Speed

I feel as if I been I speed recently.  Life has been a truckin' so fast that I can barely keep track of it.  Vacation over Korean Thanksgiving was amazing.  My job seems to be going a bit better, but the day speeds by there too.  I ain't sure where the time goes.  My church has become an amazing place.  This of course takes more time that I don't really have.  It is one of those things that just must be done.  I have to try and take the speed subway train to get there faster, cuz Sundays are among the most fastest days of the week.  Of course, I been trying to go to the gym too along with Korean lessons and lesson planning.  This and the people makes my head spin.  Too much to do and too far to travel to see this person and that person and to do this and to do that.

I feel bad that I ain't wrote.  I could write a book over here.  I decided today that too much time has went by and that I must write more.  I wonder if this is just me dreaming of doing better.  This has been a theme for me here.  I want to be better at everything.  I want my Korean to improve and that ain't workin out too well.  I want to be better about reading the Bible and that has worked pretty well.  However, I am in this competition at church.  They give me the job of score-keeper.  They give me a list of names of people that I ain't hardly never met.  I have to keep track of how well they've done and listen to their verses.  It's getting better.  I guess I got the list, so I need to learn their names.  I missed one day of reading for 30 minutes, so my team lost one point.  I had no idea that the program was so strict.  I am the score keeper!! I felt bad for my team.  Perhaps, I will be a cookin' the American Thanksgiving.  I imagine that!!!

So I went on the most randomest trip that I have ever been on during Chu-sok.  This is Korean Thanksgiving.    It is the day that traditional Koreans pray to their dead relatives and cook them food.  It is weird for me.  I just don't know what to say.  Kids bow to older family members and they get money.  It is just an odd thing.  I ask my main co-worker what she done for the holiday and she told me, "I don't pray to dead people. I believe in God."

I went with my American friend Justin on vacation for 5 days.  We simply jumped on the subway in Incheon and took it 1 hour to Seoul Station in the capital.  We had no idea where we was goin.  We went up to the ticket counter and said, "Two tickets to anywhere in Korea!"  She looked at us and laughed.  We knew it would be difficult.  We were told that we couldn't go because it is 'too busy'.  We had a plan to do whatever it took to get there and back.  She sold us a ticket to a city that neither of us had ever heard of.  Asan!  We didn't realize that she sold us a ticket on a high speed train to a city that is connected to the capital on the regular subway.  So.. we took the train and went.  Of course, we did!

Once in Asan, we ask just about everyone we could in broken Korean where this was and where that was.  We found our way to a cafeteria filled with doctors in training.  This was some kind of university for doctors I suppose.  I walked up to the counter and asked, "How much is it?"  He said $2!! We were thrilled.  We had somehow scored some standing room only tickets on the high speed train to Busan.  That is the 2nd biggest capital at the bottom of the country.  They's palm trees there and a world famous beach.  We took the train in the morning and rolled on in at 200 kilometers per hour.

Once we got there, we met up with Justin's friend from high school and 6 others.  We went to a huge fish market on the sea and picked us some fish.  They told us to go upstairs and sit down and they brought us our fish on a platter.  The fish come out on a platter with eyes and all.  Justin's friend is Cambodian, so he eat ever part of the fish except the eyes.  Brains and all!! We walked around in the rain and by the end of the day we went to stinkin' of wet dog.  We jumped in a taxi so we could go and find a place to stay.  We smelled of nasty wet dog from the heat mixed with sweat and nasty food.  It was terrible.  Once we got to the area, we found a dynamic university area filled to the max with people.  It was crazy!!  We found us a place to stay after asking tons of people in Korean where to go and whatever.  It was a night on speed!

Thanksgiving day came and we rocked it out by walking around the 2nd biggest city in the country with almost nobody around.  It was nice.  At night the people come out of the woodwork again.  We had some Korean chicken with cabbage and rice cake mixed with red hot pepper sauce and Korea's most popular drink called so-ju.  Wow!  It was just the first stop for the night.  We visited two Korean style bars as well.   They are the best!  You get your own personal room with a 'air-con' to keep you cool and a call button to call the funny server.  They gather around to hear us speak Korean and watch us drink their drink in a traditional way.  They laugh so hard when they see us speaking Korean (barely) and doing traditional style drinking.  It is an art form that ain't easily mastered.  You have to have lots and lots of training to do it correctly.  We also got a fruit platter that had some kind of mayo sauce.  It was right nasty.  I explained in Korean that it was nasty and they wadn't no mayo in the picture.  They made funny noises to express surprise and then come back 10 minutes after with some more without that nasty sauce.  It was classic.

Then we left there and went to a party store type place where we sit outside and drank a few more.  It was funny.  Everyone kept stopping and talking to us in Konglish.  We was laughing so hard for so long.  Finally some people just randomly sit with us and somehow we ended up acrosst the way in some pub.   Justin was a dancin' with tons of random people.  He had officially had too much to drink and I was a thinkin'... how am I gonna get him to leave.  Ahhhhh.  Funny!  We left at 3ish and I was so glad to get out of there.

The rest of the vacation was equally as odd.  We met some person from Uzbekistan on the subway and 4 Japanese girls who we went out to eat with .  We went to a Turkish restaurant where we were told about Allah! LOL!  I had fun with that.  We saw a Korean old lady taking a bath in the ocean with all of her clothes on.  We saw a grandmother doing exercises.  She was wearing a mask and a weird visor.  It was mighty funny.  Ahh.  I ain't even able to remember all of the funny things that happened.  Finally, we wanted to come home a few hours early.  We jumped on an early train and was questioned to why we were on that train.  They let us stay.  Foreigners here get the best of everything!!  Being foreign in Korea is truly funny!