Taejongdae

I visited a great waterfront park about a month ago called Taejongdae. It's a very popular tourist area in Busan. The views were breathtaking.




Fantastic!

APEC BUSAN!

This year's Asia Pacific Trade Cooperation meeting was hosted in my city of residence, Busan. It was a well-known fact that President George W. Bush was making an appearance at the talks, which made many people nervous of possible terror attacks. This resulted in the closure of most public schools and hogwans. Since we had the day off, Drew, Zach, and I made the trip down to the APEC meeting locations to visit the madness.

Zach and Drew standing beside the Bexco building where a lot of APEC "stuff" was going on.

Armed guards lined all the streets around the building. You can even see people on the top of that building.


Here is a large group of people in riot gear. They were expecting large riots. We didn't see any violence whatsoever.

This subway station was completly shut down.

One of the locations hosting meetings was near Haeundae Beach. We expected to see more armed guards or protestors. Instead, we found a beautiful empty beach and a man making a sand dragon.

The waters were teaming with police ships. Far off in the distance are some military ships.

The Gwangan bridge is beautiful at night.

It was impressive to see how many armed guards were on call for this event. I later read that there were some protests, but we missed that. We didn't get to see George Bush, or any of the other leaders. Security was too tight as you can see.

Visiting Yeosu

Last weekend I visited a couple neighboring towns to Busan. It was a great experience. I got to meet some new foreigners and experience the foreigner life outside of Busan.

First, we visited Suncheon, the location of a great hiking mountain. Very remarkable temples are found at the base of the mountain as well as on top. We met up with some friends of Zach’s who lives in another town called Yeosu.


Here they are: Zach (my neighbor in Busan), Christy, and Amanda.
There is a huge drum inside that temple. At nightfall the monks supposedly play it. Unfortunately, it was raining hard by the time we got there so there was no drumming.

Bamboo!


Here I am at a temple somewhere in the mountain. From where I am sitting I can see these amazing trees…

Then, we visited Yeosu. The population is around 300,000. Compared to Busan’s 4 million, it is considered a town.

Here is the cool bridge in Yeosu.

Here I am posing as Admiral Yi, Sun Shin. Yeosu is the birthplace of the legendary Turtle Ship invented by Yi, Sun Shin. Admiral Yi used the Turtle Ships to beat off the invading Japanese naval forces during the 7 year war. That is an actual Turtle Ship behind me! Read more about the Turtle Ships here.

Thanks to Christy and Amanda for the wonderful time in Yeosu!

My So Called Korean Life

Many people have asked me questions about what my life in Korea is like. So here are a few quick pics of things I see on a daily basis. Enjoy!

Here are some of my co-workers: Alice, Ale, Suzie. Don't they look fun to work with? They are awesome.

This is the school I teach at. I took this picture from the roof of my building which is accross the street.

This is my apartment building. It's tall and narrow.

When I enter the building I walk through this strange garage with a green floor. This is where I park my...

...scooter. I don't have a name for it yet. Any ideas? It's fun to go exploring around the town on this thing. Beats walking!
Next, let's have a look inside my apartment.

It's not the biggest place but it works for what I need. It has a gas range, small fridge, washing machine, and a nice flat screen TV.

More Suprises

Hey everyone!

I’m still enjoying Korea. I think I’m getting used to being surprised and confused everyday. There is never a dull moment here, and it’s certainly never boring.

Within the last few weeks the entire office staff at our school has changed. One girl quit. Soon after the manager and another secretary were fired by the owner. Supposedly they were involved in stealing money from the school. So we are getting a bunch of new staff.

We also just got a new native English-speaking teacher. His name is Drew and he is from Canada. He arrived a few days ago with his girlfriend Andrea. For the last few days I’ve been showing them around and getting Drew accustomed to the ins-and-outs of teaching at our school.

Getting back to the topic of surprise and confusion, I had an interesting experience at the subway station today. Drew and I were waiting for a train to arrive at the station. After waiting an unusually long time I began to wonder if the train would come at all. Suddenly, an announcement began to play over an intercom, in Korean of course. Since neither Drew nor I can understand Korean we were baffled to see people begin to leave the station. Since a few people stayed behind to wait for the train we decided to wait as well. The announcement continued to play over the loudspeaker for ceveral minutes. Eventually we realized we would be late for work if we waited much longer and decided to get a cab home instead. We will probably never know what happened to the train that day. Maybe someone jumped the tracks. Who knows?!

I took Andrea and Drew out for supper. We had a traditional Korean food called Samgupsal. It’s a crazy dish that you cook yourself. You get a plate of pork sliced like fat bacon slices. You cook it in the centre of the table on a grill. After the meat is heated up you wrap it up in leaves and eat it! Usually people eat this food with kimchi, a spicy cabbage dish, and soju, Korea’s traditional alcohol of choice.

That’s it for now gang.

A Hike Up a Mountain

Last weekend Zack and Amanda invited me to go on a hiking trip near a place called Geumjeong Fortress. Here are a few shots from the climb.

There are some pretty impressive gates along the mountain range that you can walk through.


Check out the temple tucked away in that mountain. Click on the picture to see it full size.

Can you see the gate in the background?


They were having a funeral ceremony at this temple.

Here we are at the top! When we got back to the bottom there was a crazy rock festival going on.