A Long Day in China

Welcome back, to all my readers, and thank you for allowing me to take a two and a half year hiatus. I felt as if I had covered most of the day-to-day aspects of Korea, so I needed a break from blogging.

Since Korea was covered, why not visit a new country? China seemed like a nice place to visit. Actually, Summer's younger sister was getting married and we visited during our Fall Festival vacation period.

This post, currently, is about one of the longest days of my life. It was my first full day in Hefei, Summer's family's city. I spent my first night and the next day of the trip in Shanghai, traveled to Hefei by train, and made it to bed around 1 that night. That same night I went to Hefei, Summer's father had asked me if I would like to climb a mountain together with him. I said "yes, of course," and we were set to wake up at 6 the next morning and depart for the mountain around 6:30.

I woke up, a bit groggy, but the climb was quite nice. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a camera on the mountain trip. Summer's brother, Harry, did, but I forgot to get any pictures from him. Therefore, I will just detail a few memories from the mountain.

The mountain was called "Big mouth mountain." It didn't really have a peak, but rather a ridge at the top that one could walk along when it was reached. The walk up the mountain was completely paved, meaning there was either a cement staircase or sidewalk everywhere we walked. I didn't bring any water, but we bought some of the most expensive water in China. I guess someone had to lug it or drive it up all the way the mountain, so it cost $1 (usually, water costs about 16 cents). I also learned the word for spider in Chinese: "zhi zhu." It was a nice walk, though a bit tiring.

We travelled back, and I got to take a nap from around 9 to 11 that morning. Next, came a lunch date we had with Summer, Summer's sister, Amy, and a family that she works with. They have a son, called Jerry in English, who they wanted to meet me (all of the English names listed for Summer's family and friends are names that I gave to them upon request). The lunch was at a shabu-shabu place, pretty standard for the most part. There was some beef and lamb meat, along with vegetables and sauces.

There was one interesting item sitting on the cart nearby, though. I looked over and did a double take, certain that I had seen something I never thought I would see. What was it? BRAIN:

PIG BRAIN

It was a pig brain, known in Chinese as "zhu nao." It is know to make one smarter by eating it. But why, would anyone ever want to eat it? That's what the western person asks. The Chinese people don't seem to ask that. The brain is cooked in the boiling hot-pot until it turns a modestly more appetizing gray color. To tell the truth, it was pretty tough to get down. I cut it with my chopsticks, and there were fibers. That's what got to me, the fibers. I didn't think that a brain would have fibers. Anyway, the texture was a bit like dry tofu, but with fibers.

The lunch also included comedic hijinks. Whenever noodles are ordered, a lady wearing all white comes out to take the unstretched noodle, and stretch it via swinging it all around her like a fancy ribbon dancer. The whole process takes a theatrical three minutes. I asked if the noodle ever hits the floor, and she replied that no, the noodle never hits the floor (through translation). I watched closely, and I saw it briefly strike the floor. I'm sure of it. Anyway, the stretched noodles are boiled and eaten, and are quite good. 

After our first order of noodles, most of the way through the meal, some of the wait staff came out to greet me. They also sang a traditional Chinese song, gave a gift of some moon pies and extra fruits, and gathered for a photo:

Jerry (front), me, and the waitstaff

So that was pretty nice of the restaurant. I don't currently recall the name of the restaurant, but it's something with 'hot pot' in the name, along with about 10,000 other Chinese restaurants. Going back to the noodles, as I mentioned before, the boy Jerry really loved them. He always wanted more noodles. It was our third order of noodles that the noodle lady asked me if I would like to swing a noodle around. I didn't really, because I had done it before, but everyone insisted. I finally succumbed to pressure, and swung it all over the place. I wasn't really as smooth and gentle as the trained noodle lady. My noodle was swinging everywhere, breaking, and hitting people in the face.

After everybody was stuffed, and the boy was finally sated with noodles, we went on to the next adventure. The father of the family and Summer's sister had to go take care of some other business, so it was Summer, the mother, Jerry, and me who went to a carnival held year round in the city. This carnival was a bit interesting, though very similar to any small state fair or carnival I have ever been to. Outside, though, there are these disheveled looking old guys who walk around holding a chained monkey, exploiting them for money. It made me really sad to see it, so we repeatedly told them to go away and that we didn't want to see it until they finally left.

We went in and found this place with a coy pond. They have the coy, and then you pay a dollar to get this baby bottle on a stick with a weird looking brown liquid inside. This bottle is then dangled above the coy to entice them into coming up and sucking on it. They are pretty good at sucking on the bottle, but they really jerk it around. Anyway, here's the bottle contraption:

Coy feeding pond

We also went to an area where people can rent "pleasure boats," and ride them around a "scenic lake." We let Jerry drive the entire time, and he didn't really know how to drive a boat. Luckily, the small, 4 person boats are kind of like bumper boats and it doesn't really matter if they graze against each other. I think regulations may not have been really strong in this particular small boating lake. We had to have life-preserving vests on the vessel, but there was more than one time I saw a baby driving a boat. Like an honest less than two year old baby. I unfortunately didn't get any photos of these naughty, nautical babies.

We also played some carny games. The only one we played was throwing darts at balloons, but I saw another one here with some interesting signage. I'm not sure what the YOID is, but I didn't lean over it.

"ATTENTS DECISIONIS FINAL"

"Noleaning over REDLINE or Game YOID"

After this, things got super dicey and nauseating. Probably all carnival stories go this way, but just bear with me. We did a series of rides that are pretty standard for carnivals. Pictured is one where there are two seating carriages at the opposite ends of a giant beam that is swung around:

Trustworthy Carnival Ride

We did about two more rides, and then came one called "Challenger." This ride possibly was made before the infamous 1986 disaster with the spacecraft of the same name. Anyway, we decided to ride. The boy, Jerry, and his mom were OK in their seats, being reasonably-sized Chinese people. I was not. My shoulder harness came down to an uncomfortable position squeezing my chest to the point that I couldn't fully inhale. The guy said some stuff in Chinese that I didn't understand, and I figured I would be OK. I wasn't. The ride may have been the worst three minutes of my life. It just spun our capsule around in a circle while the capsule itself was allowed to rotate. It was extremely nauseating, and coupled with the fact that I couldn't really breathe, I felt horrible. The ride mercifully ended, finally, and we went to find a place to sit and rest. I had to hold my head in my hands to keep it from spinning. I also couldn't stop sweating for the life of me. I just couldn't. My entire shirt was soaked, and my pants were getting there. I felt awful.

Jerry's mom decided to drive us home so I could get a shower and some rest. I didn't make it. After just a few minutes in the car, I felt the nausea lead to a pressure in my stomach. I told them I need to throw up, which I can also say in Chinese "wo xiang tu!" She stopped the car and I lost my entire lunch out the door. Anyway, after that I felt a bit better.

We made it home to shower and rest, but didn't have much time to rest. It did feel really good to shower, at least. I wanted to stay home, but Summer and I hadn't seen our friends whom we had dinner plans with in a long time, so we decided to have the dinner.

It was really nice to see our friends, Frank and Ruby. He is a policeman, and she is a journalist, and they just had a baby together. Frank is also large and baby shaped, like his baby. We had a really nice dinner with his little brother and her wife as well. We went to a restaurant where they give you a sheet of paper, the menu, with like a hundred boxes on it. You check as many boxes as you feel like, and then each one is usually really good, and only costs a few bucks. The dishes are things like dumplings and various animal dishes.

Frank is a really silly character. He jokes a lot and comes up with nicknames for everybody, though he's kind to me because I think he wants me to like him. He doesn't really speak English, so I have to use my poor Chinese, or ask Summer to translate. He also is somewhat pudgy, and can eat about twice as much as I can. I'm a lot taller and I would say bigger than him, but he can really pack in some food. We had a huge dinner, and after that he really wanted to take us to a Chinese street barbecue. I questioned how anybody could still eat, but we went. The street looks like this:

Street barbecue, the barbecue is on the right side

He ordered a completely ridiculous amount of food. And, it was parts of animals I never would have guessed could be ordered. The first course was pig ear cartilage, which has a nice kind of crunchy texture to it. Everything was on sticks. Lamb, vegetables, beans, stinky tofu, and a lot of stuff I'm not really sure what it was. There was one slightly disk shaped thing on a stick that everyone wanted me to eat. They wouldn't tell me what it was, so somehow my mind went automatically to the nether-regions of the sheep. The meat was really tender on one side, but super chewy on the other side. It turned out it was testacles. I didn't finish mine, but at least I tried. A bunch of beers later, and everyone eating as much as they could, our table looked like this:

The best foods come on sticks

After, I really wanted to go home and sleep, but everyone demanded a massage. I finally acquiesced to the pressure, and off we went. We went to a reputable, all-night place in town, and we were all seated in a room on reclining chairs. It was really great. We soaked our feet, got a shoulder massage, foot massage, and back massage. Not a bad deal for around $20 a head. 

My only problem was with the back massage, because something I had eaten that day had made my stomach upset, in the diarrhea way. I did my best to hold it until the massage was over. It was bad, but finally the day was over. A semi-successful event filled day in China.

THE END

(except for the diarrhea, which lasted for a few more days)

My New Home: Hanseo University

I write this now as my latest period of unemployment is coming to an end. I will soon be starting a new position as "English Professor" at Hanseo Univeristy. I use quotes because it doesn't seen really appropriate to call me a professor.

But, it is a really nice job to have. I signed my contract recently for 30 million a year. Thats right, 30 million, no need to ask what currency that is in. That salary is for two semesters of teaching 8 or 9 90 minute lectures plus four office hours per week. Plus, I get one day off per week for "research," and months of vacation per year.

One thing I love about this job is the location of the university. Hanseo University can be translated as "Korea West" University, and it is nestled nicely in the middle of some mountains in the Western part of Korea. It's not really located in a city, but a nearby town called Haemi is about 5km away; and Seosan (my previous city) is about a 20 minute drive from the campus. It seems to be a great location if you really love hiking, though not such a great location if you like partying.

I'll get to some pictures, anyway:

the gate to Hanseo campus

A nice mountain next to the campus area

this is the view from the top of the mountain in the previous picture

the architecture building, where my office will be located

a pagoda housing a bell located at the top of the campus

a sculpture garden

a nice woman playing cello, in the woods

a horse

The campus is really littered with sculptures. I heard that all of the sculptures located on campus are by former students, thought I haven't confirmed it. There are a few really nice ones, but there are a LOT there that range from mediocre to eyesore territory. Oh well.

I hoped you like the tour of campus, I'll take more pictures as spring comes and keep everyone updated!

The Great Korean Road Trip of 2012: Part 3

And now the grand conclusion of my Chinese New Year road trip around Korea. Well, it's not really that grand because we just kind of screwed around and drove around in some mountains for the rest of the time. Here it is, anyway...

After leaving the crazy crab vilage, we continued North. We wanted to make it to a Northern city, and found one called Samcheok right around the time we got sick of driving. We spent the rest of that night looking for a chicken barbecue place, but didn't find one. Instead, we had some pork barbecue and some whisky. We also got the bright idea to ask people "how does a cat speak" in Korean. The joke for the rest of the night was to ask this, and it actually worked. The best moment was when we were in a bar. The three of us had a rock scissor paper contest to find out which one of us would have to approach a table of 7 Korean girls and ask them the question. I eventually lost, but it worked out well. All 7 girls laughed and meowed. Some of them made a little cat scratch motion with their hands.

After getting some rest, we were on the road again. We were driving out of town, and near the edge we found a nice place to stop near bridge. This allowed for some planking:

And there was this great little bay. We ventured down and had to cross trough this bamboo forest to get to the rock ledges in the picture below:

The bamboo forest:

After setting out again, we found ourselves in some pretty serious mountain country. We found this city called Taebaek, which was a small Korean city, but spread through some mountains. It was actually a really great drive, and for me it was a highlight of the trip.

We made a stop at a little convenience store at the top of a mountain. Here is the view of the mountain road:

The place had these nice little outdoor rooms, which I assume were for drinking in the Summer time:

Driving out on the mountain roads, I developed my skill for taking photos through the windshield while driving. Here's one picture:

At one stop, these little dogs came and started barking at us. I got a good look at this one little dog who had a face that looked like a horror movie monster. Does anyone know what kind of dog this is?

Another driving shot of this rock tunnel we drove through:

We made one last stop before heading to Seoul, near this altitude sign:

I don't have any pictures from our night out near Seoul. We had a nice time hanging out near Nick Slater's school in Yongin. That was our last night before the other guys would have to work, so we left Nick in Yongin and headed back to the Seosan area. Here we are driving into the sunset:

All in all, it was a great trip and we covered a lot of Korea. Tracing it back full circle, the trip looked like this:

We didn't make it as far North as I would have liked, but we definitely had a great time. I guess a Northern trip can be saved for a later blog post...

The Great Korean Road Trip of 2012: Part 2

Hello, and welcome again to the Great Korean Road Trip of 2012. We left off with leaving Mokpo, picking up some strawberries, and heading to Busan. Let's continue there, shall we.

We arrived in Busan at around 9 p.m., with not much for maps and a slight idea where we wanted to go. We entered the city from the West side, and needed to head all the way to the South East side, where the beaches are. This took around an hour and a half due to getting lost a few times. But we arrived to find this at Gangwali Beach, so it was OK:

Bridge at Gangwali Beach

Unfortunately, the restaurant I wanted to go to was closed by that time, and the other good looking ones were closed. We settled on some crappy night club type thing that served us some poorly cooked pizza and some overbreaded chicken. We ate it.

The area of Gangwali seemed a bit dead, so we meandered over to the more famous beach, called Haeundae. I don't have any nighttime photos of the place, but we had a good time there. The one photo I do have is from the enchanting fake window plastered to the wall in the hallway of our hotel:

We got some good rest that night, and woke eariler the next day to get some decent brunch and look around. This time, the restaurant I wanted, Breeze Burns Burger, was open. They had the best chicken wings there that I have had in a long time, and excellent hamburgers, too. Along the way I found this place:

"Someone should go to prison for letting me drink this!"

We loitered around Haeundae Beach for a while, knowing that we would have to spend a long time in the car that afternoon. Here are a few photos from our time there:

"No smoking!"

Haeundae Beach

Some crazy patriotic Korean kite flying man

We cruised out of town that afternoon, without even stopping at a gas station before leaving. There was about an eigth of a tank left, so I figured we could make some time before filling up again. I was wrong. That was a huge mistake. Somehow we ended up on a highway that was a huge black hole for LPG (propane) stations. We had to finally stop in a city called Ulsan and ask directions to the nearest station, with gas lights blinking and the needle at rock bottom. Finally, we found one, what a sweet relief:

the sleek Kia Carens, strawberries on the dash

On the side of the road in Ulsan was this crazy giant temple structure, so I pulled over. I never truly found out what it is because I never asked, but I gathered that it was some kind of Buddhism school where young monks are raised. It was a nice place to stop for a few minutes anyway:

From there, we set on the road again due North. We wanted to make it most of the way to North Korea by nightfall, but we weren't so lucky. We started looking for potential stops for the night, and ended up in this crazy crab city. We didn't stop, but they made it completely obvious that you can't escape eating seafood and crabs while there. Much of the architecture was crab-based; restaurants, bridges, bus stops. Driving by the restaurants resulted in people yelling at us to park and get some crabs. We somehow resisted.

There was a nice stopping place near the city, with a temple set up on a hill. We were attracted by the multi colored lights:

It turned out to be a fake tree

The temple, decorated for a New Year celebration

We made another pit stop at a convenience store to look for some snacks and beverages. Timmy found a hat:

I found a nice sandwich with pictures of pomegranites and beans on the packaging. The best I could tell is that it was sweet red beans and pumpkin inside. Surprisingly, it didn't taste that bad:

I later found out that city was called Yeongdeok (pronounced like 'young duck'), the crab capitol of Korea. Pretty much every city in Korea is the capitol for something, like how Seosan is the garlic capitol. Yeongdeok just took it way too far.

It was freezing cold there, so we couldn't do much walking around. We got back in the car and headed North once more...

To recap the trip so far: we started in Seosan, headed South to Mokpo, East to Busan, North to Ulsan and Yeongdeok. That path is about half way around the country. Nice!

Tune in next time for the conclusion of the trip!

The Great Korean Road Trip 2012: Part 1

Hi everyone. I'm proud to announce my return to blogging...at least for a while. I'm currently jobless and living in Korea, at least until my university job starts at the end of February. Because of this, I plan to work through some of my back-logged blogs and get them up.

This post is the start of my road trip that I took over the Chinese New Year vacation, which gave us Monday and Tuesday of last week off. The Friday that the road trip was starting was also my move out date from my apartment, so it also marked the date that I became homeless and jobless. Homeless, except for my girlfriend's apartment which is currently vacant while she visits her family in China. Anyway, on Friday I moved all of my stuff out of my apartment, loaded it into the car, loaded it into my girlfriend's apartment, dropped the dog off at the vet, prepared some documents for my new job, sent them, and I was ready to go.

We set out with no real itinerary. All we had before leaving was an idea to search for some of the excitement and uniqueness to be found in the hidden corners of Korea. See, all cities of Korea are basically the same. It's high-rise apartments surrounded by the same convenience stores, shops, and restaurants everywhere. My goal was to see if there is anything different out there.

It began on Friday night at around 10:00, when my friend Nick Slater arrived in Seosan, my city. He brought with him a present, a tool we could find valuable later on down the road:

The Road Toilet

I'll kill the suspense now, and say that none of us used one in the car. It was a nice thought, though. Once Slater arrived, we jumped in my sleek Kia Carens liquid propane gas running micro-van and went to pick up my other friend, Timmy. He lives in a small neighboring town called Daesan. I didn't realized it, but it's about 25 minutes away going North on our local peninsula. So we had to backtrack after picking him up, and finally headed South.

The highway we took, interchange 15 took us to the Southwest corner of Korea, and we arrived in Mokpo at 3:00 a.m. Mokpo is a prominent seaport in Korea. They offer ferries going to many of the small islands off the coast, so it seemed like a promising destination:

Road Trip Map

After arriving in an area with a few convenience stores and motels, we settled in at a 7-11 for a few beers. We drank outside the store in freezing temperatures, and a 40 something Korean man stopped by. He joined us for a few drinks, speaking only Korean and eventually offering us processed cheese singles as a snack. We couldn't understand most of what he said. I tried to ask him what we could do to have fun in Mokpo in broken Korean, and as far as I could tell he said the best way is to drink with your friends. Mission accomplished?

We crashed in a charming love motel room. We were a few floors up, but luckily the room had the "simplicity descending life line". It looked to be slightly tangled and out of order, but I'm sure it would work in a fire related emergency.

"simplicity descending life line"

That wasn't even the best, or funniest part of the room. When one goes to the use the bathroom sink to brush one's teeth, there is a tendency to get one's feet soaked. Why? Some genious plumber didn't quite connect the drain pipe, or line them up for that matter:

nice plumbing

We fell asleep quickly, and didn't wake up until 1:30 the next day, Saturday. Since all of the ferries leave earlier than that, we were forced to get a quick lunch and then look around for other tourist attractions.

There was a nice group of museum type buildings built along a highway on the coast. We stopped by the Mokpo Natural History Museum because of some nice animal statues:

Mokpo Natural History Museum

There were actually some pretty cool fake animals out on the lawn. I liked this 'artsy' photo I took from inside a fake dinosaur skeleton's mouth:

Mokpo Dinosaur Mouth

Looking at the signs, there were many hilarious misspellings, which I love so much. There was one where the museum was called the "Nateral History Museum," and my favorite:

"Where is the lacal history building?"

Here is me next to one of my favorites, the Gorilla:

And the three of us riding a tiger, as photographed by a nice Korean man who had his kids with him at the Museum:

Since the Natural History Museum cost money, we stopped across the street at the Mokpo Maritime Museum. This one had some nice boats out on the front lawn. There was a really great shrimping boat, and a few boats used by people to sneak into Korea. The people smuggling boat from China was all decrepit, but the one from Vietnam was in top shape:

Vietnamese People Smuggling Boat

We also checked out the children's exhibit, where you can drive boat simulators and make nice pictures of fish. Another exibit we saw was about a shipwreck that happened near Mokpo.

Satisfied with the boating exhibits, we set out on the road again towards Busan. We took smaller highways for a while. While being much slower, they do offer advantages such as ladies selling strawberries on the side of the road:

Road Side Strawberry Lady

I actually found the idea of her job to be quite terrifying. There were all of these stands by the side of the highway, but not really adequate room to slow down and stop. People are whizzing by the whole time at around 60 mph. Fortunately, the strawberries were amazing.

More next time from Busan!