Korea--Day 8 (Saturday, June 30)

Full day of touring Busan planned.  We boarded the bus at 8:30 a.m.

We were delayed a good 20 minutes because someone puked and had to be evacuated. Some of the young adults were pretty hung over this morning.  Busan seems to be a big party town. Sometimes group travel is a pain, because you're always waiting for someone to go to the bathroom or go back and get what they forgot, etc. But there are lots of benefits to group travel that outweigh the inconveniences.

First stop was an air cruise on a cable car.  For some reason, Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un were shaking hands in the station where you board the car.

 This would have been a beautiful experience if it wasn't raining the whole time.

We were delayed at the top for about an hour because of thunder and lightning. Sarah sketched during the delay.

The next stop was Jagalchi Fish Market, an absolutely horrifying place of torture of needless cruelty.  I hated every second of it.  It was sad to see fish crammed into little tanks and piles of dead sea creatures. The place reeked. It was the lowest point of the trip so far for me.

I tried to focus on this cute puppy to erase the images of the fish market.

Noah found his hotel.

The next stop was two hours of shopping at the international market. It was still raining, and the market was outside, so it was miserable. Mike and I found a hotel and went in there and used the business center and free massage chairs.That was the best part of the day, although there were really no highlights to this day, only lowlights.

We were supposed to tour a temple, but there was dangerous flooding at it, so we finally came back to the hotel. Sarah had gone back earlier in a taxi with Grace and her family.  So glad to get out of our wet clothes and shoes. We haven't left since. The kids went out for pizza and brought us some. We're just watching the rain and I'm catching up the blog.

Korea--Day 7 (Friday, June 29)

We went to an art center for a drum lesson this morning.

 

We were divided into three groups. Mike and I were on Team Jeju.  Sarah was on Team Seoul, and Noah was on Team Busan.
We had lunch at a buffet restaurant at Seoul Station and then took the KTX bullet train to Busan.  It went almost 200 miles per hour, and we made it all the way across the country in less than three hours. 

I tried something called "acorn jelly" at lunch.  It was not good.

on the train

So many rice fields in the middle of the country.

We got off the train and walked to a bus for an hour ride to our hotel in Busan.  This bridge is amazing.

Lots of shipping containers. I saw some bound for Costco. Busan is a major shipping harbor.  Its population is 5 million, much less than Seoul's, but Busan has more land area.

 Our hotel (the Novotel). We are on the street side, but we can see a little corner of the beach.

 Sarah is going to the pool with her required swimcap.

 Mike and I found the beach through the fog.

 Found the Cocky Pub while prowling the streets of Busan.

 This wide area is in the middle of two streets.

 Here's a very common occurrence.  Mike doling out money to Sarah on the street.

 Now she's happy.

 Fireworks in the fog on the beach.

The tunnel of hearts lights up at night.

Korea--Day 6 (Thursday, June 28)

First, a couple random nature pictures. We haven't seen a lot of nature, but here's a Korean magpie.  It makes a lot of noise.

And here is the skygarden on the roof of our hotel:

I was up very early this morning and decided to take a walk to try to find the cathedral that looks nearby on the map.  Let's just say that after about two hours of wandering, I was completely lost.  I was standing downtown among the tall buildings so I couldn't see Namsan tower, which is my usual landmark to help me find things. I decided to forget about the cathedral and just focus on getting back to the hotel before our bus left.  I located the tower and was heading in that direction when I glanced to my right and...there was the cathedral. 

I went inside, read some verses, prayed that I could figure out how to get back to the hotel.  When I came out, I knew exactly where I was on the map but still couldn't figure out where the hotel was.  I asked a Korean guy on the street, who happened to speak perfect English and gave me great directions.  I made it back to the hotel in time to board the bus for the day's itinerary, but I was already exhausted and covered in sweat.

First stop was a tour of an elementary school. Here's Sarah with the principal:

The orchestra performed our national anthem and then theirs, along with a few other songs.  They were very talented.  Sarah and Grace performed a song that they just threw together last night. 

Then we had a line dancing lesson.

 

We presented our gifts to them, and then we left.

 We had a little free time, so we walked to Eden Meerkat Friends, where you can interact with meerkats, wallabies, a raccoon, a genet, and some cats. It was an awesome experience, and we all loved it!

 

 

 

 

 

We also got our feet cleaned by "doctor fish", who eat dead skin.  It felt so strange, like they were vibrating!

We packed for tomorrow's trip to Busan and got ready for tonight's home visit with a host family.  At 4:00, we went to one of the meeting rooms in the hotel to be matched with our host family.  We met our guy, Min Jong Baek, who used a translator app on his phone to tell us that he doesn't speak English well and showed us how to use the app so we could communicate.  Even though we had some trouble communicating, we could tell that he was a fun guy with a great sense of humor. 

Min Jong drove us to his house, which is only about five miles outside of Seoul, but it took us an hour to get there because of rain and traffic.  He told us (through the app) that his son was 16 and his daughter was 12.  He told us he lived on the 11th floor, so when we got in the elevator, I pressed 11.  He said, "Oh, sorry, sorry, I get numbers mixed up.  We live on 17."  When we got to his apartment, he introduced his wife (Jung Ran Lim), his daughter (Seo Yeon Baek), and his son (Joo Won Baek).  We were quite surprised to see that his son was just a little boy.  We asked their ages, and Seo Yeon said she was 13, and Joo Won said he was 7.  I told Min Jong that we were expecting a 16 year old, since that's what he told us, and he said, "Oh, sorry, sorry.  I get numbers mixed up." 

We toured their immaculate, uncluttered apartment, and had a feast of japchae, bulgogi, bibimbap, salad, and fried Korean pancakes.  They all used forks so we would feel more comfortable. It was all so delicious!  They even ordered takeout so we could try Korean fried chicken. Then Jung Ran made dessert (Koreans don't usually have dessert; she just did it for us), which was pancakes stuffed with honey and topped with chocolate sauce and ice cream. 

We showed them pictures of our house and family and a map that shows where we live.  I played a game with Joo Won, which was to help him learn English, but it also helped me learn Korean. They gave us gifts of socks, Korean snacks, some face mask things that I'll have to figure out when we get home, and a selfie stick. We gave them a yoyo, kaleidoscope, candle, American flag, pin, a couple books, and pens. I read one of the books to Joo Won, and Seo Yeon was able to read some of the words.

 

 

 

 

 

We had to be back at 9:00 to deliver our luggage to the holding room for our Busan trip, and we were sad to say goodbye to our new friends.  We so enjoyed our time together.  Min Jong drove us back along the Han River, and we saw the lights of the city and Lotte Tower for the first time.  So pretty.  I couldn't get a picture to do it justice.

Some of the funny mistakes we had using the translator app:
1.  Min Jong told us that they had only lived in their apartment less than a year and that they had lived in Seoul before that.  I asked him why they moved, and he spoke several sentences into the translator app, but when he stopped speaking, only one word appeared on the screen: "wife".  He pointed at it and nodded and we all laughed. What he actually said was that his wife wanted to move in order to get better educational opportunities for the kids.

2.  We told him that Korea is beautiful, and he said something which the app translated as, "When people visit Korea, they say diseases are beautiful." We had a good laugh about that one and never did figure out what he was trying to say.

3.Another one we never figured out: "What will I do with this phone after I break up with you?"

4.  On the way back to the hotel, the drive didn't take as long.  He said, according to the app, "It's night, so you are out of shape." What he meant to say was that it's night, so traffic isn't as bad.

5.  One of our favorites was when he and Mike were talking about sports, and Min Jong was trying to say something about Mark McGuire hitting a bunch of home runs, but he said Jerry McGuire instead.  Mike said, "You mean Mark McGuire; Jerry McGuire is a movie."  Min Jong laughed so hard he actually fell off his chair and was rolling around on the floor.

There were a couple times where the translator app was so off that it was embarassing. It translated something Min Jong said as, "I'm a homosexual" which made him yell "No no no!" and it translated something I said into a very vulgar phrase, which was not at all related to what I said. 

Unique Korea things

No time for a long post this morning, so just a few strange things we've noticed since we've been here. A few oddities at restaurants: napkins are very hard to come by. If you get one at all,  it's a tiny cocktail napkin.  Same with drinking water.  If you get any at all, it's in a very small cup.  You never get forks.  If you're lucky, you get a spoon.  I'm terrible with chopsticks, and I don't know how you're supposed to eat a pancake with them, so I just sawed through it with my spoon.  Lots of things are difficult to eat without a fork.

Last night I found a Subway on the street and ordered a salad, largely just so I could get a fork.  I asked for an extra, and I'm treasuring that little plastic fork and am going to take it with me wherever I go for the rest of this trip.

 The hotel provides a shoe mitt.  We have no idea what to do with it.

 The bidet buttons are labeled in Korean, which I can read but not understand.  There are little pictures of butts next to each one, which help you figure out if you're going to get blasted with water or air, but it's mostly just a crap shoot (pun intended).  You just sit down and start pushing buttons and let your butt have a little surprise party.

 This is the sign on our hotel door.  It's not on anyone else's door; just ours.  We have no idea what it means.  We looked around our room, looking for a descending life line, but we haven't found one.  Mike thinks if there's an emergency, everyone in the whole hotel is going to cram into our room for this mysterious life line and we're not going to be able to save them.

There are no top sheets on the beds in either hotel we've been in.  There's the fitted sheet that you sleep on, but for covering, your only option is the big thick comforter or nothing.

I'm not posting a picture of the next two strange things, because they're disturbing.  First, we saw a guy on a scooter, driving down the street last night, distributing porn. He was just tossing these flyers onto the street as he drove, so the whole street was littered with porn in his wake. Second, there's this one street where they torture animals brutally right in front of you and then offer them to you to eat. I watched a lady grab a live eel from a tank, set it on her wooden block, jam a pin between its eyes, cut it from head to tail, and rip its skin off.  The poor skinless thing was still writhing on the block with its head pinned to it.  Another lady took a live octopus out of a tank, played with it like she was putting on a puppet show, making it wave its tentacles at the people on the street, and then she pulled out this cleaver and just chopped it to pieces.  It was gruesome.

When you get a pizza at home, it comes with garlic butter sauce. When you pizza in Korea, it comes with pickles.

 

Here's another thing: Where are all the trash cans in this country?  I'm perpetually walking around carrying trash in my pockets, in my backpack, etc. because there's nowhere to put it.  When we get back to the hotel room, I empty it all into our tiny hotel trash can, which is always full. 

Cider in Korea has nothing to do with apples.  It's Sprite. That was a shocker the first time.