The First Few Days

So, believe it or not, I landed in Sweden by Friday morning at 9am. The flight that I was delayed from, the Copenhagen to Gothenburg flight, was really only a half hour, yet they had to put me up in a Hotel. After exchanging what felt like millions of Won for what seemed like so little Kronor I trotted to the exit gate. Annie and Frederic were like the only people waiting and it was love at first sight! Or maybe at 23948329048209348th sight. Either way, they came equipped with turkey sandwiches and beer so I was already happy.

After getting to their apartment, and dying of jealousy over how much nicer it is than mine, I had some coffee, Annie had some wine, and we both had some good conversations about our lives in these foreign lands. Eventually, however, no amount of coffee could keep me going, and I retreated to a most comfortable floor/mat bed and slept hard for a good few hours.

By the time I finally woke up, I was feeling much better, and we had a plan to "go to the park and hang out with friends". We changed, and walked just a block or so to the tram. I can now say that in 2010 I've rode on my first subway AND my first tram AND my first Ferry (but we'll get to that later). We got off on an earlier stop than we should have just so I could get a jist of the city, see what there is for the upcoming week, and scope out some of the local shops. It was definitely a cool sight to see and I tried to take a few random pictures, but I have a whole week to get some better ones.

We eventually made it over a bridge, and met her friends and relaxed on some blankets by the river. It was really neat, there were lots of different groups of people doing the exact same thing as us, and everyone seemed so damn different! I had brought Annie and Frederic (and myself) some Ajumma hats from Korea, and they definitely drew some stares/comments.

It started to get cold (the weather here is SOO MUCH colder than in Korea) so we headed to her friends "backyard" and continued the fun. We all started to get a little hungry so Frederic went off and got us some Kebab Rolls which pretty much made my day, and it was soooo big! We finally retreated home around 1 and got some sleep to prepare for day two: Island Life!

Below is Annie's friend in possession of TWO American Passports, it's like gold!

By 10am on Saturday we were out the door and ready to get a glimpse of the Swedish Archipelago. We had to take a 30 minute tram to the Ferry and maybe another 15 minute Ferry ride. The moment we got to the dock I was already impressed. The islands were everywhere and the cute boats and the houses on the islands. Oh it was like a movie, except cuter. Definitely a refreshing sight after being in the cement wasteland of Korea for the last 7 months. Here's some boat videos:

Once we arrived there were million of bicycles at the dock, that was the main mode of transportation on the island. There weren't any cars, or maybe just one or two taxis. We walked for about ten minutes, around the fields, the houses, and the random boats outside of water.

Finally we came to the cabin we were staying at and made ourselves at home. First on our agenda was relaxing. Actually, that was all that was on our agenda. So we made our way down to the water. It wasn't a proper beach, but more like a mini cliff of big rocks to lay on and then you could walk down to the dock to go swimming. I was only out there for about an hour but I watched the color of my skin change, it was nice to see a tan, for the first time this summer! We made it back to the cabin and retreated to the deck for a bunch of hours while we all talked and I probably talked about Korea way more than necessary.

By dinner time we were starving and we had to make a fire, wait, and finally take part in the deliciousness of non-Korean food. I was satisfied, once again.

The night continued with a trot to the local (and only) bar on the island, and some more chats on the deck. The craziest thing I discovered was their sunset. It's almost like it never happens. By midnight you could still see a glimpse of the sun and it was up and ready to go again by 4am. And it's not because there's a plethora of neon lights everywhere either!

By Sunday we were all exhausted, made our way back home and headed to the couch with food to re-cooperate from the long weekend. Today, of course I'm up way too early. I hope to get out and get my shop on finally. New shoes HERE I COME!

My Travel Bug is Sick

So, as you may or may not remember, I came to Korea about seven months ago through a process I’d like to call a living hell. Quick recap:

Left my home in Minneapolis 4:00am Central Time on a Monday. Flight delayed due to..dun.dun.dun. SNOW! (Who would have though in Minnesota?) Then I subsequently missed my flight from Denver to Seattle, which caused me to miss my flight from Seattle to Korea. So, I made it to Seattle, cried, and got put in a hotel for the night. Then went from Seattle to Japan, hung out there for a few hours, then Japan to Korea, where I had to sleep on chairs at the airport, then finally take a bus to Gwangju and arrived in Gwangju around noon on Thursday. Yes. It was hell. After that, I was ready for anything.

Or so I thought. This trip has been a bit of hell as well. I got four hours of sleep before waking up to catch the 5:20am bus to the airport, got on the noon flight to Munich, made it to Munich 12 odd hours later. Waited around Munich during what should have been my sleeping time. Finally boarded, to find out that we had to sit there for a good hour before heading to Copenhagen. As you can guess, that made me miss my final flight from Copenhagen to Gothenburg. By the time we arrived, it was midnight local time, and 8am Korea time, so I was exhausted and sleepless for about the last 28 hours. Finally they rescheduled my flight to the next morning, and I was put up in a ghetto ass hotel. You’d think sleep would be effortless with such a lack, but nope, it was rough, really rough. I am now a good 36 hours deep with maybe 3 hours of sleep (not counting the day before with such terrible sleep as well) and I’m impatiently waiting to get the fuck to Sweden.

Here's a picture of the view from my seat

Besides that, nothing too interesting has happened in my travels (I haven't landed in Sweden yet). I just paid 14 USD for a sandwich and a coffee at the airport. I also ate a sandwich in Germany. Basically I’m going to be eating many, many sandwiches with real cheese and tasty meats. The long flight over wasn’t so bad either, I think I would have been complaint-less if I just would have made all of my flights. I’ve also observed that everyone working in the airports I’ve been in are like trilingual. It makes me want to be fluent in another language, but that will never happen. I’ve also realized that English is a big player in global languages and I’m luckily it’s my native language, because traveling would be a bitch if I only spoke some random language. It also kind of puts in perspective why so many people in Korea want to learn English, because who speaks Korean outside of Korea? No one. Alright, I’m going to go find my gate and get the hell out of here. Bye Bye.

Boryeong Mudfestival 2010

Well, as promised I made my trip to the Boryeong Mudfestival this weekend, and as usual it was a fun little adventure. I woke up bright and early, around 6am, and without an alarm clock(!) on Saturday morning. Packed, got ready, attempted to call some people in Minnesota, and left for the bus. I'm sure you're wondering why I would need to get up so ungodly early just to roll around in mud, but much to our dismay we could not reserve tickets for this event, so we had to be their at the crack of dawn to ensure everyone got a ticket. On top of that, we soon found out that this particular bus would not be assigning seats, so if you didn't want to get stuck with some smelly foreigner (aka people like us) you had to line up just to get on the bus.

People waiting on the floor

People sitting on the floor.

This is where coming super early came in handing, because the line was long, not everyone got on, AND the last people on the bus were stuck sitting cross legged crouched on the floor for that entire time. Thank god that wasn't me. I was sitting next to Dom, allowing me to use her for watching The Office on her snazzy iTouch. Man, I want one of those. But, in return, I did her hair in cute pig tails, see oh so pretty!

Seconds after we arrived it began to down pour even more than it already had been so we quickly hailed the first cab to our hotel. Now, I know that this is a big festival, but we literally got raped for the price of our shitty one bed love motel room. I'd like to add that I got raped the most by being the only one to volunteer to sleep on the floor. The four of us had to pay a total of 150,000 Won for this room. Normally, it'd go for like 30,000. But, after the mess of mud, dirt, sand, and water we made... I guess they deserve it.

So we got ready and took a few pictures:

Then we made our plan for the day:

First, we would eat lunch. During that lunch we would devour multiple bottles of soju and beer. Then, we would hit the beach, during that time we would devour multiple bottles of soju and beer. Finally, we would come back, shower, get ready and go out for the night. During this time we would also devour multiple bottles of soju and beer. In case you haven't figured this out already, this Mud Festival definitely wasn't a "cultural" experience. Unfortunately, our plan was flawed. I soon found out that amongst the bottles of soju and beer I had forgotten to drink water. I also found out that I had sort of forgotten to eat a big lunch while we were there. It was more like a light snack to accompany my soju and beer drinking. Heres a few shots from lunch:

As you can imagine, by the time phase one was done, we were already..well.. drunk. We happily stumbled along the boardwalk and searched for our first mud covering adventure. As luck would have it, one of the first people I drunkenly stumbled upon was my old co-worker from back home at RCC, Nick. He had originally moved to Korea a handful of months before me and vouched for its awesomeness. So we had a short reunion, talked about how much better Korea is (sorry RCC friends) and took some pictures, oh and of course drank some soju and beer.

By this time we all had to pee and headed to the ocean to do just that. I knew I was good and drunk and it wasn't going to be very safe for me to go in too deep. So I plopped down in about two feet of water, released myself, and decided to relax, enjoy the waves, and BAM swallow an ounce of saltwater that immediately triggered vomiting. I then, kinda, sorta, flopped around like a beach whale, half dying in 2 inches of water, and waited for Dom to come save me. Luckily, I was easy to spot and it only took her a bit (though it felt like hours of death by salt water). Don't worry though, I over exaggerated a bit.

By this time it was, well, I don't know, later in the day? So we sat down, regrouped, and decided a giant mud filled slide was necessary. So we got in line and waited, and waited, and waited some more, and got bored and took turns jumping into a giant pool of mud, and continued to wait in this line. I'm pretty sure we waited at least an hour and a half. As luck would have it, while I was literally almost up the slide they said the slide was closed for the day. So that was a big waste of time.

At some point we made the logical decision to get out of our mud covered clothes, shower, and get ready for the night.. We had to stop for a corn dog and a cocktail baggie on the way home. Oh, yes, the cocktail baggie is great. Just imagine a plastic baggie, the size of a Capri Sun, filled with whatever cocktail you want so its portable AND delicious.

Whilst getting ready Dominique promptly passed out for the night and the three remaining headed towards food. We then got fiscally taken advantage of yet again, and Fliss decided she was done for. Holli and I spent the rest of the evening being awesome, meeting fun people, and actually making it to bed at a decent hour!

As I woke up I realized that that hour definitely wasn't decent enough. I was hit with a flow of agonizing pain ranging from my uncomfortable just-slept-on-the-floor-body, my missing chunk of skin from my toe, my many mosquito bites, and of course all the pain that comes with a day of drinking. We all slowly scrambled to gather what we could see/remember in our hotel room and scooted out of there in order to get home and into our own beds as soon as physically possible. Holli couldn't scoot at our slow pace and decided to wait behind.

When we got to the bus station at 10:00am we were more than displeased to hear that the next bus to Gwangju wasn't until 1:30. However, at 11:30 there would be a bus to Jeonju, and we could easily get a bus almost anytime from Jeonju to Gwangju, so we decided to go for that. This bus ride was pleasant, lots of space, and nicely air conditioned. I'll tell you about the other bus ride in a minute..

Once in Jeonju I remembered the awesome chicken place we went to on Lucy's Birthday and tried to find it for a good half hour. Luckily, Zaid was willing to put up with a few phone calls from me lost and confused and we finally got there to eat the most delicious spicy potato chicken meal EVER. I did also learn that eating extremely hot food on a extremely hot day when you're extremely hungover doesn't mix well. But I suppose that's obvious.

Finally we boarded our last bus home. It felt like it might be the last bus of my entire life if he wasn't a bit more careful with his driving. He swerved, swayed, and zoomed across the Korean highway and if he wasn't fully intoxicated I'd be surprised.. Or at least ashamed for his terrrrrrible driving skills.

Now it's Tuesday. I'll be leaving the Land of Morning Calm Thursday and landing in Sweden late Thursday night and I will hopefully be having a blast by Friday A.M. Of course look forward to lots of good pictures and hopefully some good posts too! Love ya!

Ah, If you want to see a few more pictures without me and my drunk friends, check this out..

http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/getting-dirty-south-koreas-boryeong-mud-festival-724062?hpt=C2

Just another week in Gwangju

Monday Monday Monday. Oh how I hate you. I swear, no matter what I do on the weekends Mondays are always the most tiring and long. This weekend was a fun time. We didn't have any specific plans but it turned out to be pretty interesting.

After getting off work on Friday I had a chance to talk to my old pal Mark from back home and as always its so great to hear from the familiar voices (and accents) of Minnesota. I then forced Dom to come to my house and visit me because we were planning on going to dinner late. So we just sat at my house for a while, worked on our awesome rap, and shot the shit. After a few hours of that we decided to go down to my corner store, Dongsan MARTuh, which I frequent at least 4 times a week and have a beer outside. The lady who works there is so friendly and so is her husband. I remember my first time going there and Lucy informed him that I would probably be going there a lot so he gave me a free laundry hamper which has been used steadily ever since. The lady and I have also exhanged a few Korean/English words. One time I hadn't been there for a while and she said "long time no see" in Korean, which I actually understood and promptly returned the phrase. She also said in English that I was beautiful one time when I stopped in there before going out on a weekend night. So I think she was pretty happy to see us hanging out and enjoying some popcorn and beer in the plastic chairs in front of her store.

After our dinner plans fell through I just headed to my favorite diner, where I was also pleasantly greeted by the women who always recognize me. I had a healthy serving of ChamChidosut Bibimbap, which is basically a giant bowl of rice with tuna and other stuff plopped on top. My night ended early and I was in bed by midnight because I had to be well rested for Saturday's adventures.

I woke up wide eyed and refreshed around 9 (on a Saturday, I KNOW!) and chilled in my apartment a bit. I sat in awe of all the space I seem to have now that I rearranged my apartment, it's like a whole new shoebox! Then I hit up the gym to be pleasantly surprised by my current number on the scale. I am now down 10lbs, which I think might be a little off since I hadn't had any breakfast yet and I was a bit dehydrated from the beers from the night before. But I have been working my ass off, so I know that number will be for real soon anyways.

After the gym I headed to the Bus Terminal to meet up with Dom. It's funny because you wouldn't imagine the bus terminal to be a happenin spot, but it is basically like a little mall. It's also smack in the middle of Gwangju so wherever we seem to go from there its no more than a 6 bucks cab ride. We had some Italian food and Holli met up with us and we went to go hang out with Lucy and Chris.

Those two had planned a lovely day of chilling at a lake and hanging out in a classic old style pagoda thing up in a little mountain. It was good to talk with those guys again, I hadn't had a chance to hang out since Lucy's Birthday and it was definitely fun. Well, besides the fact that I got a million mosquito bites out there. It was also a lovely view up there.
Here's a few pictures that Dom took:

Then we went to one of the tastiest restaurants here. Though I do say that all the time. It was duck meat and it came prepared 3 different ways and there was so much food. First was a stir fry with like some kinda onion greens. Then there was bigger thick pieces served with the wrap ups and all sorts of extras. Then there was some soup, oh man, that soup and rice was to die for.

We also had a conversation about eating dog which was pretty interesting. In case you didn't know, the rumors are true, they do eat dog in Korea. Though it's not like at any ol' diner being sold as pork, it's more of a specialty. You go to dog only restaurants and dig in. My friend Ryan was looking for takers because in all actuality, we eat all sorts of meats, why not dog? Dom decided she'd be down with it but I'm still on the fence. I mean, who am I to be meatist? Plus, then I could always say I tried it... Yeah, maybe not. I'm currently thinking "No" but I still have another year and a half here, so who knows?

Of course the night ended where any good night in Korea ends: a Noraebang
(singing room). Here's a few pictures:

After staying out far past my bed time I woke up way past my wake up time on Sunday. Immediately Fliss and I decided that an ultimate amazing buffet was necessary in our immediate future so we hit up VIPS. Basically a fancy Korean buffet with all kinds of American food. It was delicious, but not the best idea after a night of soju and beer. I capped off my weekend by seeing Shrek in 3D. I'm not usually a fan of kids movies, but it was neat to see a movie in 3D, I've never seen one and theres an IMAX right in the bus terminal so I'll have to go see another one soon.

This week I plan to lay low, hit the gym a bunch, and get ready for Mudfest next weekend. Yes, a festival where you cover yourself in Mud, how cliche. I'm sure it will be good fun, and by the next weekend I'll be in Sweden! Yay!

Here's my closing video for this post. Also, I added the Worldcup video to my other post too, so check it out.