January Was a Busy Month

I haven't had many opportunities to blog lately, and that is due to the fact that January was a very busy month. Whether it was on the weekends or during the week, I always had something to do.

For the month of January, we changed our schedule at work. We went through what they call Winter Intensives. The students are on vacation from public school during the month and even for part of February. To give the students something to do during the day, many of the private English Schools in Korea change their hours and add more classes. We normally teach from 2:00 pm - 9:45 pm. During intensives, our hours switched to 8:35 am - 6:45 pm, 8:35 am – 6:00 pm, and 9:30 am - 6:00 pm depending on the day. Honestly, I did not enjoy it. I am not a morning person. Maybe I have years of closing shifts at Best Buy to thank for that, but I just operate better if I get up at 9 or 10 as opposed to 6:30 or 7:30. The longer hours not only took away from our free time, but they also made working out difficult. I didn't really want to run after work, because that is when everybody wanted to go to dinner. That left waking up early to run, and as much as I enjoy running, going at 7 or 8 every ranked just slightly above depressing. In the summer it would be great, but it was still dark at 7 during the winter and boy was it cold. The coldest weather I'd run in before was probably about 35 degrees. Now I can say that I've run in 17 degree weather. Between the dark and the cold, it was a long month of hit or miss running. I can't tell you how glad I am to be back to normal hours now both for the sake of having more free time and having more enjoyable runs.

The weekends were also packed during the month of January beginning with the very first one. We were off on New Year's Eve, so we left that Friday for Daegu. We got there early and saw Tron 3D at the IMAX. That was awesome! The sound alone was worth the ticket price. I love going to movies in Korea. You eventually don't notice the subtitles after 20 or 30 minutes, and the rest of the time that you are watching the movie in a dark theater you might as well be back home. It is one of the few places here that you can really forget where you are. After the movie we had a great dinner at The Holy Grill. It is a restaurant run by two Canadians, and it is loaded with food from back home. I had The Californian, a chicken, bacon, and avocado sandwich with fries and a margarita. After that, it was time to party. We went out and started with some of Daegu's infamous bag drinks. We had to hurry and get inside a club as it was almost 11:30 when we finished eating. Despite the rush, we probably had the most anti-climatic midnight celebration I've ever had on New Year's. They said it was 5 till midnight at 11:55, and then the next thing you know they said Happy New Year's. We couldn't figure out what happened to the countdown. It was all westerners doing the call outs, so you couldn't use the excuse that the Koreans didn't know what to do. We didn't let it ruin the night though. After a few more bag drinks, we started walking the streets. That lasted for about 20 minutes, because the temperature at this point was about 10 degrees with a wind chill of 3 degrees. We quickly found a bar that let us choose all the music we wanted to listen too on their laptop. We hung out there until about 3. From there we went to Club MK. Club MK is one of my favorite clubs in Korea. It has a great atmosphere and a very good mix of music. We danced there until 5:30 or so. It was about time to head towards the bus station, but Mike and Gary wanted to stop off at Burger King. They had some massive burgers at 6:00 am; that still doesn't sound appealing a month later. After BK, we grabbed a couple of cabs and made off for the bus station. We caught a 6:40 bus back to Masan. The bus was freezing cold. The driver had just turned it on when we got on, so it had been sitting in 10 degree weather all night with no chance to warm up. I guess we all got over it, because by 7:00 we were all sleeping. We got back to Masan around 8:00, took a cab home, and then I passed out.

New Year's also turned out to be one of the two times my water has frozen so far this winter. Hopefully there won't be a third, but we still have the month of February to go. What do I do when my water freezes? Nothing! I lay in bed waiting and hoping. I don't know who to call, and given my inability to speak Korean I wouldn't know what to say even if I knew who to call. So, I sit around hoping somebody in one of the 89 other apartments in the building will call and get it fixed.

The second weekend in January, Guy, Mike, Matt, and I traveled to a little town called Hwacheon for the "Ice Festival That Wasn't". We got on a bus to Seoul at 1:00 am Saturday morning on the 8th of January. I slept for about an hour. We got to Seoul just before 5:00 am. The four of us hung around waiting for the subway to open. At 5:30 we got on the subway to another bus station in Seoul that runs buses out to Hwacheon, which is about another two and a half hour trip. When we arrived at the bus station we met two other people that Mike knows, Matt and Kate. They decided to join us for the journey into the mountains of Northeastern Korea. After a quick and tiny breakfast at Tom and Tom's Coffee, we got on an 8:00 am bus to Hwacheon. It struck us as odd that the closer we got to the festival, the fewer people there were on the bus. This festival is supposed to be visited by over a million people every year over the course of three weekends. It was opening weekend, but the bus was as empty as the roads. We also wondered why not too far before the city, they were spraying all the vehicles at a checkpoint with some sort of liquid. When we finally got to Hwacheon at 10:30 and got off the bus, we were greeted by two young ladies who informed us that the festival wouldn't start until the following weekend. The website had said that it started on the eighth, and as we walked around the small town even the signs advertising the festival stated that it began on the eighth. We were mystified until we decided to grab lunch at a small restaurant by the bus station. After telling the owner that we came for the festival, she had someone send her a text in English on her phone explaining the situation. Apparently, the festival had been pushed back by one week due to the Foot and Mouth epidemic that is sweeping the country. They didn't want people potentially carrying the disease out of the NE province were it is mainly concentrated and spreading it all over the country. That also explained the checkpoints where they were spraying vehicles. The disease is harmless to humans, but South Korea has already slaughtered over two million cattle and pigs to prevent it from spreading more. We didn't want our six and a half hour bus ride to be completely in vain, so we walked around the city for a few hours after lunch. It was a nice walk as everything was frozen and it was snowing quite a bit. It wasn't an ice festival, but is was still far more ice and snow than I'll ever see back in Texas. Around 3 o' clock we headed back to Seoul. We also decided we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a great Western Meal. The six of us hit up the All American Diner in Itaewon for some delicious burgers. We polished off the meal with an epic brownie topped with ice cream. From there it was back on the subway to the Seoul Intercity Bus Terminal. We caught a 10:00 bus to Masan and arrived home around 1:45 am. Despite only 2 - 3 hours of sleep since waking up on Friday morning, we met some friends at a bar for an hour or so. I didn't last too long though, which I guess is to be expected. Sleeping until 1:00 pm on Sunday was great!

For the weekend of January 15th, we wanted to keep our activities inside. It may not be Chicago or Minneapolis, but compared to Texas, Korea gets quite cold in the winter. We only had one day in the 40s for the month of January, and the rest were in the 30s or 20s. What makes it worse is that it is hard to get out of the cold. We tend to walk most places so we can't warm up in a car, and my school and my apartment are not exactly the warmest places I've ever been. Thus, a day of indoor activities sounded good to us. It turned out to be a good choice because that weekend was probably the coldest we've had all winter. It was the second time my water froze. Mike, Nikki, Liz, Gary, and I went to Busan. We started out at the Busan Museum of Modern Art. It was small, but nice. There were some pretty interesting pieces on display. After the art museum, we stopped by Centum City, the biggest department store in the world, and grabbed lunch. It is one of the few places around that you can get a sandwich, a salad, and a cookie all in one stop. From Centum City, we went to the Busan Aquarium. It is the biggest aquarium in Korea. It was an enjoyable experience. They had a really cool jellyfish display, and an awesome underwater tunnel in which sharks, stingrays, and other fish were swimming next to you and above you. The highlight was easily the Giant Pacific Octopus. I have seen quite a few octopuses at aquariums, and they never seem to do much. This one was either mad or exercising, I'm not sure which. He was moving all over the place! Check out the video on my website, it was really neat to see! We went to an Irish Pub after the aquarium, and then had dinner at Fuzzy Navel. Fuzzy is definitely my favorite Mexican Restaurant in Korea so far. The food is the closest I've found to Mexican Food back home. After dinner, it was time to call it a day. We took the subway back to the bus station, and we hopped on a bus to Masan.

The weekend of the 22nd was pretty low key. We had done a lot of traveling for the month and spent a decent amount of money, so we decided not to take any trips outside of our immediate area. Nikki and I went to Changwon on Saturday in search of a mythical Subway restaurant I had heard about. Sandwiches are by far one of the foods I miss the most. There are places you can get them in Korea, our little corner of Masan just isn't one of them. After an hour and a half of searching, we found the building. However, the restaurant was missing. The gentleman inside said that it was changing to Lion Subs and that it would be open on Monday. A lot of good that was going to do us on Saturday. We ate at Kraze Burger instead. After lunch we found a Cold Stone. Ice cream is good no matter what country you are in. Nikki and I walked around Changwon for a brief period of time. It was cold, and we wanted to get back to Masan. We ate dinner with the crew that night at a new pizza and pasta place. Sunday, I got up and met Gary and Mike for screen golf. That was a blast. I hadn't played since October, and it felt good to swing a golf club again. We played Pebble Beach, but I imagine the real Pebble Beach would be slightly more difficult than what we experienced. Nonetheless, it was a great time. We ate dinner at a new place called "Meat King" that just opened up with Nikki, Liz, and Guy. After dinner, we saw Megamind in 3D. It was a good way to finish off a relaxing weekend.

For the last weekend of the month, we spent Friday night celebrating the end of Winter Intensives. In a country that has no closing time, you can do a lot of celebrating. On top of that, it is pretty amazing when you can do a lot of celebrating for about $6. I will certainly miss Mokkali, rice wine with cider, when I get back to the states. Saturday, once we finally got up and got moving, Mike, Nikki, Guy, Gary, and I went to Daegu for some shopping and good food. I don't know if I'd want to live in Daegu over Busan or Seoul as far as Korean cities go, but for a quick trip the shopping, eating, and entertainment options are great. I bought a new jacket, and I can honestly say that I've been warmer the last few days than I've been this entire winter. All the Koreans wear these puffy jackets. At first, I'd have to say I didn't love them, but they've grown on me. I picked one up on sale, and wow is it warm. It cuts out all the wind and it seals up really well so my body heat doesn't get out. I guess they know a thing or two about staying warm here. We ate two great meals in Daegu to bookend the shopping, and barely caught the 11 o' clock bus back to Masan. It would have been awful to miss it, because the next bus was at 6 am on Sunday. Speaking of, Sunday was also quite entertaining. Mike chose January 30th to get his first tattoo. Tattoos are very rare in Korea. They've long been associated with gangs and the mafia, and they've only just recently become something that wasn't completely taboo. Given the status of tattoos, getting one isn't exactly an easy task. We had to have one of our Korean co-workers look up places online that offered them. You have to make an appointment just to ensure they have all of the necessary stuff ready to go. We went to Changwon to get it, and we made up for the prior weekend by getting lunch at Lion Subs. It's just like Subway, except they don't pile as much stuff on their sandwiches. After that, we met our co-worker and headed to the tattoo parlor. The tattoo parlor turned out to be a random apartment. At first we were all, Mike especially, a little weirded out by the setup. As it turns out, the guy that opened the door doesn't live in the apartment. It is used only for tattooing. He had a partner that showed up after a few minutes as well. Everything looked nice and clean, so we didn't run away. The tattoo took about 2 hours. Mike is an extremely patriotic Canadian, so his tattoo was a maple leaf with symbols inside of it that were derived by Native Canadians. I'm not entirely sure if that is what the original residents of Canada are called, but it sounds good. Anyways, it looked pretty good and he made it through without crying. It was a pretty good deal for $180. After killing some time at a nearby coffee shop, we stopped at Shinsegae on the way home for some kabobs. Then we headed back to Masan and watched The Green Hornet. It was a nice finish to a busy month.

I don't know if the entire month of February will be quite as busy, but it should start out very entertaining. We are going to Seoul during the first week of the month for Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year. Among all the things we will be doing, we have a tour planned for the DMZ. I can't wait to do that. I've wanted to see it since before coming to Korea. Stay tuned for details on the trip, and be sure to check out pictures of our adventures in January.