It has been a little while since my last update and I have had some new and exciting experiences. I am hoping to have some pictures of the mud festival up that I went to about a month ago. Not a ton of stories but there should be some pictures of people covered in mud.
Onto the next few stories. A couple of weekends ago I went to Kong-won-do (spelling?) beach. It is on the East side of Korea and I live in the East side. I went with 4 friends, 3 Koreans and my neighbor Jeff. We left at 4 AM on Friday night/Saturday morning and headed out. We left at this hour because traffic is so bad here. I believe that it is roughly 250 Kilometers, but don't qoute me on that. The weekend before we left our driver's brother made the same trip and it took 10 hours. Our trip over took roughly 3 hours and we arrived at the beach around 8ish. We had breakfast and decided to head to the beach. We were one of the first people on the beach, and the beach was quite different. First, there were many awning-type things that were covering the beach and in order to even sit on the beach you had to pay about $15. If you decided to not pay for the awning there was a roped off area quite a ways away from the water where people would put up tents or towels. It was quite an odd thing and the second thing that was quite weird is taht people, for the most part, would wear their clothes and people just stand on the edge of the water. Most of the swimming was when people would throw their friends in, and that was also generally in full clothing. We stayed at the beach until about 3 or 4 and then one of our friends, Amy, entered a women's korean wrestling contest. There were 56 women in the contest and Amy won her first match and then during the time between rounds they challenged one of the 2 foreigners to wrestle a middle school wrestler. I told Jeff to go first and we found out that the middle schooler was the national wrestler for Korea. The women's fights generally took about a minute or so and this match between Jeff and the boy took about 1 second. jeff was ready to quit and they got him to try one more time and it lasted the same second as the first one. Jun, another friend with us, said that the sport isn't so much about strength as it is about strategy. After seeing that I decided that I wouldn't take my chances and Amy had the first match after this debacle and she lost so we made our way out after that. We got so incredibly burned at the beach. By the time we got home to shower we were all friend and then it was time for dinner. We went to a famous fresh fish market that was right down the road. We got dropped off and it was a narrow street with little covered restaurants on both sides. In front of the restaurants were fish tanks filled with all kinds of different fish. We would walk by and ladies would pick out fish and put them in a strainer and then negotiate a price with people walking by. I am thankful that we had koreans with us because I would have no idea what to do if I was there by myself. After a bit of walking we found a place to eat and we had a strainer of fresh fish still flopping and slinging water all over. These are the fish we had: rock fish, squid, flat fish, a heart-looking thing, a brain of some fish, an orange thing, and who knows what else. Behind the fish tanks were 2 ladies who would cut up the fish. They were incredibly fast, I was the 5th person to walk into the restaurant and by the time I walked past they already had the whole strainerfull of fish filleted and all that was left was the guts. We sat down at a really cramped table. There was a little trough that ran from the front of the place out to the docks. It ran right through the restaurant and in between the tables. We sat down and within 5ish minutes we had a plate full of freshly killed raw fish. It looked a lot like raw chicken and it actually tasted really good. All of the fish was raw, I didn't know that you could do that without getting sick but no one had a problem and we nearly finished it all. After the meat tray, we slowed down our eating we were brought a type of soup and they poured the rest of the meat into the soup (which included an entire fish head) It was quite an experience and I really enjoyed myself. We went to the beach again on Sunday for a little bit and then headed home. The trip home was almost stop n' go the entire way home. We stopped at a rest area and I have never seen so many people in my entire life. The entire rest stop was shoulder to shoulder and it was literally just a swarm of people. They don't have many places to get off the highway and there aren't really fast food restaurants/gas stations/etc off the exits. The gas stations are at the rest stops so everyone has to stop at these places to use the bathroom or refuel. Our return trip took about 5 hours or so but we had a great time.
Last weekend I had another eating experience. It seems like many of the experiences that I have been posting have to do with eating, ha, I didn't really realize that until now. I will have to make a point of writing about other experiences... But last weekend I had eel for the first time. We went with a group of about 8 people and we had 2 different kinds. We had BBQ eel and regular eel. It was actually really good. It was quite chewy and the BBQ was spicy but it was really tasty. I had a really great time that night also, I met some new people and made some new friends.
Nothing much has changed at my school. Everything is about the same, some new students and some students have left. Boss is still really sketchy. We have a new head teacher who is quite nice, but that is the only thing new on the school front. There is a big global festival in Incheon (my town) and I'm planning on going there next weekend, but other than that it's a bunch of same ol' same ol.' Thanks to people for keeping in touch and seeing what is up with me. I really appreciate it.
Kevin
I actually had written the above post earlier this week and I figured that I would just add a few stories from this past weekend. On Saturday I went to a baseball game in Korea. We watched the hometown team play another team from somewhere in Korea. It was fun but the game was sold-out. They sell more tickets than seats so people sit on the walkways and stand wherever it's possible to see at least some part of the field. The other team's pitcher was supposedly the 4th best pitcher in Korea and the game was a blow-out but it was still a great time (we found a seat about halfway through the game) You go to a game and on the way into the stadium there are vendors that sell food/beer/water/etc and you just buy it and carry in whatever you want. There isn't really much food inside the stadium so everyone carries coolers and bags with them. One of my friends said that you can even order pizza to your seat, quite different than at home. After the game we went out with a big group of friends and I had my camera because of the baseball game so the pictures with me and friends are from that night. Anyways, that's it for now...
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Pictures
Picture 1
Close-up of the dog...looks just like my Grandma's beef roast
Picture 2
The spread of food
Picture 3
Kevin eating dog...
Picture 4
The entire table. They give you many side dishes and I have yet to finish all of the food when going out to a restaurant.
Picture 5
From right in a circle...Grace, Jeff, Jun, and Kevin
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Last Few days/weeks
Hello -
I am going to kind of work backwards, I forgot a few things about the previous month and I will talk about those too.
First, the past weekend was quite eventful. On Sunday, I had made plans to go to a driving range. My Dad sent me an article from one of golf magazines he reads that was about the biggest driving range in the world that happens to be in S. Korea. I met a man who was a student of Mandi (old teacher at my school) He is a CPA, his name is Kevin, and he started taking english classes about 6 months ago. On Sunday, he called and me eventually decided on a place to meet and he picked me up in a 1 year old Lexus and drove me all the way to the driving range. It was a/b an hour away and when we got there it was amazing. It is a huge circle and people hit from the outside of the circle. It is so big that it is impossible to hit it much past the center of the range, even with a driver. The circle was surrounded by many chipping/putting greens that were perfect, but you had to pay additional money for those. We went and I was expecting to play with the other Kevin, so we decided to pay for 1.5 hours (which he would not let me pay for) We left the clubhouse type place where you pay and got on a golf cart that took us to our hitting spot. We got to our spot and he told me that he played golf in the morning and he picked me up/drove me all the way there just so that I could play golf. The hitting space had a mat with a tee like you see back home. There was a ball on the tee and when you would take the ball off the tee the tee would disappear and then reappear with a new ball on top. It is a really good way to make sure that you end up sore the next morning because you can hit balls like a machine. I hadn't hit a ball/swung a club since I left home in May and I was really excited to play so I hit way too many balls. It was incredibly hot so I was drenched in sweat but I continued to hit ball after ball. My first maybe 20 balls were some of the ugliest shots ever, I was really embarassed. I had told Kevin that I had been playing since I was a little kid and that I loved to golf. So I got up and it was very embarassing but once I got going I eventaully started to hit the ball a little better. When I would stop the other Kevin would hit at least a couple balls, but it was basically a whole golf trip just for me to hit balls. It was a great time, i was really excited to go and there might be an actual golfing experience sometime in the future. He said that he wanted to take me and a foreign friend to a real golf course and if that happens i will be sure to update that in the future.
After golfing we had plans to meet my neighbor Jeff, his girlfriend Grace, and another Korean guy named Jun to eat dog. We had been planning on this trip for quite a long time and it finally happened and we had a reservation in our own little private room. The restaurant had the smell of "dog," which is different than any other kind of meat but it is not bad. We walked in and were escorted to our room and ordered our fresh plate of pooch. ha We also ordered a big bowl of boiled chicken and rice along with the rice. The dog came on a plate and it looked almost exactly like my Grandma's beef roast. It was really dark and it didn't make me sick to look at as I was kind of expecting. We kind of jumped into it and it was actually some of the most tender meat I've ever had. It was really tasty and it was a little bit like beef, a little like chicken, and a little bit of mystery meat. It came with a kind of soup and also rice and other side dishes. The whole dog thing was not nearly as discusting as I thought, and I really enjoyed it. Dog is very expensive and we asked why. They said that it is because it is illegal to import dog. You can import cows/pigs/etc. but dog is illegal so it is the most expensive meat in Korea. This part of the story may be kind of disturbing...I was trying to decide if I should include the method of execution and I decided that I would...(disclaimer, skip a few lines if you don't want to know) Jun said that he had a friend that had a dog farm which is the same thing as a cow farm but with dogs. ha, seems kind of odd but then somehow we talked about how the dogs were killed. I was kind of hoping that it would be something humane and painless but it turns out that they actually hang the dogs. The wrap a noose around the neck and then string them up from trees. That kind of made me feel guilty eating the animal but they were already killed so I got over it. The one good thing is that they said that beating the dogs to tenderize the meat is now considered cruel. Ha, it was quite a unique experience but at least I can say that I actually have eaten a dog. i don't know how many people can say that, but there is no need to hide your dogs from me when I come back home... =)
Also, about a month ago I went to the Mud Festival. I forgot to put pictures up but it was a really fun time. It is about a week and a half celebration centered on mud. The whole city, which is on the ocean, is taken over by people in their swimming suits covered in mud. Our bus got caught in traffic and we decided that we would walk to our hotel. We walked through the mud festival and as we got closer we would see people covered in mud (greenish-brownish) and everyone in swimming suits. There was a big blow-up slide with mud, a big mud wrestling pit, and also several other places where you could get covered in mud. We ended up walking forever and finding our hotel but we did and then changed and everything and headed out to get mudded. We went back and played in all of the mud and then found a place where you could throw colored chalk on each other. After the chalk is where the pictures are from. It was nearly impossible to take pictures because of the mud so everyone left their cameras behind. We had one friend who took his camera and stayed relatively mud-free for awhile so he is to thank for the few pictures that we have. It was a really crazy experience but it was a great time.
These are all the stories for now, I am actually headed for bed, the pictures will be following tomorrow hopefully.
Kevin
I am going to kind of work backwards, I forgot a few things about the previous month and I will talk about those too.
First, the past weekend was quite eventful. On Sunday, I had made plans to go to a driving range. My Dad sent me an article from one of golf magazines he reads that was about the biggest driving range in the world that happens to be in S. Korea. I met a man who was a student of Mandi (old teacher at my school) He is a CPA, his name is Kevin, and he started taking english classes about 6 months ago. On Sunday, he called and me eventually decided on a place to meet and he picked me up in a 1 year old Lexus and drove me all the way to the driving range. It was a/b an hour away and when we got there it was amazing. It is a huge circle and people hit from the outside of the circle. It is so big that it is impossible to hit it much past the center of the range, even with a driver. The circle was surrounded by many chipping/putting greens that were perfect, but you had to pay additional money for those. We went and I was expecting to play with the other Kevin, so we decided to pay for 1.5 hours (which he would not let me pay for) We left the clubhouse type place where you pay and got on a golf cart that took us to our hitting spot. We got to our spot and he told me that he played golf in the morning and he picked me up/drove me all the way there just so that I could play golf. The hitting space had a mat with a tee like you see back home. There was a ball on the tee and when you would take the ball off the tee the tee would disappear and then reappear with a new ball on top. It is a really good way to make sure that you end up sore the next morning because you can hit balls like a machine. I hadn't hit a ball/swung a club since I left home in May and I was really excited to play so I hit way too many balls. It was incredibly hot so I was drenched in sweat but I continued to hit ball after ball. My first maybe 20 balls were some of the ugliest shots ever, I was really embarassed. I had told Kevin that I had been playing since I was a little kid and that I loved to golf. So I got up and it was very embarassing but once I got going I eventaully started to hit the ball a little better. When I would stop the other Kevin would hit at least a couple balls, but it was basically a whole golf trip just for me to hit balls. It was a great time, i was really excited to go and there might be an actual golfing experience sometime in the future. He said that he wanted to take me and a foreign friend to a real golf course and if that happens i will be sure to update that in the future.
After golfing we had plans to meet my neighbor Jeff, his girlfriend Grace, and another Korean guy named Jun to eat dog. We had been planning on this trip for quite a long time and it finally happened and we had a reservation in our own little private room. The restaurant had the smell of "dog," which is different than any other kind of meat but it is not bad. We walked in and were escorted to our room and ordered our fresh plate of pooch. ha We also ordered a big bowl of boiled chicken and rice along with the rice. The dog came on a plate and it looked almost exactly like my Grandma's beef roast. It was really dark and it didn't make me sick to look at as I was kind of expecting. We kind of jumped into it and it was actually some of the most tender meat I've ever had. It was really tasty and it was a little bit like beef, a little like chicken, and a little bit of mystery meat. It came with a kind of soup and also rice and other side dishes. The whole dog thing was not nearly as discusting as I thought, and I really enjoyed it. Dog is very expensive and we asked why. They said that it is because it is illegal to import dog. You can import cows/pigs/etc. but dog is illegal so it is the most expensive meat in Korea. This part of the story may be kind of disturbing...I was trying to decide if I should include the method of execution and I decided that I would...(disclaimer, skip a few lines if you don't want to know) Jun said that he had a friend that had a dog farm which is the same thing as a cow farm but with dogs. ha, seems kind of odd but then somehow we talked about how the dogs were killed. I was kind of hoping that it would be something humane and painless but it turns out that they actually hang the dogs. The wrap a noose around the neck and then string them up from trees. That kind of made me feel guilty eating the animal but they were already killed so I got over it. The one good thing is that they said that beating the dogs to tenderize the meat is now considered cruel. Ha, it was quite a unique experience but at least I can say that I actually have eaten a dog. i don't know how many people can say that, but there is no need to hide your dogs from me when I come back home... =)
Also, about a month ago I went to the Mud Festival. I forgot to put pictures up but it was a really fun time. It is about a week and a half celebration centered on mud. The whole city, which is on the ocean, is taken over by people in their swimming suits covered in mud. Our bus got caught in traffic and we decided that we would walk to our hotel. We walked through the mud festival and as we got closer we would see people covered in mud (greenish-brownish) and everyone in swimming suits. There was a big blow-up slide with mud, a big mud wrestling pit, and also several other places where you could get covered in mud. We ended up walking forever and finding our hotel but we did and then changed and everything and headed out to get mudded. We went back and played in all of the mud and then found a place where you could throw colored chalk on each other. After the chalk is where the pictures are from. It was nearly impossible to take pictures because of the mud so everyone left their cameras behind. We had one friend who took his camera and stayed relatively mud-free for awhile so he is to thank for the few pictures that we have. It was a really crazy experience but it was a great time.
These are all the stories for now, I am actually headed for bed, the pictures will be following tomorrow hopefully.
Kevin
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