiful, I couldn't really capture it on my camera.


And while we were admiring the sunset, we had to get our toesies into the Sea of Japan/East Sea ASAP. By the way, Koreans call it the East Sea but the rest of the world calls it the Sea of Japan. Hard feelings I think.

So after a 30 minute bus ride and another hour subway ride, we finally made it back to our "not as shady as it sounds" place. We slept well, that is until the morning when construction workers across the street decided to haul at least 100 metal bars and drop them over and over...(at least that's what it sounded like)...Come on it's SUNDAY! After a thoughtful breakfast by Genie, we were ready for the beach.

Haeundae Beach was so beautiful, and exactly what we needed. In the morning, the weather was a little cloudy, but that was nice because we heard on sunny summer days you can barely move there are so many people on the beach. However, we did meet and observe many interesting people, we were just glad they weren't all up in our business.

While exploring the beach, we found these awesome sand sculptures. I think they were from the weekend before, but they all held up very nicely. I have many more interesting pictures to post of these.

Just a couple of beach bums:
This girl asked us to take a picture with her. I'm telling you, it will be an adjustment to come back home and not have paparazzi ;)
I love spending the day at the beach. By the end of the day, it's almost like the people who sat next to you become your "sort of" friends. Well, this guy and his friend were next to us for pretty much the whole day.
Please notice the flippers on his friend's hands...How old are these guys?

They were quite entertaining. They spent the first 20 minutes blowing up this giant tube. Then they attempted to take it out into the water, but the lifeguard whistled them back in because swimming wasn't allowed yet. After they allowed for people to swim in the frigid water, they were out there and riding the waves on this enourmous yellow tube. It really did look fun, and before they went out, one of the men said to us, "you go." So, I took that as the o.k. to borrow his tube. When they came back in, I asked (in Korean) how much the tube was, and he says, "no no no, you go." So off we went into the Sea of Japan with excitement and an oversized yellow tube. The girl in the picture and her friend also rode the waves with us for awhile. There weren't many people swimming, so us whities were a good source of entertainment for those on the shore. Elizabeth took a little tumble after I sent her soaring on one of the waves, but she recovered quite nicely. I also, got a face full of salt water when one of the waves overtook me. The Korean girl says to me, "beautiful!" I'm not sure how my screaming face and not so graceful fall was "beautiful," but hey, I'll take that compliment. The tube was definitely a highlight for me.

While we were drying off from our little adventure in the water, we noticed this group of lifeguards doing some sort of photo shoot. This guy was clearly their "money maker" so they took numerous shots of him running out of the water like so:

We (and by "we" I mean "me") contemplated going back out there and fake drowning, but Elizabeth stopped me. All I wanted was a good blog story, Elizabeth ;)

After not fake drowning, Elizabeth went out and got us some din din. "Finger Lickin' Good" KFC! And it was so delicious.

We left the beach in enough time to give us an hour at the bus station. During the whole trip, we were talking about how responsible and organized we are for traveling and living in Korea. But then we get to the bus station and it turns out our bus was full and we didn't buy our tickets ahead of time. Wah wah wah...I guess we aren't as grown up as we bragged to each other about. So, we got on a bus that took us to a city called Jeonju about 30 minutes from Gunsan, but the bus from Jeonju to Gunsan would stop running by the time we would arrive there. So, we called our Pastor..it was definitely an, "ummmm...dad, so, um, uh, can we ask you for something?" moment. So, our wonderful Pastor had the driver of our church, Mr. Oh, come and pick us up in Jeonju at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday night. Such a blessing, that Haven church. My camera died, so I didn't get a picture of us with Mr. Oh, but he was his chipper self. We were even able to take a little family who was in the same situation as us back to Gunsan. Actually this is a little story.

So, when I was getting off the bus in Jeonju, I noticed the lady in front of me was asking the bus driver where the buses were for Gunsan. I knew that the buses had stopped running, but I didn't know how to tell her that without it being a very confusing and potentially awkward conversation. So, I told Elizabeth about it and we decided we should follow them to the bus station and then when they find out there is no bus, we will offer them a ride with us. So, here are two girls chasing this little family down the streets of Jeonju and thinking of ways to offer them a ride back. And it worked! Turns out, they found out there was no bus, and before the taxi drivers could get em, we were there to tell them they can ride with us. And surprisingly, they were missionaries in Thailand and spoke English very well. The taxi drivers were a little upset with us, but I think we made up for it with giving them a chance to talk English to us, "America? Obama? Obama...booo. Madonna?" An interesting end to the trip indeed.

And here we are a little more crispy than when we left Gunsan.

Well, I hope you can also have some sort of vacation this summer! Someone go eat at subway and order a teriyaki sandwich on Parmesan Oregano bread, American cheese, toasted, extra sweet onion sauce, honey mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions, and a little olive oil. Thanks :)