My month in review: part 2/2

I will continue to make up for my lack of blogging this month in this post, about my last two weekends.

Cheering for Korea in their World Cup game. They were eliminated by Uruguay.


June 19-20: Adventure Korea Raspberry Festival trip

I signed up for an Adventure Korea trip this weekend. (You may recall my trip to the Butterfly Festival, which was through the same group.) The way the trips work is that everyone meets up in Seoul at 8am Saturday morning, takes a bus down to the festival location, does activities together, and returns on Sunday evening.

I awoke on Saturday morning to my phone making a noise that was definitely not my alarm. I checked the time: 8:10. It was the AK trip coordinator, calling to find out where I was and if, in fact I would be joining them. I admitted my sleep-in and, after a bit of research, decided to join the group.

I was rather resourceful: I took a train ($16) from Anyang to Jeongeup, then a bus ($3) to Gochang, where the group was. Or rather, where the group was near. I then had to take a taxi ($20!) to a temple village where the group was. And voila! I joined the group, now slightly confused as to why there was a new large addition to the trip.

I had arrived just in time for dinner, which was unsatisfactorily small, and a party, which offered free berry wine. I'm sure even those of you without math degrees can add that up. Reader's digest version: I awoke the next morning to an empty room, surrounded by playing cards and with my head pounding. It was 10:00; the group had left for the beach at 8:30.

Oops again! Fortunately, they were coming back for lunch - so I joined them, though I didn't eat much. I felt a little better after drinking some water, and had great fun at the beach/mud flats where we headed after lunch. (See photo, by Cynthia.) We dug for clams and played mud soccer and kickball. I got terrifically muddy!

For a trip where I missed most of the scheduled activities, I had a lot of fun! I met some fun new friends and established that I could travel across Korea by myself. Looking at Facebook photos of the parts of the trip I didn't make, I felt a bit regretful - but overall the weekend was a positive.


June 26-27: A random gay weekend!

This last weekend wasn't planned, it just kind of happened. I had exchanged numbers with my new friends from the Adventure Korea trip, and they invited me to hang out in Myeongdong for the day.

But first I had an arrangement to play volleyball on Saturday afternoon. Except that I got a call at 9:30 from my Korean volleyball friend. I'm paraphrasing a bit as his English is a bit better, but it went something like this: "Ste-beu. Volleyball... time changee. 10am." I dragged myself out of bed.

It turns out we were playing an exhibition match against a middle school team. Yup, eighth graders. I wondered just how unfair this would be - a 6'5" foreign giant beating up on the little Korean kids on the volleyball court.

As I had suspected, it wasn't a fair match. The score in the first set was 21 - 10... for them. The kids could play! They had strong hitters, a creative setter, and were digging almost everything (though I did put one or two hits straight down where no-one could touch them). In contrast, our team couldn't dig to save our lives - I was playing middle and barely touching the ball.

The second match we rebounded, though we were helped by them missing about 10 serves in a row. We lost barely, by 22-20.

With my tail between my legs, I went to meet my friends in Myeongdong. This is one of the central shopping areas of Seoul (think Robson street times 10 and wrapped into a pedestrian maze) so I didn't have much to do. I wandered around for hours with new friends while some of our group got their hair done.

After this, we hit the town in Itaewon, which is the foreign district with the gay bars. By now, it was a small posse: one of my Adventure Korea friends, and two new friends. We had an excellent dinner (spinach salad with brie and walnuts, caesar salad, two types of pizza, and wine) and sparkling and at times hilarious conversation of which I will share none.

The night became a blur of soccer, dancing, conversation and rain. We watched the Korea vs. Uruguay game with a group of deaf Koreans, which was very cool - I learned a tiny bit of ASL and started a conversation (translated for my benefit) about how deaf people conceive hearing. One woman was making a documentary on what it is like being gay and deaf in Korea - a fascinating intersection of two minority groups.

But apart from being interesting -- and peppered with my incessant questions -- the group were really nice, open and neat people. We were all so disappointed when Korea lost.

After some dancing and valiantly staying awake through the U.S. vs. Ghana game, I took the 6am subway train home. Seoul occasionally just magnificently outdoes Vancouver - and this was one of those times.


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So there you have it: the exciting parts of my last month. As I've mentioned to various people back home, my weekdays -- though work is still going well -- don't feel nearly as exciting now that I'm almost four months in. Rest assured that I'm still here having fun and having the occasionally blog-worthy adventure.