Be a Global Friend, Make a Global Friend!

Today I was a global friend. I participated in the “Green City Daejeon Project with Global Friends.” Which is just a way to say we went to a community tree-planting event. Adam, who lives below me, had a call from Mr. 째 (“Che” as closely as I can translate it from the local patois) that they needed waegukin for the opening of a new park on the ever-expanding edge of Daejeon.

So at about 1:00 this afternoon, Adam came down and we walked off to the designated meeting point beyond Daejeon station. We got there about 1:40, but the bus, scheduled to leave at 1:45, had already left.

We think.

Later events might support the argument that we had been instructed to get on a city bus. Who knows?

Anyway, if it had left early, as Adam sagely noted, it would be the first Korean bus, EVAR, to leave early.

Anyway, we called the man and after a bunch of dithering, decided to grab a cab and head over to the park. Cabs are one of the really great things about Korea – they (wait for it) are (here it comes….) ubiquitious and inexpensive. On the other hand, Korea has essentially no system of addressing places, so you can’t tell a cabbie to go to a certain address. Instead you have to

a) hope he knows the location to which you refer
b) come up with some local landmark he does know
c) give up, beat him with a stick, take his money and buy soju

Worse, Korean cities are built on the same planning principles that fleeing chimpanzees use when deciding to defecate – random expulsions and extrusions.

As it turns out, our cabbie had no idea where we were trying to go. This probably flowed directly from the fact that we had no idea where we were trying to go. Calls to Mr. Che were difficult, because he was also the guy on the mike at the event. Finally, by random walking around, we found the place. It was 45 minutes later and we were drenched in sweat, but it was a good thing we made it because we were about 15% of the “Global Friends.” In typical Korean style, the waegukin were asked to stand up and introduce ourselves. Thank God I have a bit of Korean (and none of it, yet, includes swear words).

Then it was on with gloves, up with the shovels, and grab a tree and clamber up the hill. There were enough attendees that it was one to three people per tree, and thus the actual tree installation was a negligible effort. I snapped some pictures to bring back for BPU and after we were done Adam and I played cultural ambassador with some local Koreans, including the high-school aged girl who was dragged over to us by her dad. Her eyes widened in obvious terror and shock every time I talked to her, but her dad wasn’t letting her lose this key chance to speak English.

After a few more photo ops, it was back onto the bus and a ride back to my 15-pyong Love Pad. More walking than I had anticipated, but it was a good way to work off the headache I earned last night at the TSR’s joint. He makes a mean chili con carne, but staying up til 1AM and blabbering like high-school girls (while drinking mandarin-infused soju) is a bad thing.

Not as bad as Korean wine, but that is a topic for another day.