This weekend felt almost like I wasn’t working in Korea anymore but instead I was travelling it. I talked in a blog post many months ago about the three stages of culture shock; I left the honeymoon period a long time ago and sunk into a rather complaisant negotiation stage. This weekend I finally entered the adjustment phase, after coming out of a long winter it feels like the end of my contract is in sight and I’m sure in the next three months I’ll be frantically trying to cram as much in as possible before having to leave.
Bob arrived in this small mountain town on Wednesday evening
and spent the Thursday and Friday chilling out in town and recuperating. He’s
been on the road for 8 months now and Korea is his last port of call before
heading back to the USA. We went for dinner the first night, had pizza the
second and on Friday night Nathanael joined us on our trip to Seoul. I’ve given
the Seoul tour more times than I can remember now; this was to be the last
time.
Bob didn’t have a set idea of what he did and didn’t want to
see which made it easy to set a course for the weekend. Friday night after
arriving in town we checked into the Pencil Hostel (a hostel we’ve stayed in
many times before). This quaint little converted house is tucked away at the
back of the Hongdae area of Seoul down a peaceful back road. After a trip into
town for some Korean style Japanese food, we sat out on the decking under the
moonlight and drank beers. We started talking to two University students who
were on a short break from their studies in Beijing. They were international
finance students who had a fair amount of stories to tell, it was obvious that
they were very much still in the honeymoon phase of their Beijing odyssey, which was refreshing. It's good to hang around positive people.
The next day I was up stupidly early, I had a shower in the
hostel and went for a walk out in the early morning sun. When I got back to the
hostel Bob was still sleeping so I hung around for a little while until he
started to stir. We left the hostel and met Nathanael who had stayed in a bath
house and we headed out to a market whose name escapes me. The market was
pretty big, mainly clothes and fabrics but in the middle was a giant food court
(I’ll call it a court because my vocabulary is limited on Monday mornings). We
sat down and had some kimbop for breakfast, Bob seemed to enjoy the kimbop. When
we left the market the sun was blazing and we took a casual walk back across
the river to the subway station.
Next we went to the war memorial (something Bob had shown an
interest in seeing), by the time we got there the sun was beaming down, the
hottest I had been out in it for quite some time. Outside the war memorial there
were a group of Korean high school students performing dance routines in front
of a giant crowd. We guessed that the reasoning behind the event must have been
Children’s Day. It was that same old Korean shit, performing overly choreographed,
and suggestively sexual dance routines to crass popular music. We went inside. The
war memorial is a great museum and we spent a lot of time here, we even bumped
into a traditional Korean royal wedding re-enactment outside and stood around
watching it for a while. By this point we were getting hungry so we preceded to
Myeong-dong, the popular shopping district, and scored some overpriced
sandwiches for lunch. We jumped in a taxi and headed to the palace and watched
the changing of the guards before heading back down the boulevard towards the
hostel.
We spent much of the afternoon out on the porch playing
songs on the hostels acoustic guitar and talking about travel, politics, music
and movies. It was pleasant after a day of walking to just kick back and chill
out under the shade of a tree. In the evening we had dinner at a traditional
Korean restaurant and purchased some Makgeolli (Korean Rice Wine) from a crazy
Korean who was wheel barrowing the stuff around Hongdae. Staying in a hostel was a reminder that I won't be living here forever but that everything is temporary. Being around people who were coming and going rather than staying was just what I needed. It reminded me that I'm still travelling as well (in a sense), that Korea isn't my home, or even my place of work, but a transitional period of my life that one day I'll look back on. An experience. Something I need to embrace.
On Sunday we went to Techno Mart in an attempt to buy a
camera but this didn’t go very successfully. I tried some blood sausage in the
market outside the bus terminal and just after midday we got on a bus back to
Sachang. We spent Sunday evening on the roof watching the Supermoon rising,
eating pizza and relaxing. Bob is sticking around today but is heading to Busan
on Tuesday. It’s been great having him around. I haven’t seen him since 2010
and it’s always good to be around a familiar face.
The sun makes everything seem brighter. With only three
months to go until Natalie and I leave on our ‘big adventure’ things feel like
they are gradually coming to a close. Nathanael and I are going to go running
every other night, climb some mountains and try and make the most of the time
we have left here. I still have a fair amount of things to do in regards to
planning for the big trip; I’m off to Seoul next week for my vaccinations. Every
day I come into work I’m flicking another page of my desk diary over, I
remember flipping it for the first time in January and that feels like it was
only yesterday. Before I know it I’ll be flipping it over for the last time and
I’ll no longer just be writing about Korea. There’s a hell of a lot to look
forward to, but, for now I’ve got some kindergartners to dance with.
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