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!

The Korea Files: FREEDOM

So I know it has been really slow with posts on here! I have a few things to post about, but lately I have been very short on free time. I blame most of it on the fact that I have been locked in a school for 9 hours a day.

That is until today. Earlier this week I informed my boss that I found a new job, and that February 17th would be my last day. She wasn't completely with that plan, and she told me she would release me from the contract when a new teacher arrives. I think that she was informed she wouldn't get a new teacher soon enough, and she informed me today that it is my last day at the school. I would pay back the plane ticket with whats due on my current salary, pay my bills, and move out by tomorrow. So I said sweet, this is the best news I have heard in a long time.

I am finally moving to greener pastures. At least they appear to be greener pastures, because you can never know for sure. But my old job was 45 hours a week being paid for 30, piles and piles of work, and almost constant nagging from a woman with the most ear shredding, shrill voice I have ever heard.

And the new pasture, Hanseo Univeristy. It's located about 20 minutes driving from my current city, surrounded by mountains. The job includes teaching 9 to 10 90 minute classes per week, and one extra day off per week for "research." I would say that is an improvement, but considering my last job, it's not even in the same galaxy. Not even the same universe. Not even the same multiverse. Wait, that doesn't really make sense. Anyway, my new job starts on February 20th, so I have a little bit of time off.

Since I don't like to put up posts without pictures, here is a picture of my newest interest, origami. I have almost perfected the crane, so I have been challenging myself by making them smaller and smaller.

Back To Korea/Happy Christmas!

So hi everyone. I'm back to Korea now, as most of you should know. I found a job at a new school through a recruiting agency, and returned on December 6th. It's now December 29th, so it's been over three weeks since I've been here, and I haven't written a post. Sorry.

I've been having a nice time so far. I've collected both of my guitars, and may have a connection to get an electric guitar that was left by someone else. My school is pretty nice. There aren't so many classes yet because it's brand new, and there is a lot of material to teach with. I usually have to rush through my lessons because there is so much. But, the downside is that I spend so long each day preparing the material. I must spend Monday through Friday from 9am to 6pm at the school, mostly preparing flash cards. It's really a drag on most days.

But, for our short Christmas party last Friday, we prepared some Christmas hats for the kids. They also included beards for the boys. Enjoy:

The owner's twin son and daughter

a student who I stuck eyebrows to as well as the hat and beard

kind of a goofy kid

he's cute, but doesn't wear the beard right

my favorite student, Theresa

another goofy kid

Peter Pan. He was a student at my last school who switched to my new one. A nice surprise

Some of the girls

the girls again

me as a grandfather

Merry Christmas everyone!

UK Trip: York

One stop on our massive road trip through the UK was York. We stopped there on our way North to Scotland to check out the historic city. It doesn't seem terribly huge, but the locals there have their own distinct accent. The accent includes pronouncing the name of their city 'Yark', so I thought that was pretty funny.

We spent one night at a hostel, and had a good time shopping, wandering around looking at historic architecture, and visiting an art museum. I'll get to the pictures anyway...

Castle tops along the gate wall of the city

a really great red brick building. I'm not sure what the building was, but it said 'Barclays' on the side.

This one is getting a bit old and sags in the middle

a church through the trees

We stopped at a pub to try and get a roast beef dinner because supposedly roast beef dinners from York are famous. They were out so we had to get pork that night.

A church under the clouds

With the history of the city, they also offer ghost walking tours. I'm not sure what that has to do with a guy on stilts...

We stopped at the art museum, and had some tea afterwards. This is my attempt at an artistic photo.

We walked around the city on top of the gate that circles it. Along the way there were was a gate that Roger took a nice photo in front of.

One of the famous streets in York called the shambles. Most of the buildings have overhanging shelves that were similar to a feature in butcher shops where they got their name.

York was our last stop on the way to Edinburgh, which was my favorite part of the trip. Check back soon for blogging from Edinburgh!

UK Trip: Bristol and Stonehenge

I have a pretty short post today, just 6 pictures. We visited two places on the way back to Peterborough from Wales, Bristol and Stonehenge. Our plan was actually to get up pretty early and try to get a ride, but that didn't work out. They wanted something like $200 per person to ride, and then the weather ended up being normal England weather, so we just stopped by to see them. There ended up being a carnival there, so that was OK.

3 hot air balloons

At the carnival there were bumper cars (called Roger's so we got a picture of Roger in front). It was pretty slow, so the only three riders were me, Summer, and a small kid. It was pretty awesome.

Summer and some cotton candy

Our next stop was stonehenge. I think everyone will be pretty familiar with it because it's pretty famous, if not from the desktop screen included in Windows98. Once again, it was traditional English weather, so the pictures don't look too great. I like stonehenge with it's ties to astronomy and the mystery of who built it, but the setup is pretty stupid. You have to pay like $15 to walk close to it and listen to a guided tour. So in summary, you pretty much pay that much to walk around in one circle.

This is what you get

I like the green moss

The connector kind of looks like a boob

See you next time!

UK Trip: Bath, England and 3 Peaks, Wales

So this post is a bit out of order with the others chronologically. Roger, Summer, Marlene (Roger's Mother) and I took the trip out to Wales, as mentioned before. This post is about a stop that we made in Bath, England on the way to Wales, as well as one of the walking tours we took to Three Peaks in Wales.

Loyal readers will know that I have an obsession with signage:

Plumbing is important

Bath was a nice place to visit. On our trip we spent maybe 3 to 4 hours there, but we could have easily killed a day there. The city is filled with some great classic architecture. Some of the more ancient features date back to the days when the Romans controlled the land. This stuff isn't from then:

Typical Bath street

Everybody take photos

A decent church on the main square

We ended up taking a tour of the ancient Roman baths. That's right, Bath is called that because it actually contains baths. Pretty cool?

A view of one of the ancient baths. The pedestals along the edges used to support a roof in the Roman times.

This one isn't too exciting, I just love that it demands to be touched.

Of course, the tour included two actors portraying ancient Roman workers. Here, the man on the left has a puzzled look. I can't remember specifically, but we probably just mentioned something like a telephone.

"Ipod? Sheep are my entertainment."

A great view of the skyline of Bath from down in a bath

After the tour, we had to jet out of there because we were a little behind schedule. Maybe we shouldn't have stopped for tea so many times, but whatever. It's England.

Roger leads the way

As mentioned before, we made it out to Wales. We stayed in a more rural part of Wales, which offered mostly walking tours. We did probably half a dozen walking tours, but they were all great. One of the best was a tour we took to this place called Three Peaks, which also had a ruined castle on top of a hill. Unfortunately, the only way we saw to get up the hill was to scale up this steep, sandy slope. My shoes were filled with sand by the time I got to the top, but the castle was cool.

A ruined castle

More ruins

A view of the valley from on top of the hill. This is what I imagine England and Wales looked like a few hundred years ago.

Scottish thisle, I believe. Don't ask me what it's doing in Wales.

And finally...Three Peaks