DMZ Tour

This past weekend a group of us from Busan ventured up to Seoul for the weekend! We left right after work on the KTX (super fast train) for our 3 hr ride. While we were sitting in our family seats (very special) we had the surprise of seeing a Korean mother make her two-year-old son pee in a water bottle right behind us. KOREANS ARE SO ODD! Once we got to Seoul we were in search of a “love motel”. These are super cheap motels and are supposed to be used for couples/lovers/hook-ups to do their business…Anyways! We found one, which was super gross, but it was late. Molly, myself, and David toughed it out and got two rooms there for a couple hours of sleep. The others went on a mission to find a ball’n place near the USO/tour location.

I’m pretty sure I had maybe an hour of sleep that whole night because we didn’t get to bed till 2:30am, the room was flippen cold and disgusting, the pillows were as hard as rocks, and we had to be up at 5:30am to find where we had to meet the tour- USO army base. We jumped in a taxi and the language barrier kicked in. It was pretty stressful cause we had no idea where we were going and the taxi driver didn’t either…We got on the phone with a translator and got things figured out. Turns out we were going completely the opposite way. It was supposed to be a 5 minute taxi ride but it was about 25 minutes and we had to be at the USO for 6:45am. We got there finally, signed in, and jumped on the bus for a hour and a half bus ride up to the DMZ. Our tour guide was so awkward which made the tour info a little annoying to hear but we got used to it. I liked the bus ride up because I got to see more of the country North of Seoul. Once we arrived to the DMZ we got hooked up with a USA army tour guide. He took us around to all the sites and informed us on the importance of each place. We were his second tour and boy was he nervous. He managed to throw out “that’s gay”, “oh fuck”, and “my bad” due to his nervousness. OH and as Molly said, “He just gave us Korean history for dummies”. Hilarious. We were able to go into the boardrooms where North and South Korea meet and talk. This was the JSA. We were able to physically stand in North Korea there, which was super cool! We took a bunch of pictures and the South Korean soldiers in the room were quite intimidating. After the boardroom we stood at the House of Freedom and stared at North Korea’s “House of Freedom” which stands taller than South Korea’s intentionally. It was eerie looking at that solider just standing there staring back at us occasionally pulling up his binoculars to look closer at us.

In our single filed lines we walked back to us bus and went to a look out to see Propaganda Village. This village was built to mimic South Korea’s and no one actually lives in the North Korea one! Very weird. They was also a flag tour built initially in South Korea and then North Korea built one exactly the same but taller then South Korea made theirs taller then North Korea retaliated and one upped South Korea, and so on. Finally, South Korea quit the silly game and let North Korea have the taller flag tower. It is now the tallest flag tower in the world and the flag weighs over 600lbs!


From here we had lunch, went to a souvenir shop, and went to another look out where we could see North Korea better. There was a line painted on the ground showing where you could and where you couldn’t take pictures. If you took pictures where you could the soldiers would either take or make you delete you pictures. Kind of intense! At this look out we saw lots of hawks and eagles soaring around. It made the experience even more eerie. For a second I was convinced they were fake but they were definitely real. After looking out into North Korea we were bussed down to the third underground tunnel that was discovered which the North Koreans built into South Korea. There have been 7 tunnels discovered and the latest one in 1990. The tunnel walk was about 500m underground and we weren’t aloud to take pictures down in it. It was pretty cool being that fair underground and to think that it was used by soldiers back in the day to get into each other’s countries. To end our tour we were blessed with a weird-ass video about the history between South and North Korea. There was definitely propaganda at its best there. They were trying to convince us that all was well between the two countries. SERIOUSLY?! But anyways the tour was awesome! Definitely a great experience. Oh and rumor has it…Kim Jon-IL had a stroke and is dead…ಹ

Jagalchi Fish Market

YOYO!

Today (November 8) Molly and I made our way down to Nampo-Dong to check out Jagalchi fish market and do a little browsing in the shopping district. We ventured on the bus rather than the subway so we could see more of the city instead of being underground for an hour. But we didn’t really know where we were going…I had done this once and Molly hadn’t at all. OOPS. But everything went smoothly after jumping off the bus cause everyone else was! We try not to buy anything when we go browsing but always seem to buy some ridiculous stuff because it’s so cheap. It’s so cheap that we’ve become cheap and try to bargain things down. GAH honestly in Canada I would buy a scarf for $20 easily but here we see so many scarf vendors that we say “As if they’re selling those scarves for $12”. However, I always come home with a new one. We had way too much fun getting a couple special things for my BF then headed down to the fish market.

The market is several blocks long full of live, dried, dead, and half dead seafood. We also stumbled upon dead dog…I can’t grasp the idea that people would eat dog…Sick. We walked up and down the market taking pictures…being total tourists and watching living things being skinned live then thrown into a bucket and still givin’r moving around. So crazy! We also saw a live octopus escape from its bucket and we screamed/pointed then she nonchalantly chucks it back in the bucket like it was nothing. Hilarious! As we were getting soaked with fish stank on our clothes and shoes we walked down to the dock where the fishing boats were to take some pictures. As we were leaving this area no really paying attention to anything we found a dead shark! AS IF! It was just lying there with its stomach hacked up. SICK, yet so cool, yet kinda sad….After that point we were over with the market and ventured back to the subway BUT being crazy we decided to try the bus it back to Hwamyeong….We asked a man and he knew a little English and got excited and started to run so stupidly we ran with him and jumped on his bus because we thought he was showing us where to go. We had no idea if we were going to Hwamyeong and the traffic sucked so we jumped off in Seomyeong (an area we know) to catch the subway home.
Molly smelled like ass/fish cause he jeans we soaked at the feet so she was killing everyone/me on the ride back. Twas, definitely an adventure but really you can’t get lost in Busan because of the comfort of the subway and it being so easy. Until next folks! xo

Korean Halloween

Hey Folks!

So the past couple of weeks have had their adventures for sure. On Halloween my school had an all day Halloween party for the kids…no teaching which was a nice break. However, Halloween is definitely forced out here in Korea cause of us foreigners. Our day started by decorating the school and dressing up. The Korean teachers did pretty much all the prep and I guess during their prep time they decided that “Sarah Teacher” would be the Korean dead woman in the traditional dress that makes anyone look a trillion pounds. SWEET. I would like to say I can rock any kind of MOO-MOO clothing…EF. Haha! I was in charge of the treasure hunt room which lead to kids to be running all over the place and not really understanding what was going on due to the excitement and of course the language barrier. In the end everyone got their candy. During the afternoon we had our elementary kids coming and going with their classes participating in the scary room, my treasure hunt, arts and crafts, face painting, and relay games. In the evening the pre-school/kinders came back dress up in their awesome costumes with their parents. From here it brought us outside for the annual “Halloween Parade” around Hwamyeong. Somewhat humiliating due to my attire and chanting “Hal-lo-ween” repeatedly but watching the kids doing their “tricks” for their treats was so cute…. They’ve been practicing for the past month for this moment. Our director brought some candy to two stores and they gave our kids their treat after their “trick “skits. The workday ended with a potluck feast back at the school thanks to the parents.



By 9:30pm I ripped home to get the real Halloween started by dressing up as a Korean workout woman. These women workout in the most ridiculous outfits at the gym I go to. HILARIOUS. I was able to get something together with the clothes I owned and what I found in the apartment from the previous tenants. GOLD! I inspired Molly and Erin to get decked out the same and we had a workout crew. We headed down to Pusan National University (PNU) for a pub-crawl. That area is a foreigner fest mixed with some Koreans so it’s a good time for sure. There were tons of people in the streets, in the bars, and a costume contest was on where the first prize was a trip to Thailand fallowed by keg parties, $100 bar tabs,etc. We ripped around till 3:30am or so then cabbed it back to the boonies (Hwamyeong). Halloween in Korea was ok…not the best I’ve had but then again it’s a forced holiday here! Plus there was no discount candy…However, I’m hoping that this Depepro holiday (some romantic, chocolate eating event) on November 11th will hook me up with some treats!