Thursday afternoon we headed to the bus station after work, we had Friday off because of Buddha’s birthday so we decided to take a little trip and get away for a while. Some 13 friends and I decided to head to Sunyudo Island off the west coast of Korea. It was phenomenal! We had a private ferry from Gunsan to Sunyudo as well as transportation from Gunsan to the ferry which of course was not free but still very convenient, much more convenient than if we had taken the public route.
Friday was gorgeous. Partly cloudy and about 74 when we arrived on what looked like was a half deserted island. It seemed fairly barren and there was only one undersized, family ran convenience store near our beach house, which sold the essentials, and what we lived on for the next two days – Hite beer, and ramen noodles. The ‘downtown’ was composed of about a dozen stores and a couple restaurants scattered in the middle. Despite the tiny population of the island it had some of the best and most picturesque natural beauty I had ever seen. Like I said, it was unpopulated and despite the pedestrian paths, a handful of shops and a few restrooms scattered throughout, it was relatively undeveloped – it was exactly what you would think a traditional Korean island might look like.
Once we threw our bags down and claimed our rooms we decided to rent some bikes and explore the island. The bike rental place rented out single and double seater bikes as well as some small mopeds. $9 per bike for the entire day and needless to say I had to hop on a double seater to start the day! It was intense. I was seated on the back and I was controlling more of the bike than the person steering which turned out to be an adventure. We almost died about a handful of times, which ended up foreshadowing an event to come… But it was difficult to control because the roads were so curvy and Koreans ride bike significantly slower than I was used to. Anyways, once we got to the ‘downtown’ area, which was conveniently located near where you access the beach, we threw our bikes down and headed out to explore. As we were biking down to the beach access area we were passing by Korean families and westerners alike grilling and drinking beer along the beachside and underneath some hard to come by shade. It was beautiful and a well needed getaway from the busy workweek. There was a rocky area that leaded to another VERY small island which besides the small hiking path connecting one end of the other and a few empty beers bottles, it looked like we were the first people to ever step foot on the island. After we hung out on the tiny island for a bit longer and had a couple more beers we decided we needed some food.
On our way back to the main island there were small pods of Koreans, hovering around small patches of the beach shouting like they were watching a horse race. As we got closer, we noticed they were pulling back areas of the beach with a deformed shovel that exposed numerous small holes hidden underneath. At first glance they looked like tiny little holes that would never excite anybody, but after we watched for a bit we noticed they were pouring salt from a small Dixie cup on top of these holes, waiting a few seconds and grabbing what looked to be another life form popping up from underground. It was intense! And a team effort as well. One person was controlling the shovel, while one person had the salt and there were maybe two or three people plucking because the window of opportunity to grab these slimy little bastards was quite small. I’m ashamed to say it, but it was quite scary. The first time I tried to grab one, it slipped through my fingers and as it did I took a quick three steps back and screamed like a little girl. It was weird; I knew I wasn’t going to catch it. I was thinking in my head, “I know I’m not going to catch this and it’s going to scare the shit out of me!” I think my anticipation of being scared made me more scared and it just kind of blew up all at once. It was actually quite embarrassing. I take a look around and ALL of my friends are grabbing them like it’s their job and I’m literally the only one who hadn’t caught one yet. So, I give it another try, crack the shell, and then throw it in the bucket where the rest of the snails were being kept. Apparently it’s worthless if the shell is cracked but I threw it in anyways and hung up my snail catching jersey for the day. I THINK it was a snail anyways. It was a long and narrow (about the size of 2 new pencils put next to each other). It was quite strange.
I decided to take a nap slightly earlier than the people I was with, so I stole a single seater bike and headed back to the beach house. On my way back on the narrow, curved and ever so crowded road I took a bit of a spill. I was flying past families because everyone rides a bicycle in Korea like they had literally just taken training wheels off yesterday. It was so slow I couldn’t handle it. So I’m flying past families, children, old people and as I’m heading down a fairly steep decline I see a family coming around the bend so I, for some reason, decided to only slam on one break instead of easing into the break or ideally, using both breaks… remember, I had been drinking, I wanted to get out of the sun and I could feel that nap a mile away. ANYWAYS, the right handles break turns out to control the front break instead of the back break, which is how bikes are designed back home. Soooo, the front tire locks up and I superman over the handle bars, but don’t worry, my face and entire left side of my body, which was being protected by an ultra thin basketball jersey, broke my fall. I remember my face hitting the pavement and the next thing I remember is that Korean family, whom I was trying to avoid, is now up in my face, I think asking me if I’m okay in Korean. I get away from the concerned mob, bike the 3 minutes back to the beach house and take the most painful shower of my life. That was Friday; I still had to tough it out for Friday night and all day Saturday and Sunday which turned out to be the most terrible two and a half days ever because I couldn’t sleep because of my arm and every shirt I put on would be instantly ruined because of the light yellow ooze coming from my arm.
It was actually quite fascinating how little I knew about first aid after this debacle, and how much everyone else thought they knew. “You need to wash it Mayo, it’s gonna get infected if you don’t” says person number 1. “You can’t put water on it, that just makes the yellow stuff come out and increases chances of infection” says person number 2. I didn’t really know what to do so I just kind of humored everyone and took the least painful routs of everyone’s advice. Surprisingly it didn’t get infected and I never had to amputate my arm so all is well. I thought I got stares before this accident for being a foreigner … now I had a black and blue eye and yellow ooze coming from my arm… people are literally terrified of me!
Back in school all is well and not much new… I’m actually getting a new co teacher, which I’m pretty bummed about because I get along really well with the one I have now and she has really helped me out with a lot of documentation crap that needs to be done seemingly every week. She also speaks really good English and I can communicate with her really well, much better than any other teacher at my school. Anyways, the teacher that I’ve been kind of tutoring every now and then is a head teacher which basically means she’s an important homeroom teacher that has to do more paperwork than regular teachers. I don’t think there many perks. Anyways, I was joking with her about who we were going to hire next as an English teacher… I explained to her that we had two check marks… young, and pretty. She explained to me that these were recent graduates from the Korean Education University so they were already young; we just had a question mark in the pretty category. I was of course kidding but I think this was one of the ‘lost in translation’ moments and she jokingly said she was going to call her and ask her if she was pretty. I sarcastically said, “Okay Sister Kim, that’s a really good idea.” Annnd she proceeded to actually pull out a list of all the teachers that had graduated recently grabbed her phone number off the sheet and started punching her number in. I was terrified. I don’t know what she actually said but I heard my name in there a few times and I of course got up and was walking around the room for fear of her handing me the phone… I spent the next twenty minutes of my lesson explaining to her what sarcasm is…
I’ve also noticed a few things that didn’t really catch my eye as a new teacher and more importantly, a foreigner. I’m reaching the 100% sure mark that there’s a kid that has uncontrollable turrets syndrome in one of my classes. He just sort of sits in the corner and shakes and nobody really pays any attention to him, it’s absolutely bizarre. There’s also a student I believe should be on some sort of suicide watch. He sits near the back and stares out of corners of his eyes towards the window and never says a word to anyone. He doesn’t seem to get along with any of his classmates and every time my co teacher or I try and get him to participate it’s literally like he can’t even hear us. I’m actually terrified of the kid now and am more reluctant to get him to participate. That bothered me at first but when you see as many students as I do in a day you start to realize that not every student is going to participate all the time. If you can get a 9/10 of the class participating and having fun, that’s a victory in my book. They don’t have special ed. classes here so there are disabled kids sprinkled into my classes, which makes for some interesting classes. There’s this one kid in one of my grade five classes that brings a plastic zip lock bag to class, lays it out as flat as it could possibly be on his desk. He spends the first 10 minutes of class flattening this bag to his desk. My co teacher and I will peel it off his desk and put it back in his bag but as soon as we turn our backs it’s back on the desk being flattened perfectly so there are no air bubbles underneath. After he’s satisfied with how flat it gets to his desk, he peels it off, and blows it up. Once it’s blown up, he uses both hands and rubs it back and forth on the top of his head, making his hair hilariously static and a bit electric as well. The rest of the class, and occasionally my co teacher and I will find it absolutely hilarious, but come on! This is in the middle of class. Anyways, after he’s done experimenting with the friction and static of his plastic bag he gets up and starts to wonder around the room. We’ll be in the middle of a lesson and he will stand up, walk to the corner of the classroom where we have giant picture books, sit in the corner and entertain himself until my co teacher or myself physically grab him and put him back in his seat. As hilarious as it is, this kid really needs to be in a special education program. He’s not learning in my class and if anything he’s just disrupting other classmates. But that’s dynamic Korea I suppose.
Another event I think is worth noting is the hike I took with my principal and a few other teachers. It was my principal, the head teacher, a first grade teacher and the office secretary who went with. We first went into this Buddhist temple, which was not as magical as I was expecting. I don’t really know what I was expecting but it just didn’t capture me like I thought it would. Anyways, we’re heading up this enormous hill and I’m quite unprepared. I was told we were going ‘hiking’ and not mountain climbing. We ended up climbing 1084 meters or 3,556 feet and the view was spectacular. I of course didn’t bring my camera because I figured we were going hiking, not mountain climbing. My legs were literally trembling by the time we got back down to the bottom. It was actually really cool being on top of this mountain. Apparently it’s the highest mountain in Daegu and you can literally see forever. I actually felt a bit of accomplishment reaching the top of the mountain… of the seven people we went there with only 3 made it to the top. I couldn’t be too excited though because I was competing with a 60-year-old man and a 50 something woman, so I played it cool. Except once you reach the top you realize you have to trek back down, which is a pretty depressing realization.
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