I've been hearing about this holiday since before I moved here...it's 4-5 days of freedom in September or October (it moves around)...it's the first time I've seen Korea slow down. Seriously...Korea never seems to sleep...or even take it easy...but...for Chuseok, traffic (at least on the middle days) seemed to die down, all the things that wake me up every morning seemed to take a break and streets were eerily empty.
The first two days, we had a tropical storm blow through Korea, bringing rain, rain and more rain to my area, so I did what I haven't done in...well, ever. I stayed at home, watched movies and ate junk food. Oh, and played video games...it was wonderful. On the third day, the weather was better, so Dawni, Johnny, New Allison and I decided to hit up Busan...it was pretty trippy, because Busan is usually really busy, but stores were closed and streets were deserted. Ghost town...by Korean standards, anyways. We finally managed to find a restaurant to eat at and sat down, looked through the menu handed to us, sipped the glass of water the waiter kindly bestowed upon us and after about 5 minutes were ready to order. It was at this point that the waiter informed us that they don't actually have a chef and it would be at least an hour before one would show up.
This was one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time...seriously, who opens a restaurant without a chef? And why give us menus and water and act like everything is normal when you know the dude cooking the food is - at that very moment - sleeping at the other side of town.
Long story short (I have a lot to cover in this blog post), we just bummed around Busan, walked everywhere we could think of, had some awesome laughs and saw some wicked things...Busan simply rocks. I can never get bored of that place!
Anyhoo...I'll have more pics coming as soon as we figure out how to get it from Dawni, but for now...here are a few...the 4 of us on the subway in Busan.
The waterfront...panoramas rule...
My visual commentary on contemporary Korean fashion:
A cool pagoda at a temple behind a row of shops in a shopping district...way cool and unexpected find:
And a gorgeous moonrise over Haeundae Beach (where there are way too many out-of-shape white people wearing way too revealing clothes...just sayin').
The next day (I LOVE that we can do Busan in one day without stressing about time...with the lack of traffic this weekend, the bus took 40 minutes to get from Masan to Busan...oh and it costs a little over $3...yeah...do that back in Canada or the U.S.)...anyhoo, the next day, I decided to saddle up ol' Two Wheels and head to Daegu, about 90 km away. I carbo-loaded (rice, beans and corn), water-loaded (few bottles in the freezer at all times) and backpack-loaded (camera, spare tube, clean dry T-shirt for the bus ride home) and hit the four-lane blacktop. Now, I love the sun and the heat, but damn, riding in 30 degree weather in a semi-tropical (read: humid as all hell) climate on pavement with no shade kinda sucks...but whatever the scenery was beautiful, the sun was blazing and the hills were challenging, but not murderous. Life was good.
And then, at around the 21 km mark...I heard what every rider dreads hearing, especially out in the middle of nowhere. *POP* sssssssssssssssssssshhhh.....flop flop flop. Excellent. I blew an inner tube to smitherenes in the middle of nowhere (time to change the actual tire, the real cause of the problem...it has holes in the sidewall...oops). Being the wise man I am, I had a spare inner tube, but no pump. So, I got off the bike and started walking. And I walked. And walked. And walked. I saw dead bugs. Big ones. I saw gigantic live spiders. I saw snakes that had been run over by cars. And I walked on. After 3 km of walking on the side of the highway, a gas station (or teleporter to take me home) still failed to materialize, but 6 Korean knights in bright yellow armour and on $5,000 carbon-fibre steeds did ride into my miserable life!
These guys were the proud members of Kyongnam MTB, a local mountainbiking group and wow...they were as nice as their bikes were sexy. They rode up behind me, stopped to see what the problem was and then transformed themselves into a Formula 1 pit crew. All I wanted to do was to borrow a pump, but these guys were having none of that. They were tripping over each other helping me with my bike and within minutes I had my bike roadworthy again. We took a quick picture, waved goodbye and went on our way (I headed back home, not wanting to temp the tire one more time...still, logged 45 km...yay).
Say what you will about Koreans, but they rarely leave a stranger in need stranded. Huge thanks goes out to these guys for not only proving once again that Koreans are, by and large, kind and generous people, but also for turning what started as a thoroughly negative experience into a very positive memory.
So that was my weekend...today I'm going to chill out and going to take it easy tomorrow (maybe finally get that new tire the bike has been needing since I bought it)...but, I wanna lay a few more things on you guys before I leave...
Guess what. Seriously. Guess....okay, no guesses? I have been here for six months!!!
I know. Isn't that crazy? On March 14, I landed in Busan and it's been an incredible ride ever since then. Not a single boring day, and not a single day (despite some negative experiences) when I wanted to pack my bags and head home.
Don't get me wrong...I miss home. First and foremost, I miss my family and friends. I am lucky to be surrounded by some amazing people at home, but thankfully I have some awesome friends here too, so that's really helping a lot.
Some other things I miss: being able to go out to eat. Seriously. Seems simple, right? Yeah...try being a vegetarian in Korea. Good luck. I miss the Island. I miss perfectly clean and crisp air, beautiful blue water, massive old growth forests and being in the middle of nowhere. But, most of all...the thing (people don't count in this category haha) I miss most is my stupid little station wagon.
I miss driving and having the freedom to go anywhere anytime. (Or, in my case, everywhere all the time). Going from driving 65,000 km/year to 0 km in 6 months is ridiculous. Sadly, I don't think I'll buy a car while I'm here, so I better find a way to get over the driving withdrawal before I go crazy. Oh...I also miss my car's stereo :( The pair of Sony headphones I have just can't compete with this:
My parents always knew when I was coming...they heard the boom from the subs, and knew that about a minute later I would magically materialize...sigh.
Despite all the things I'm missing from home, I'm having a lot of fun and I have a great life here. I'm good at my job and I'm appreciated at work, which feels very nice (just the other day the senior English teacher told me that she appreciates the way I teach and I'm very "sincere" when I'm teaching...it was awesome). I make good money; I live well here and I'm paying off my student loans. I'm on the ultimate trip of my life, forget a weekend here, a couple of weeks there, I'm living in Asia for a year or two...how crazy is that? This is something I'll be talking about for the rest of my life.
In fact, I like my life here so much that, despite coming here with the intention to stay for one year and one year only, I am 99% sure that, if offered another contract, I will sign it and rock out in Korea for two years before settling down in Canada again.
And that brings me to my second anniversary. On Sept. 15, 1993, my parents did what must have been one of the most stressful, scariest and most anticipated moments of their lives: they packed up eight bags and two children and stepped on a Malev plane and left Hungary. Twenty four hours later (but still on Sept. 15, thanks to the time difference), the four of us touched Canadian soil for the first time and became Canada's newest residents.
My and my brother's futures were no small part of the decision for my parents to leave their families and homes behind and try their fortunes halfway around the world, and for that, I can't thank them enough. Eighteen years later, we're all Canadian citizens (in fact, we're all dual citizens...we have more passports in the house than a KGB double agent), and I am proud to tell people around here that I'm Canadian. I love Canada and I know my family (especially my brother and I) have the kind of life we couldn't have even dreamed of back in Hungary.
Oh yeah...there's another big milestone coming up...stay tuned...blog coming soon!! ;)
Also...I'm always listening to music...and I was thinking of starting some sort of a musical component to the blog...not exactly sure what to do. Was just going to throw out some cool lyrics and/or stuff I'm listening to as I'm writing the blog...tell me if it's a huge flop/waste of time...currently listening to Peter Bjorn and John's (with Victoria Bergsman) 2006 track "Young Folks"...when was the last time a song where whistling was a big component charted so well? Plus, Victoria has an awesome voice. First few words of the song...
If I told you things I did before, told you how I used to be
Would you go along with someone like me?
If you knew my story word for word, had all of my history
Would you go along with someone like me?
So...here's to 18 years in Canada, six months in Korea and a few days short of three decades on the planet...yup...this is a big week for yours truly!!!
T
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