서울 (Seoul) Part 1 of n

I'm not sure how many blog posts it will take to get across my adventure in Seoul, so this is the first of n amount of blogs. Odds are this will be an ongoing story for a few weeks, unless I'm really diligent; although you should expect off topic posts in the meantime.

Religion in South Korea is an interesting thing. Most are not affiliated with any religion but of the approximately 40% who are, Buddhism and Christianity are at the top, but both only combine to make up 65% of the 40% or 26% of the total population. This is all according to Wikipedia.

However, from what I've seen Jesus is everywhere in this city. At night it's lit up like the red light district of most countries; a giant glowing cross in the scenery of the city. In Korea you don't have to look far to find Jesus.

Buddhism however, is everywhere else. It has influenced the architecture, culture, traditions, etc. Most things Koreans do have roots in Buddhism; and most Koreans that don't affiliate themselves with any religion still follow Buddhist practices. This leads to some interesting conflicts between Christianity and Buddhism, but that isn't the topic of this post. Instead this is about my trip to Seoul during Buddha's Birthday Weekend Bash.

I'm sure some people celebrated the birthday of Buddha with something holy, but it seemed as though most of the people I saw viewed it like any other holiday; especially wei-gooks. Myself and a group of my friends ventured up to Seoul for three days of exciting fun.

We stayed at a hostel where we met some interesting folks. There was a guy from England, Paul; Steve, from Maui who was traveling the world and showing off his six year beard; and Stefan from Norway, but he still sounded like an Englishman The hostel was pretty awesome, there was a few rooms full of bunk beds, almost all of our crew were in the same room. Joel and Jehan slept in the main room, and Jamie and Dylan stayed with their friend. It was a cool arrangement until K-pop (Kirill) kept waking everyone up at night with his incessant, unwieldy coughing fits.

We got to Seoul from Busan via the KTX (Korea Train Express), which is a high speed train that only took three hours to get up from the South to the North. It was a cool train, and I slept for almost the entire trip. The night before had been a going away party for our Korean boss, so we (Joel, Jehan and I) stayed up drinking until the wee hours of the morning. The rest of our crew went to bed on time, and woke up early enough to take a shower. The three of us crawled off the floor of the rented condo (for the party) and raced to the subway station at about 800, 30 minutes after the others left. My first day in Seoul was plagued with exhaustion and sleep deprivation, but I made the most of it and had a killer first day.

Below is a picture of the hostel with the people who were there when I took the picture--a little circular logic there. This was the living room area. The picture at the bottom is the best pic of the sleeping arrangement I could take. There were too many beds to be able to accurately represent with a picture--10 beds.


(L to R) Steve, Derek, Mickayla (outside), Chris, Allison, Joel, K-Pop, Stefan


Mine was the top bunk with blue sheets and a black backpack. I think I woke Mickayla up everytime I went up there.

10K

The above title is not representing how much I won at the casino, it's the distance I ran on Sunday the 16th. I participated in the Busan "Marathon" but you can choose half-marathon, 10K or 5K. I chose to run in the 10K race. I didn't win the race, but I did finish, which was my only goal. My final unofficial time was 1 hour and 10 minutes; they never sent me my official time, and since I am moving soon, I'm not sure if I will ever know.

Some people's strategy is to run fast, keep running fast, and to not stop running fast. I tried to use this strategy, but my lungs and knees protested. Instead I adopted a new strategy--with finishing being my number one priority. During the race I scored a bunch of free water, gatorade, and spray pain relievers. I took advantage of every stop and came out of the race hydrated, sore, sunburned, and reeking of icy hot.

I ran with three other people I knew (another six I just met, and another 5 thousand I didn't know), but in reality I only really ran with one, Jana. Everyone else was way further ahead, or Korean.

Most wei-gooks wore their own clothes, but the race gave us a service (free) shirt, so most Koreans wore that. Instead, I represented my team. It was a fun race, and I even won a medal.


(Left to Right) YT, Jana, Nikki, Jin

It's been a newsworthy past couple of weeks. The weather has started warming up with the spring deteriorating into summer. That means that the beach has become the most popular weekend destination, replacing Kino Eye (Bar). This also works out well since my favorite chill bar, Rock and Roll, is right next to the beach; as is another popular destination, Paradise casino.

Cinco de Mayo also took place last week, but in Korea it's called something slightly different, but the idea is the same. Instead of celebrating a major Mexican military victory, they celebrate the children for Children's Day--parents have to buy their kids video games and there is no school that day. I was happy, as was my mustache.



That picture was taken a while after Cinco de Mayo, but I'll get to that later; I'm also not sure what's going on with Torie there. In celebration of Children's Day we all went to the beach. I also bought the hat you see above. As per usual a frisbee was brought and then proceeded to be thrown around. In the process of the fun, I was chasing a frisbee that I thought I had a chance to catch so I dove at full speed, completely laid out with my right arm fully extended. I didn't catch the frisbee, but my right shoulder did catch the weight of the rest of my body. At first I thought it was just a minor shoulder tweak so I stopped playing frisbee and dug a person sized hole--I'll see if I can track down a pic of that. After a couple of days I was concerned that it might have been a bit more serious because there was very little improvement. Sleeping hurt and I couldn't move my right arm outward or beyond a few inches from my side without sharp shoulder pain. Turns out that it was only a sprain, and one week later I've regained a bit more movement but I'm still missing my strength; sleeping isn't as hard anymore, but mornings suck.

One of my coworkers (Nikki) is leaving in a few weeks, so she said she is going to throw two more big parties. The first took place on the eighth and was thenceforth known as the Ocho de Mayo party. I won Best Costume, but Chris had a better mustache:



In my gift bag for best costume included some roman candles, and in the same foyer that the first picture was taken was where all three were lit off. Fireworks and soju are a bad combination, especially for me. I was pretty close to being arrested. At the time it was hilarious, but looking back it was a poor decision--yeah soju. Thankfully, another of my coworkers, Kyeung Hae, had brought her boyfriend, who speaks fluent Korean. He defused the situation; not literally, the fireworks were still going off while the cops were yelling at us, and then after I stomped on my roman candle it exploded--that part would've been way cooler it we had been at the beach like Nikki, the party thrower, had intended us to be; it was still really cool though. I bought beers for all those I involved in my stupidity; Carlsbergs all around.

Later that night we wound up at the casino; I don't have a picture of that because they don't like it when you bring cameras inside. I lost 40,000 won, ate three sandwiches, acquired two packs of smokes, had several drinks, watched my friend, Jesse, purposefully get kicked out, and all before 8 am. It was a good night.

Some final thoughts: I am happy to be running Mac OS X again which is so much better than Windows. Also, I have a 10K on Sunday, and I ran twice in the past two weeks, so I've fallen a bit out of shape. It's really hard to get motivated to go running when you wake up and have a strong sore pain in your shoulder, but that's just an excuse. I'm not too concerned though, I just have to pace myself in the beginning and focus on finishing rather than finishing at a certain time.


Till next time, whenever that'll be

Aaron