3rd day in Busan
Hello hello!
Today we knew that our Korean teacher, Ms. Kim, would be coming from her visit to her family in Seoul to visit us in Busan (about 5 1/2 hours by bus). We told her it wasn't necessary - we were doing fine on our own - and that she should spend the important holiday with her family. But she had insisted anyway.
We made it out of bed quite late and then decided on the last really culturally relevant site, a temple in the mountains called Beomeosa. When we arrived we realized that we picked a very popular day to visit - on the main day of Chuseok all families and couples go up to a temple to pray and pay hommage to Buddha. So it was a very lively event. We found out it's also an active monastery and does templestay programs for foreigners. It's really a beautiful, albeit rather small, enclave.
By the time we came down from the mountain and fought our way through the CROWDS climbing up to one of the bigger cemeteries (to offer food to their ancestors and then eat a picnic 'with them'), our teacher had already arrived at the station and proposed dinner.
So we took the subway to the city's hippest quarter, called Seomyeon. During the day the underground part is a fabulous place for shopping, at night everything overground vamps into a place to drink and play for mostly tweens. Somehow comparable to Tokyo's Shibuya, it's a very neon bright, fashionable, hip and slightly drunken place to eat well, drink lots and then go karaoke singing. Which we also did, in exactly that order ^____~.
We ate at a Korean barbecue restaurant, where you sit at a table that has a little grill already built in. The smoke is 'vacuumed' by a vent that sits underneath the grill, so it doesn't really stink at all and the tables were inside the restaurant. There are many choices of meat, beef or pork, really fatty to rather lean. Of course the best is supposed to be the really fatty pork, but that's a bit too much for my liking. Along with it you get tons of side dishes, kimchi, pickled vegetables and salad to roll the meat in to eat. Of course a bottle of soju, Korean 20% vodka-like national alcoholic beverage, is absolutely mandatory. *g*
Then the secret was revealed; our teacher had come because it was the birthday of the only guy in our group. So of course this had to be properly celebrated! We went to three karaoke places in total and sang until our throats were sore. The beach was a little too far to take a taxi to after the last train had left, so we stopped by a little store to get some more soju to drink at the hostel.
Unfortunately, when we arrived, it was so overbooked that there were people sleeping in the living room and in our room on the floor, so there was no chance to really talk or drink anymore.
So we headed off to bed at around 2 in the morning.
What fun!!!!
Today we knew that our Korean teacher, Ms. Kim, would be coming from her visit to her family in Seoul to visit us in Busan (about 5 1/2 hours by bus). We told her it wasn't necessary - we were doing fine on our own - and that she should spend the important holiday with her family. But she had insisted anyway.
We made it out of bed quite late and then decided on the last really culturally relevant site, a temple in the mountains called Beomeosa. When we arrived we realized that we picked a very popular day to visit - on the main day of Chuseok all families and couples go up to a temple to pray and pay hommage to Buddha. So it was a very lively event. We found out it's also an active monastery and does templestay programs for foreigners. It's really a beautiful, albeit rather small, enclave.
By the time we came down from the mountain and fought our way through the CROWDS climbing up to one of the bigger cemeteries (to offer food to their ancestors and then eat a picnic 'with them'), our teacher had already arrived at the station and proposed dinner.
So we took the subway to the city's hippest quarter, called Seomyeon. During the day the underground part is a fabulous place for shopping, at night everything overground vamps into a place to drink and play for mostly tweens. Somehow comparable to Tokyo's Shibuya, it's a very neon bright, fashionable, hip and slightly drunken place to eat well, drink lots and then go karaoke singing. Which we also did, in exactly that order ^____~.
We ate at a Korean barbecue restaurant, where you sit at a table that has a little grill already built in. The smoke is 'vacuumed' by a vent that sits underneath the grill, so it doesn't really stink at all and the tables were inside the restaurant. There are many choices of meat, beef or pork, really fatty to rather lean. Of course the best is supposed to be the really fatty pork, but that's a bit too much for my liking. Along with it you get tons of side dishes, kimchi, pickled vegetables and salad to roll the meat in to eat. Of course a bottle of soju, Korean 20% vodka-like national alcoholic beverage, is absolutely mandatory. *g*
Then the secret was revealed; our teacher had come because it was the birthday of the only guy in our group. So of course this had to be properly celebrated! We went to three karaoke places in total and sang until our throats were sore. The beach was a little too far to take a taxi to after the last train had left, so we stopped by a little store to get some more soju to drink at the hostel.
Unfortunately, when we arrived, it was so overbooked that there were people sleeping in the living room and in our room on the floor, so there was no chance to really talk or drink anymore.
So we headed off to bed at around 2 in the morning.
What fun!!!!