 |
| Bored and sad at work |
I got to school and started off by teasing my students about the date. Normally I ask them how the weather is, what today's date is, etc. But today I stopped and asked "why is September 12th special?" and they would get all flustered and inevitably baffled until I told them that it was birthday and I received a round of "happy birthdays" from all the students. Then I would ask "what do people do to celebrate their birthdays in Korea?" and without fail every class said "have a party with friends and family" and the reality of that impossibility for me slow sank deeper into my mind as the day progressed. I started getting a little choked up toward the end of the day until one of my co-teachers asked "what's wrong?" I couldn't even get out the entire phrase and ended up saying "It's my birth-" before having to stop cuz I legitimately thought I was going to cry.
I was just thinking of all the craziness that would be going on back home for my birthday. A nice dinner with my parents and maybe a day out fishing followed by a party at the fraternity house with all my brothers and a trip to a bar with some of the ones I'm closer to. Instead I'm sitting at a desk grading papers. I think my co-teachers felt bad, because they didn't call me into my later classes and let me just chill in the office, but that was even worse because it was like 6am in America so no one was on Facebook and I was just left alone with my depressing thoughts.
 |
| Solidly Western meal |
Luckily, I do have good friends here in Korea and they helped cheer me up a lot. After work we went to Masan (my first trip to Masan!) to get some Pizza da Gennero, which is the legit Italian pizza joint here. We got some phenomenal pizza (some kinds I've never even tried before) and beer before heading over to Baskin Robbins and grabbing an ice cream cake from a wall of masterfully sculpted cakes. They put it in cool insulated styrofoam box with dry ice and then we headed to Palyong to try and find some alleged pirate ship playground. After walking all over the damn place, we found it and it was a pretty awesome pirate ship, I won't lie. We sat in the pirate ship, lit some candles and had our own little party up there in our birthday-pirate-ship-fort. I couldn't help but feel like I was in that movie "16 Candles"...which I've never seen except for that birthday cake scene but it reminded me a lot of that. I'm really lucky to have met such thoughtful and cool people.
I don't think my birthday had anything to do with it, but ever since then (it's only been like 5 days, mind you) I've just been agreeing to the most ridiculous things that I would have never done in the states. So Friday, Casey, Caitlin, Naz and I meet up with a few people in Sangnam who were trying to start up a "bike party" in SoKo (Erin has coined this term and I love it, so I will now always refer to Korea as SoKo). Apparently this is a big think they do in California? And it gets up to 4000 people in attendance. Obviously we probably won't get 4000 bikers in SoKo, but Changwon has a bike rental system calle Nubija, so it actually makes it pretty easy to obtain a bike. So this group wanted to bike 15 miles through Korea....which normally I would NEVER do...but..what the hell, right?
 |
| Those are some pretty cool cakes. |
So we meet in Sangnam, unfortunately I don't have a Nubija because I don't yet have a Korean phone (I'm learning this is more akin to having a SSID in America than your actual SSID in SoKo. They use it to verify your ID for practically everything). The leader of the event, Coby, thankfully had a bike of his own that he lent me. It was one of those collapsable bicycles that look absolutely ridiculous but ride really well. And I'm about to ride it all the way to Jinhae.
 |
| Peak of my birthday |
We set off, alcohol in hand, ringing bells and screaming "Bike Party!" like complete assholes, but it was a lot of fun. Not too far into our trip, we pass a Korean man and do the usual: ring bells, chug, scream "bikeparty!". But then, right after we pass him, we stop at a Nubija rental to renew our bike passes. While I'm waiting for everyone to rescan their bikes, he catches up to us and walks up to me saying "so beautiful!" I think it's safe to assume he was drunk. He begins to reach into his pocket and Casey thinks that he is taking out a camera/phone because Koreans are always asking to take pictures with me. Instead, he takes out his wallet and pulls out a 5,000 Won bill and tries to hand it to me. I think he is trying to tell me to rent a Nubija since I'm the only one without one so I say "Ken-cha-na-yo. No, thank you. I'm fine." because I already have a bike!
He then pulls out a peach bill and holds it up to my face. I'm thinking "What? Is my skin the same color as the bill? Does my face look like the guy on the bill?" Casey is equally as puzzled and everyone else has rode ahead. Next thing I know, the Korean man sloppily kisses his bill and smacks it onto my forehead. I bow slightly and say "kam-sa-ham-ni-da! (thank you!)" and he starts to walk away, so we start peddling away as well. Caey turns to me and says "Did that guy just stick 50 bucks on your forehead?" I pull it off and, sure enough, it's a 50,000 Won note. Only 10 minutes into the night and I already made 50 bucks. Put me in a pretty good mood.
 |
| We're about to descend into the tunnel... |
We then eventually reach this tunnel...which turns out to be the most magically awesome tunnel ever. It's like a mile long and on a slight downhill slope, so the we just speed down this tunnel-hill and it feels like a rollar coaster. It probably sounds stupid in a blog, but there really is no way to adequately explain how it felt. Probably one of the most fun things I've ever done. The rest of the trip down to the Dream Bay was downhill as well, so it was smooth sailing the whole way. We get to the bay and I spend the 50 on booze and fireworks and we shot Roman candles out into the bay. We then proceeded to drink heavily into the night and were either assholes who scared away all the Koreans, or we were just there until very late. Eventually, we started biking back and it started raining ever so slightly. I obviously couldn't go the night uninjured so, at a downhill portion, I squeezed the brakes on the collapsable bike really hard because I forgot how quickly it stopped. I flew over the handlebars and into the street. Bled quite a bit. The people at GS25 were super nice and helped clean me up, but I was not up for the bars at 330am when we got back like everyone else was. I was out for the night.
 |
| Yes, I realize I'm wearing the same thing Saturday as I did Wednesday...I don't have a lot of fall clothes =P |
The next day Casey and I went to Lotte Mart to buy taco fixings for a potluck that night. The potluck ended up being really cool and I met a lot of awesome people. One guy, Sunil, got me to agree to audition for a play he was directing and another group got me to agree to go to a cultural festival the next day. See? Literally just up for anything. It's not like I have a lot to do otherwise, so in that sense SoKo is really liberating. The food was outrageously delicious too. I probably overate.
The next day I met up with Brittany, Suzie, and bunch of other new acquaintances to check out the cultural Airang (I think I spelled that correctly?) It was raining all day, which sucked, but ponchos were free and there was a ton of food to try. SoKo has taught me I am a complete sucker for good curry. I don't think I'd ever had Indian food before coming here, but damn....I don't think I've tried a curry I didn't like. That may have to be a main staple of my diet in Korea. There were also a bunch of musical performances by international pop artists from many different countries. It was cool to see people go wild with such cultural enthusiasm. I feel like my American enthusiasm is so much more lackluster than other people's, but my enthusiasm for things in general is significantly less I think.
 |
| A Philippino artist performing at the Airang |
Not sure what will come next, but maybe it's better that way! I'll keep you posted!
No comments:
Post a Comment