But before
I could set out on another adventure, one of the other teachers came by my
house and surprised me with a Chuseok gift on behalf of the school. I wasn’t expecting anything at all, so I felt
really grateful and honored. The gift
came in this nice briefcase-looking thing, and it was heavy. I had no idea what
was inside, but it looked pretty nice. After
I thanked the teacher, I went back into my room to open it. Inside, I found…a dozen cans of tuna and a
couple more cases of spam. Umm…OK. Apparently, my friends received such gifts as
socks and a “lifetime supply of seaweed.”
I’m not even gonna pretend to understand Korean culture.
Anyway,
after I put the gift away, I headed out to meet some of the guys in Busan. Busan is the 2nd biggest city in
Korea, so it’s kind of metropolitan. But
it also has beaches, and that gives it more of a laid-back vibe than somewhere
like Seoul. As the great philosopher M.
Cyrus pointed out, you get the best of both worlds. It definitely seemed like my kind of place. Once we all got there and met up, we headed
to the beach to find a hotel close by.
In total, there were 7 guys in our group. Here’s how the conversation went:
“You think
we can fit seven people in a hotel room?”
“Of course.”
And so we
all crammed into a single hotel room, which had one queen sized bed and a bunch
of sleeping mats covering the floor. It
went about as well as you would expect.
We dragged sand back from the beach every day. We made a mess. There was lots of snoring. The bathroom…oh god, the bathroom. I would say the place smelled like a locker
room, but that would be an insult to locker rooms everywhere. The best part is, over the course of the four
days we were there, the cleaning lady never
set foot in the room. She must’ve just
taken one look in there and thought, “Nope.
I’d rather quit.” We were abandoned,
left to wallow in our own filth. It was
pretty great.
 |
| View from the hotel room. Trust me, you don't want to see the inside. |
 |
| At the beach |
Anyway,
what’d we do with all our free time?
Most days we hung out at the beach for a while and went swimming in the
sea. One day, we went hiking up a hill
to get a view of Busan, and I have to say, this was the one view that was absolutely worth it (you can’t really
tell in pictures, though). On the way
back down, we ran into some older Korean ladies, who immediately took a liking
to me. My friends (being the nice guys
that they are) sped up, leaving me stranded with a trio of grandmas.
“English-ee?”
they asked me.
“Yeah,
English teacher. English san-sang-neem.”
“Ahhh!”
they all screamed happily. “How old?”
“Umm…23,” I
said. They didn’t really get it, so I showed
them on my hands.
“Oh, good!”
said one of them. Then she pointed at
herself.
“How old
are you?” I said.
She nodded.
Honestly,
she looked about sixty, but I knew how to handle this situation. I went ahead and said, “35?” and held up the
fingers to show them.
All three
of them cracked up. They thought I was
hilarious. Then suddenly, the “35”
year-old one started smacking me on the butt.
What the hell?! I slid off to the
side and tried to speed up.
“Englishee
teacher! Englishee teacher!” they all
shouted. They were waving for me to come
back, too.
“Sorry,” I
said. I pointed ahead. “Have to go with friends.”
Luckily, I
was able to break away from them without any further groping. I guess the lesson in all that is don’t give
out compliments unless you really
mean them. Also, stay in large groups
around older Korean women.
 |
| Busan from above. I couldn't even fit the whole city in a single shot. |
The next
day, we ended up going to this rocky cliff/beach area, and that last lesson was
strongly reinforced. Along the beach,
there was a giant row of these colorful little tent structures. Out in front of them, there were a bunch of
tubs filled with live seafood, which old women were trying to sell us. They shouted and motioned for us to come
closer, but we all said no thanks. That is,
except for one brave soul: my friend James.
James is a
hilarious British guy with a pretty vulgar sense of humor. As he approached one of the ladies, he
noticed that she had a bin full of some…phallically-shaped fish.
“How much
for a penis fish?” he asked her.
The lady
just went on speaking in rapid-fire Korean.
“What if I
buy two penis fishes?” he asked. “Buy
one, get one free?”
Then, for
just a moment, James turned to look back at us.
That ended up being his nearly-fatal mistake. I have no idea what the old woman was
thinking. Maybe she was worried that she
had lost his attention. Maybe she wanted
to mess with the foreigner. Whatever the
case was, for some reason she decided to pull out a live octopus from one of
the tubs. And then she held it right up
to James’ face. Judging by James’
reaction, she might as well have held up a hornet’s nest. He booked
it out of there. He’s a pretty big guy,
but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a person move that fast. It was priceless. Thankfully, I had my camera out to capture the
moment:
 |
| Perfect. |
After we spent some time climbing
around the rocks, we started getting hungry.
Inside the tents they had these mini-restaurants, so we decided to check
one of those out. Of course, after the
earlier incident, we knew we had to go back and have dinner at that very same
tent. The guys all decided that they
were gonna try the “live” octopus (more like very freshly murdered). I chose not to, and I don’t really feel like
I missed out. The woman brought out a
plate of tiny pieces of chopped-up octopus that were still squirming. It looked pretty sick, but the guys all ate
it. The consensus: chewy and tasteless. I’m not sure if the lady gave us the same octopus
as before, but in the end, I feel like James got his revenge on the species.
Once they finished with the
octopus, we all split a giant plate of scallops and mussels. We got to bake the food in shells in the
center of the table, and honestly, it was the best seafood I’ve ever had. Fresh, tender, and it tasted
delicious. Even though there wasn’t a turkey
or potatoes, I felt like this was a pretty reasonable substitute for a
Thanksgiving feast, and I was lucky enough to be able to share it with some
awesome people I’ve met in my time here.
It’s true- my home is thousands of miles away, and so are the people I’ve
spent most of my life with. But sitting
around a table on the beach in Busan, watching the night fall…I wouldn’t trade it
for anything. I know what I’m thankful
for.
 |
| Fantastic meal. |
 |
| Back on the beach! |
 |
| Busan at night. |
