Fall in KTown

Here in Korea, they are very proud of the fact that they have 4 distinct seasons. They constantly ask if the weather back home is hotter, colder, more or less rainy, and if the leaves change color like they do here. We (Americans/Canadians) have to break it to them gently that we also have four very distinct seasons.

Fall has brought lots of fun things to do here! First, it's the official hiking season, and Koreans LOVE hiking. Many of my co-teachers go every weekend plus sometimes during the week. One day I went with some teachers to a valley of Jirisan mountain to "look at the leaves". I didn't understand this at first, but turns out it just means the maple leaves are changing colors, and everyone in Korea has to get their butt to some sort of mountain to witness it (again, the 4 seasons pride). It actually was quite beautiful though.

I am a white giant, I know.

Of course, like most things here, the outing turned out to be more about eating and drinking than actually about hiking. The tradition hiking alcoholic beverage of choice is makgeolli, Korean rice wine. Pretty delicious.

I also took a nice trip with friends one Sunday to Suncheon Bay, a very famous ecological wetland only about half an hour from home. When people around Korea hear we're from Suncheon, they usually remark how lucky we are to be near Suncheon bay. It was quite crowded and touristy, but there are some great views:

The bay

Cath, Jenna, Glenn, Mike and Pete taking a photo break

Another great thing about fall: festivals! There seems to be a different festival in one city or another every weekend, even in my rural province. Unfortunately I can't get to most of them, but some examples are the chrysanthemum festival in Hampyeong, the lantern festival in Jinju, the reeds festival at Suncheon bay, and a great one that I attended: the fireworks festival in Busan. Busan is one of the biggest cities in Korea; it's not actually in my province but only a few hours away. Going into this festival, I had heard that last year they spent over 5,000,000,000 won ($5 million) and more than a million people attended. And this year was supposed to be even wilder. Well, it was wild for sure. I was lucky enough to have a friend of a friend with an 18th floor apartment overlooking the beach where the fireworks were, so I didn't have to battle it out with the crowd to get a good spot.

The show lasted for over an hour, and it was divided into sections by "continents": Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and "America". The Canadians were NOT pleased. Each section had its own theme music: the most memorable of which being "New York, New York" and "Under the Sea" for America, "Jai Ho" for Asia, and K'naan's World Cup masterpiece "Wavin' Flag" for Africa. Popular culture much?

The fireworks were shot mainly off of a bunch of boats in the water, which was cool cause you couldn't tell where they were coming from. It also incorporated a laser beam show off the bridge in the background, and some firework waterfalls. No big deal.

Here's a quick video from the Africa section. Try to ignore my friends talking in the background...

Some other great fall moments, summed up in pictures and videos:

One night Glenn and I encountered a couple of high school girls hamming it up, laughing and playing on the street. The fact that one of them was in a hospital gown and hooked up to an IV didn't seem to bring them down.

Two of my friends dressed up as Julie and Zeeto, the infamous characters from the elementary school curriculum CD-ROM.

Jenna demonstrating the parking situation at Shidae apartments, which she describes as "grim". There is not nearly enough space for everyone's cars, so they simply double park all over the place, and leave their cars in neutral. If you come out early enough in the morning, you can spot the businessmen pushing these cars out of the way to get their own cars out!

My friend Milly and I hit up a private noraebang room at an arcade one night, which was a huge excitement for these middle school boys. They promptly invaded our room and started shouting requests ("Michael Jackson!" "Kelly Clarkson!" "Justin Bieber!").

3rd grade mullet kid is back, and this time wearing my winter coat and pretending to be the teacher. I love this kid.

My principal and me exchanging a smile at my most recent post-volleyball teacher dinner. The man on the left kept filling my glass with a beer-soju mixture ("so-mek") and yelling, "Mill-uh! One shot!!"