Thoughts.com Blogs - This week's story

View Blog

This week's story

This Valentines Day was my favourite one so far. I spent the entire day with my munchkins at school decorating cookies, making crafts and eating chocolates. It was great. Koreans don’t usually celebrate v-day, but since we’re introducing them to western language, we throw in some of the western fun too. Here they have black and white day. I believe black day is when girls give chocolates to boys, and white day is when boys give candies to girls. I might have the colors mixed up. Both black and white day are celebrated in different months, I think black day is in feb and white day in march.

This Saturday morning I went hiking with a bunch of girls from work. The mountain we went to was HUGE, it took about 15 minutes to drive partly up it, and then we walked up for another 5kms. It was freezing cold, I was still drunk from the night before and I’m so out of shape I was going through some serious inner turmoil all the way up. It was quite a challenge but well worth it. The view from the top was phenomenal. You could see Gangneung city, Gyengpo lake as well as the ocean. There were so many people there, mostly Koreans part of hiking/touring group. On our way back down, we stopped and had a winter picnic. Some of the Korean girls we were with had brought this tiny winter stove and boiled some water. We ate noodle soup and kimbop (Korean sushi rolls without raw fish) It was delicious, but not a very sensible idea. Having to eat with chopsticks I couldn’t really wear my giant skiing mittens so my hands nearly froze off. All the Koreans there were having picnics. It must be the traditional way of hiking for them, regardless of the weather. I thought it was a bit crazy but they came equipped for it. Most of them had these padded cushions to sit on and serious hiking gear (including ski polls). I was happy I managed to find cleats before heading up there, they were necessary. It was so icy and snowy…but beautiful.

Melissa and I had to rush back because we had a 4 hour bus ride into Seoul and a Bjork concert to catch by 7pm. We made it there just on time. Surprisingly, she went on exactly at 7 with no opening band. It must have been the shortest concert I’ve ever been to in my life….but it was exceptional. The energy, the orchestra, her dress the drum, bass and electronic sounds, her voice…I could feel her music pulsing through me. Actually, I can still feel it. She’s truly unique and mesmerizing.
After the show we wondered around Seoul. We found this neat café with delicious bread, ice cream and organic tea. You have to pay 3500 wons ($3.50) to go in, but you get unlimited toasted bread with butter and jam, organic tea and coffee as well as soup. AND they have small tanks for your feet with Dr.fishes inside. Oh my. You pay $2 and you can put your bare feet in the tank. Then, all the fish come to you and eat the dead skin of your feet. It may sound a bit gross but many find it relaxing. I found it excruciating. It tickled so much that my entire body was tense and my toes would curl and it was impossible for me to enjoy it. But I’m glad I tried it. I can’t imagine going to the ones where you sit your entire body in the tank. That would be insane.

Afterwards we ventured out in search of a jimjilbang, went in the hot tub and then crashed. We were exhausted. It was nice because the women’s sleeping area was separated from the men’s so there were no loud snoring old men keeping me awake like the time in Pohang. The next day we decided to walk from Hongday (where we slept) to Iteawon. Not really knowing how to get there we decided to walk towards the river and then along it. After a few hours of walking, we stopped at a metro station to see our progress….and found out we had actually digressed. So we said screw this lets just take the dam metro. So we did. Once in Iteawon we headed to “what the book”. I believe it’s the only English bookshop in South Korea. It has a pretty good selection of books. Since I’m currently reading “The book of tea”, I decided to pick up a book that wasn’t for mere leisure but also for learning. It’s a Korean language structure book that will help me teach myself how to read and write in Korean. So far, I enjoy speaking it very much. My vocabulary is obviously still very minimal but I feel very comfortable using what I’ve picked up and it comes out almost naturally. So I think I have a good chance of learning it quite quickly if I try hard enough.

Afterwards we went out for delicious Indian food (which you can’t find ANYWHERE here…) and then to the market to stock up on chick peas, delicious Indian spices and some cheese… because it’s impossible to find that stuff in Gangneung. Then, we hopped back on the bus and headed home to rest before work in the morning.
The end.

Posted by synthesizer on 2008-02-17 08:13:46 | Rating: