Day One - getting there

WARNING: This post may contain incidents of extremely friendly and supportive behavior from total strangers!

Yvonne and I headed to the airport (Gimpo not Incheon, so much closer to home) on Friday morning, and boarded a Jeju Air plane to Jeju city. The flight was relatively boring, except for that bit where the waitresses-in-the-sky put on bunny ears and ran two games of rock/paper/scissors for everyone in the cabin. We had no idea what the gifts were, but by the second game Yvonne played vigorously but unsuccessfully, being knocked out in round number one.

Then it was out to hot and sweaty Jeju. We grabbed a local bus to the intercity bus terminal, and there grabbed a bus down to Siheung-ri, the bus stop from which we had been told we could find our hotel. The trip down was uneventful, except for the fact that there are two really similar busstop names and I freaked out for a moment when, 20 minutes into the ride that name came over the intercom. I raced out my map, and figured out by highway signs that there was no way we were close to our stop. So I could resume my typical near-coma state.

At this point, we began to get the notion that Jeju was very different from Seoul; in fact, much friendlier.

It became clear we were not going to make it to our hotel at the time we had agreed on. My lovely wife called the hotel and got the guy who knows absolutely no English. They confused each other for a while, during which time two young ladies got on the bus, one of whom sat next to me. I asked Yvonne for the phone and called the hotel. In my (what is more than 'broken?') Korean, I told him we were on the way, but used the wrong numbering system in talking about time. After I hung up, the woman complimented me on my Korean (in Korean, which is one of the few bits of business in Korean that I can now easily hear - it's all that follows that is gibberish to me^^). We then chatted for a bit before she opened her purse, pulled out a just-dead starfish, and offered it to me as a gift.

This was touching but bizarre. Without going into nasty detail, "starfish" is a word that some expatriates use to describe Korean women in a derogatory way when they are in, shall we say, compromising positions?

Still, she had sat down, started a conversation, and was just about to help us on the phone when the hotel guy rounded up someone with some English, who sorted things out with Yvonne.

When we finally did get to our busstop, and it turned out that all the Olle Trail busstops are announced as such in Korean, English, and Heathen Chinee, we hopped out into the middle of what looked like nowhere.

We wandered, tentatively, this way and that, but it was really in the middle of nowhere and there were no taxis (which is how the hotel had told us to get there).

So, before calling a taxi company, we talked to some people on the scene. One woman had no idea, but when we talked to two ajjumah getting into a car, they sprang into action. They called the hotel to find out where it was. We had communicated to them that the hotel said we should take a taxi, and when the first ajjumah put down the phone from talking to the hotel, she started rapidly talking to her friend in what was clearly disbelief that the hotel had guided us here.

So, she pointed to where the hotel was, and then put us both in her car and drove us there!

This meant crossing a highway, driving down a gravel road, cruising through a couple of of walled neighborhoods, and then dropping us off at the hotel, which, as a bonus had been renamed!

I simply can't imagine this happening in Seoul. Jeju is unbelievably friendly.

When we got to the hotel, the hotel guy was super sympathetic/apologetic that we had got lost, and helped us into the room. One look at Udo (the island offshore) and I began to change my plan. Udo has an "optional" Olle Trail, and I decided that would be a good way to start. So Yvonne went down to ask the hotel guy if we could get a second night.

Alas, the hotel was booked.

10 minutes later, he came up and knocked on our door.

He had begun calling other hotels in the area, and had found us lodging for the next night that was even closer to the ferry port that his hotel.

Again, an act of massive and gratuitous friendliness.

We walked into town and had some BBQ pig, then headed back to the hotel for some sleep, with the real fun beginning the next morning.

Ajjumah

Hotel Guy

LOL at ITunes

When it gives me the Von Bondies "C'mon, c'mon" backed with the Buzzcocks "Hollow Inside" it seems to be asking me to do something with some particularly sharp cutlery and a few arteries. ^^

Is Dennis Kucinich (spelling?) just one bottlebrush moustache away from Hitler?

Really Google? Really?

My search for Korean Literature turns up this on the 3rd page of results:

Общий форум - Blond lesbian granny fondling teen on sofa.9

Rapture in the Hood

My new hero stands on the edge of the street with a bottle of beer in his right hand, and a bottle of soju in his left....

Doctor, Doctor, Please.... Oh, the Mess I'm In... Part 1

Oh.. such a bad blogger and so much has gone on...

two nights ago I wandered into the local and ordered a beer. My friend, an army nurse/administrator was sitting there. He's a crew-cut and fit dude of roughly my age.. to the right of him were a group of younger men with the same look but a bit younger, some of them nearly out of swaddling clothes.

There was no room at the bar as they were drinking car-bombs, Jaeger-bombs, and beer. Much macho banter (which should be the name of a drink) filled the air. As the conversation at the bar continued these guys rotated in and out of the seats.

Until the point that the crippled one tried to get on a chair.

He was lanky and red-headed and had some kind of disease that hampered his ability to get up onto a bar stool. The bar stools at the local are particulary tall - the wife has to acquire the services of a sherpa to ... well enjoy sex... but also to get up on the bar stools.

I think I've said "stools" too many times?

But this dude had a right arm that was in some kind of curved rictus and I nearly got up to help him onto his barstool.

Which would have been wasted effort because the crippled lad bolted from the bar.. barely escaping the open glass doors to the right, to vomit profusely ... partly onto the shoes of his buddy

To the left of me one of this buddies said, "he shouldn't have had those two ambien."

Outside, the red-head vomited again.

His leaving had given me a chance to sneak up to the bar, rather quickish.

I asked my friend if these were his buddies, and he said, "no, but I know them."

Turns out they were the bomb squad (Hurt Locker, for you LA fucks)

For the rest of the evening (to be related next post) they played that macho game of dismissal/love/homoeroticism (in a thoroughly non-gay way)/brawl that all us boys love to play...

Ah.. yeah.. the wife and I also went to Hwaesong... google it.. or I may post...

It's totally cool..

the walls of a fortress include the cool full fortress part and a killer park. Then they lace through the community as well..

Come on over to Korea.... Yvonne and I will show you around!

all the wires are black! and tangled.

Fridazzled...

Didn't even see a berry flashing those high beams

Got to work and it was presentation day, which is always an easy one. I just sit there and grade them, and the grading is done by the time I leave the classroom. After that it was sitting around for 45 minutes waiting for the “teacher’s day” celebration of the English Interpretation and Translation Department.



This even is always super-fun as the students enjoy anything communal, and it involves cake. I was able to bust out about this much Korean when it was my turn to speak

Everyone, students and professors, welcome. That student (pointing to a guy who had spoken earlier) has good English. I have bad Korean. I will practice it (I botched that sentence badly!). I love teaching my students. Now, I will speak in English.

It was pretty ragged language, but students always like the fact that I even try – in fact Koreans in general will treat foreigners who know a little Korean better than non-speaking foreigners.
Once all speeches were done, the cake-candles blown out, and the pictures taken, it was time to call it a day. The video of the episode of the cake is here:



The day was too nice to go back home and after calling Yvonne without results, I headed down to City Hall Underground Shopping Center and bought a book I had been looking for and that seems to be out of print even though Amazon offers ‘new’ ones; Everlasting Empire.

Then it was up to City Hall Square where some enormous festival was setting up. On the side was the “adoption day” (입양 달) booth, and they had some cute kids drumming. So I took a lovely home movie which I have reproduced here.

It was still too nice to head home, so I headed for a Starbucks, relatively deserted by Seoul standards, and grabbed an Americano and typed all this.

My weekly three-day weekend begins tomorrow!

Yesterday's Rain

The lovely wife came home for lunch (Monday is my day off), and after I hurriedly despatched my rentboy out the bedroom window, we headed over to Yongsan to get ink for our printer, and then took advantage of an empty restaurant with a wide open front, to snarffle down some tueji galbi....

A nice mid-day surprise!

Some Marriage Thing..

The sun struggles up, another beautiful day
And I felt glad in my own suspicious way.
Despite the contradiction and confusion,
Felt tragic without reason,
There's malice and there's magic in every season

So yesterday our friend got married and with all the best signs - free booze, barbeque, and the rain dissapearing into the ether. This last thing important for a wedding conducted on the roof of the Somerset Hotel (up there by Angguk Station). It all went well and it was free booze for nearly 5 hours, which has left me nearly unmanned today. ;-)

Still, a super event and I believe the picture below suggests a happy marriage will ensue. They are already ignoring each other, and he has a bottle of beer tucked into his elbow...

Nice-uh, as we say..

Seonyudos and Seonyudonts! Being part uno...

Last weekend the lovely wife and I both had Friday off as a result of a class-switching (I became toff) binge with another foreign instructor who wanted to go visit China to attempt to procure a mail-order husband.

So we decided we'd head down to the Gunsan and then catch a ferry to Seonyudo, which is one of three very small linked islands off the southwest coast of Korea. It's sort of an expat "todo" and by getting there on Friday we'd be in advance of any other tourists, which was likely to be a small number as this is not "island visiting time of year" (Koreans work to internal and unknown clocks that would be the envy of the Borg).

Consequently, we got up early on a day off and headed to Yongsan station to catch the Saemaul to Gunsan. This was good for me as I love the Saemaul ("New Village") and had work to do. The Saemaul has a totally cool club-car and I went in, grabbed a delicious sammich and coffee and worked on sound edits for www.kcreport.net all the way down. Yvonne, as is her wont, napped. As we crossed the river to the north of Gunsan I noticed a sign that said "Ch'ae Manshik Literary Museum" (Except, like the cool dude I am, I noticed it in Korean). Manshik is one of my favorite short-story writers and I put this away in my head in case I ever got back to Gunsan.

At Gunsan sation, while waiting for the bus, got bored and grabbed a taxi to the wharf. Probably a good move as it turned out, since it was a pretty long haul and the bus would have been even more boring.

When we got there, Yvonne talked to the ticket office which immediately put her on a cell-phone with an English speaker.

Drats and confounderation! Bad weather had stopped the ferries from running.

About 15 minutes later we headed out of the terminal and to the exact same cabbie who had brought us from the train station. He asked if the time had been bad ("shigan" something or other that was clear enough to me to answer in my shit Korea.... I answered the weather was bad and then sat sulking in the cab as I realized I should have said the sea was bad. I suck at Korean).

This time, since we had nought all else to do, we headed over to the Ch'ae Manshik Literary Museum where I got that treatment I sometimes get - Korean docent going mad that foreigner gives a crap at all about Korean literature.

The man, the legend!

This was wildly exacerbated by the fact that I accidentally had "My Innocent Uncle" (A work by Manshik) in my backpack. I spoke what little Korean I have and the docent went mad, chattering at me like a chihuahua with an amphetamine suppository in its ass. All, good... I got a bit of it and she was super happy to lecture, particularly about the museum's kind of cool map of Korea and regional authors.

The joint (on the river, so kind of nice)

Finally, we went out to catch a cab, but as we were in the middle of nowhere, had to hike back into town. Probably only an hour overall, but because we had supposed to have been at a beautiful island, I was dragging my laptop and all my camera gear in a backpack with only one strap. Then there was the shitty weather - which had halted our amphibious assault on Seonyudo. It sprinkled ever so lightly, but threatened consistently. I loudly, repetitively, and without much imagination, blamed Yvonne!

Once in town, we caught a cab from a cabdriver who couldn't understand anything I said in Korean or read a map (In Korean!). He left us on the bayline of Gunsan which is, to be fair, an absolute asshole of an area.

It is slated for urban renewal (apparently) and walking around it was spooky as all the stores are closed.. the houses broken. We could see no restaurants, and it took us a very long time to find a yeogwan. This was partly because when we were in an area with restaurants, Yvonne insisted we keep walking until we find a galbi joint.

Said "find" never happened.

Walking into the yeogwan the proprietors were on the stoop (all of a sudden this area is reminding me of bombed out areas of New York...well, you know.. minus crime, vandalism, or graffiti) and immediately ask me, in Korean, "do you speak Korean well?"

I laughed and said I spoke very little, but wondered what would have happened if I couldn't respond in Korean? What a weird question to ask in Korean.

Didn't matter.. for 30,000 won we got a very simple (large) but adequate room with a big TV and no computer. Also, it didn't have the usual "love pack" of condoms, lube, and whatnot, although we did get toothbrushes and a razor I wouldn't use on the corpse of Osama bin-Laden. Shortly, Yvonne got on the iPhone and hassled the help enough so we got directions to a galbi restaurant that was only about 10 minutes cab drive away.

To cool down we went to a "coffee/drinks" place across the street that was probably nice once. It was spacious and had big booths with couches, but also had no customers, plenty of flies, a weird smell, and a staff consisting of a completely bombed (but quite understandable?) Korean man and his wife who, once we were served, went back to their business of fighting with each other. One drink and we were out.

So we headed up to the galbi place, ate well, and came back for sleep.

Big slabs o' Tuegi Galbi

During the morning the promised storms came through.. rattling the metal rooftops of the surrounding buildings and with thunder crashing....

Yvonne, of course, slept through all that bit.^^