daebudo

deery-lou.

YEAH! to snapfish for finally added a slideshow feature. its about time. i do like a good slide show when viewing photos. hope you do to. now onto business. my weekend has come and is slowly on its way out. boo hoo. friday night i got to spar with one of the kids in my taekwondo class. its wasn't my buddy cha-won. instead i had to spar with the tall kid. he was so not wanting to do it. they are alway so nervous to be paired up with me. i had to practice kicking earlier with one of the girls and she was nervous too. i know i'm tall and white with blue eyes and blonde hair but come on. me not that scary. after class i met up with my friend hyunsik in jungangdong. we went to my favorite bar which i call the "batcave". we got a pitcher of beer and some sidedishes. our sidedishes included: sausages and veggies [more like hotdogs cut into octopus shapes], sweet and sour pork [which was delicious], and hwa chae [which is cut off fruit in some kind of liquid served with ice]. i must say i was a bit septical of the hwa chae but it was very refreshing and good. who knew. the evening ended rather early which was good since i had to be up at 11am to meet bae jung-bae.

bae showed up at 10:45am. just as i was on my way to get a pepsi. damn. why do they have to be early. so he greets me with a hi mr. ethan and into the car i go. we head to his apartment to pick up his family. not sure why they didn't come in the first place. oh well more kl for you. when we get to his apartment his wife and two sons are standing outside. i get to greet them. the oldest son gets in the car while his wife and second son remained on the sidewalk. they weren't coming with. once the older son got into the car the younger one started to cry. i think i might have scared him. off we were. daebudo or bust. bae told me there was three stages to our trip. i love how they have stages. conversation was very minimal the whole day. my korean sucks and bae's english is limited. he did have a bunch of questions written out and prepared for the day. occasionally he'd grab his pad and ask me a question. it was cute.

stage 1: our first stop was on the shiwa embankment bridge. there i saw some boats and fishes. i love korea for the mere fact that even along a bridge there are snack tents everywhere. these people sure do like to eat. from there we went to gubondgo coast on daebudo. there we saw the tidelands which are all over the island. when it's low tide its low tide. i couldn't even seen the sea water at some places. its all in the tidelands that people are out digging clams and and crabs. its very mudding. there were people all along the shore with a tent set up with their stuff while they were out in the mud. it's so great because its alot of families out doing this. digging in the mud and getting all dirty. i really wanted to get all in the mud but i didn't. we strolled along the beach. at one area there were all these tents with women eating. at the end was a little restaurant. a little farther we came across a barb wire fence and a road. the gate was opened for people to walk through and the sign gave warning to let you know it was a military area. thats one of the strangest things about being here. all the military posts. at the end of the road there's more rocky beach and off to the left was gubongiseondol, two large rocks. this is the site for daebudo sunset sight 4. hee hee. i love how they have names for this stuff. the smaller rock is called halmaebawi and the larger one is harabaebawi. you can see a picture of them in my link. even though it was far from sunset they were still cool to see. the muddy tidelands, rocks and boats out in the distance was amazing. its really kind of hard to explain how i felt. there was something about it that felt calming, almost mystical. i don't know. after walking around gubongdo we got back into the car and continued our journey. next stop was lunch. we had noodles and seafood soup. not sure what its really called. it was filled with clams, squid, and some other sealife that i have no idea. i sat next to bae's son. which i should mention that a couple of times throughout the day he grabbed my hand when walking. little kids are so cute. he's about 7, the same age as some of my students. he was adorable. after lunch we walked over to this island. apparently when the tide is low you can get out there. the first part of the journey was through the squishy mud. it was like going through the mud walk at john stevens planetarium in florida. while on the little island bae caught a crab and gave it to his son. he carried it around for awhile as if it was his pet. there wer so many hermit crabs there. big ones, little ones it was cool to see them all. there are also these strange water bug that look like roaches. i don't like them so much. beofre heading back to the car bae's son left his new friend behind. i guess he didn't want to bring him back to ansan.

stage 2: stage 2 consisted of a brief stop at the english village ansan camp. english camps are where students go for a week or two and speak nothing but english. they have various scenarios set up to make the students feel like they are in america. we didn't get out of the car it was more of a drive by. it was kind of set up like a university campus. i saw a basketball court, soccer field, and a swimming pool. at the front entrance in giant letters is ENGLISH. i wanted to ask some questions but bae couldn't really understand me. oh well. we also saw the famous yeongeon bridge. hee hee

stage 3: stage 3 took us to nueseom island lighthouse lookout. it was a pretty far walk to the lighthouse. bae's son and i both had a pepsi before we began our long walk. i think he got one because i did. we're like brothers now. the strangest thing is that bae is 36. we're basically around the same age yet he seems so much older than me. i'm i that immature. i think a lot of that has to do with the fact that korean want to look after you. i mean he paid for everything. i tried to offer money several times and he wouldn't take it. i think thats partially when i felt like a child. well that and the fact that bae's son and were playing. anyway once we got to the lighthouse there was a very steep incline we had to climb. by now my sandals had completely dug into my feet and it was very painful to walk. the view from the light was good. although it was a bit foggy out so you couldn't see all these tiny islands that were out in the water. inside they had a simulated boat driving game. both bae's son and myself gave it a try. i almost made to the lighthouse but struck a rock beforehand. oh well. i guess i'm not made to drive a boat. that was the end of stage three. it was now time to head home.

the ride back was pretty much the same as on the way there. very little conversation. although bae did consult his pad a couple of times. and one point he said "let's have a heart to heart". he also told me to call him anytime i had a problem. and then he asked for my clothes size. bizarre. it was definitely cool that he made an effort. there were a couple of times throughout the day that i busted out my korean phrase book too. that thing defintiely comes in handy. bae's son slept the whole way home. when we were approaching my building i told bae where to stop but he said that we were going to dunkin donuts first. so now the three of us were in dd. i tried to get away with only having one donut but bae put a second one on my tray and then a caprisun. thats why i feel so young. its like i'm a son to him. its so strange. outside we parted ways. i thanked him for the day and told him that i really appreciated it. he said it was a fun day and next time we'd go somewhere else. i said ok. i said bye to bae's son and then went home.

i spent most of today [sunday] doing nothing. i read a little. i'm still trying to finish house of leaves. its been two years so far. i'm definitely determined to finish this book. hopefully this will be the year.
watched some tv: korean drama, and big momma's house. took a little nap. did some laundry, wrote some emails, and ate. talk about exciting. it rained most of the day anyway so no worries. sometimes you need to do nothing.

be well…

snaps from daebudo…
Links

• daebudo