Fighting Over Kimchi (Part 1)

Aah. I had just showered, and am brimming with happiness. It was an awesome weekend, and I wish it weren't ending. Buddha's Birthday weekend was a rare three-day weekend, and I spent it in Seoul, Cheongju and Daejeon.

In Cheongju, four friends came to visit, and I showed them around a city that I had only lived in for roughly 8 months. The only specific request was a visit to Subway, so I led everyone to the basement of the DreamPlus mall, where there is one Subway outlet. There are 3 Subways in total in Cheongju, I later found out, though I only knew of 2. My friend really enjoyed a pizza sub, which she didn't get to have when she went back to America. So we all savored subs - except for me, because I was silly and ate a peanut butter jelly sandwich right before setting out. I'm happy they all enjoyed the sandwiches so much.

We wandered around the rest of DreamPlus, where we checked out little private fashion stores that are all in rented space. They liked the not-crowded and relaxed atmosphere of the place, and amidst all the shiny, I bought myself a classier watch. It has an oval face, with a leather band and circular metal studs. 40,000 won. A while of wandering around in the mall later, we decided to go outside. Conversations about everything make us very slow walkers, and it was a relaxing day, so we go with the flow.

Five people pack into a taxi, and then it looks like a clown car. I sat on my friend's lap, and we went to Sajik-dong. We got off a block from the bus stop, because we were going to find the small lake or pond, but the bus that I rode to get there last time wasn't running that day.

We noticed the stadium, where I explained that the steps and the extra huge television screen are for people who didn't get tickets in time - they can sit on the stairs to snack while watching the game on the tv outside of the stadium. There was also a statue to the side, almost Greek looking, explaining some part of Korean history. Near it are the mascots for Cheongju, little cartoon characters, because all cities in Korea must have mascots. My friends stopped to smell the bright flowers in front of them. We noted the big bonsai tree behind the flowers.

A block later, we head to the golden temple. It was the first time that I had seen it open, perhaps because of the holiday. We wandered and pointed at the buildings, saying hi to the old lady keepers and commenting on things. There were two: one was Chinese styled and painted brightly, a dormitory where the religious family lives; and the other was the temple itself, painted gold and usually locked. The old lady was nice enough to unlock it for us as a random treat. Inside, she explained the turtle dragon, which accompanies the most powerful god places. It reminded me of the robots from Power Rangers.

On the second floor, there were five gods, the biggest one in the center dwarfing all the rest. They were sorted by size and position: nearer to the center and taller means more important. Their Chinese names were framed in front of them. We bowed. They had different styled hats, were all painted gold, and their faces looked both stern and concerned at the same time. We went upstairs to see the biggest god, who had his palm out in the stop position and the other hand holds a giant pearl of sorts. He was also painted gold, with a topknot in a crown on his head. The space above his head was painted with 4 mantras. When we asked about the pearl in the king's hand, the language barrier got in the way, so the lady led us back down to their offices and showed everyone a short history book, in English, about everything that is this temple. I'm waiting on a friend to finish reading it so I can learn too.

Then we wandered around pet street, looking at dogs and cats and pet food. I bought my Eugene another bag of food. All the animals were so cute. We stopped for drinks at a 7-11 before deciding to hop on a bus after all. We rode to Shinae, the downtown area, before deciding we will sit on a pretty bridge. We stopped by for ice cream at Baskin Robbins on the way, and my friend got a bapbingsu, an ice cream mix with lots of ice. I got the Blueberry Volcano, blueberry ice cream with butter cookies and mint candy. After we went and sat on the dragon-ribs shaped bridge for a good long while, we went for dinner.

I took them to haejonggook, which means hangover soup. We all got the sugolgi one, which means beef with vegetables, soup and purple rice plus the usual appetizers. We had good conversations about our mothers and random subjects, and the meal was very fulfilling. Then I had to pack and go back to Daejeon with them for our ziplining trip the next day. They met my cat, while I hung up underwear and packed for the next day. I still had to go back once for some things I had missed.

Then, like clowns, we all hopped into a taxi once again. The driver, seeing that we were all foreigners, was trying to say to us that Daejeon was just a short distance, so we don't need to go to a bus terminal and he can just take us there instead. I told him, no, that costs too much, and he faced the road again sheepishly. We had a good ol' time making fun of ourselves and of him, and he informed us that he has a Canadian cousin and that he would visit soon. He was smiling when we all exited his taxi. You just know that we made his night.

Company Trip

My brain is tripped out on leftover adrenaline and endorphins right now. Ahh, exercise. Wait, I came here to narrate. Hi! Since the last post, dear coworkers and I had gone on a very surreal company trip to a small handful of places - all of which were beautiful. On Sunday, I hung out with my best friend and we bought hiking boots for me and he gave me a Domo hat. Then one of the easier work week happened for five days, and this past weekend... What did I do on Saturday? I hung out with three girl friends for a Children's Day festival and then enjoyed Avengers with a few new friends on Sunday.

It's amazing that I was able to remember all that. It took a tiny bit of work and looking at random pieces of paper that I had written down on over these past two weeks, mind you. Anyhow, on to the stories. =)

We all stood around awkwardly after arriving at about 8:30am in front of the office building, then we got piled onto a rented tour bus outfitted with flashing lights and a karaoke system. Almost every hour, we stopped for bathroom breaks. The first place we went to was a beach-side seafood restaurant. My, do I Love raw fish. While other people started drinking, I was consuming the essences of the ocean. The conversation around the table was about what exactly is healthy, and giant ginseng roots, and then a Canadian coworker had to awkwardly insult all the Korean men at the table by asking them why there are so many herbs and products that are supposed to help sexual stamina. "Do Korean men really need it, or something?" I told this coworker he was a bad egg in the silence that had fallen over the table. Soon after, the boss told us that we should go walk around the beach - so we did.

The sand was so soft, and the sun was just high enough in the sky. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. All the other women had went ahead to walk by themselves, so that Canadian coworker, a Korean man and I took off our shoes and strolled along the oceanic foam. We made fun of each other, as people do, talking about Diablo 3 which had come out recently, all the different kinds of beer around the world, and the way a towel is the most necessary thing for a traveler - one of the things that he learned from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I'm ashamed to say I haven't read yet. Then we wiped off our feet to pile back onto the bus and head to our next stop - a Buddhist temple.

Most Buddhist temples look the same. They're all in high places, but this one is especially commercialized with restaurants and a woodsy walkway leading up to it. I had started taking pictures. My two traveling companions and I started talking about religion and those kinds of beliefs, and why a person should focus on either the here and now, or the afterlife. When we came back down to find the bus, the rest of the crew were somewhere enjoying the rice wine near the temple. The Korean man was sad that he had missed it, but neither the Canadian nor I want to drink. We sat in the shade of the bus until everyone came back.

After everyone got on the bus, we're now going to the last stop on this trip, which is a barley field. When we got there, the sun was fairly low in the sky, so it cast a warm glow over everything it touched. The grass and the barley moved with the wind like waves, and tourists like ourselves populated the little dirt paths in between the vegetation. There were horses, very tired horses pulling horses, and in a fenced in area somewhere to the left middle, there were sheep. I liked the smell of barley - I eat so much wheat and bread based products that it's practically all I'm made of. My Korean and Canadian coworkers fed bits of plants to the sheep, because apparently, they made my Korean coworker uncomfortable so the Canadian suggested that he should go feed them to overcome his fear. There were little tents of products, but everyone was very drunk still and we didn't stay long.

On one part of the trip where we were all on the bus, a bunch of drunk men decided to blast the karaoke system on the bus with its flashing lights and sing and dance awkwardly. None of them looked particularly good dancing, and half of the bus was trying to sleep so they were all very irritated. Apparently, it gave one woman a headache, and she said that all this is distracting to the driver, so technically it's illegal. I was amused at the whole lack of intelligence in the situation, especially when one of the Korean American men demanded that the bus be stopped so he can pee. So then a couple of men peed together by the side of the highway.

We all got back to Cheongju about roughly 9pm or so. The sky was dark. The director asked me if I enjoyed it, and I said yes, I had fun. It's hard not to have fun when given a free tour of places I've never been before, along with free food, and then being perpetually amused the whole way at all the social awkwardnesses my Korean and one Canadian coworkers can impose on each other because we were the people who didn't have a valid reason that the management could accept to get out of this trip. It was a situational comedy. So yes, I had fun.