Friday afternoon, I get out of work at 4:30 like usual. After running home to take the quickest of quick showers, I headed out with my co-teacher for dinner and an evening with her friends. Her closest Korean friend married an American from Arizona about 3 years ago. They have been living in Dubai ever since. Two weeks ago, they moved back to Busan which has made my co-teacher extremely happy. She was excited for me to meet them and for all of us to hang out. We first met up at a Beer Festival held outside in a hip part of town. Live music and beautiful weather made it quite enjoyable and a lively experience.
Since I had heard that this fellow from Arizona loved noraebang (singing room) weeks prior to our meeting, I asked my co-teacher if we could go out that night to the singing room (it is also a favorite pastime of mine as well.) Dreams do come true! We hit up a noraebang for a few hours, covering a wide-range of both Korean and English songs alike.
Saturday morning I headed out to the neighboring province of Ulsan with a few friends from Busan (my city). We were gathering there to practice for a whale boat race that is going to be held there next weekend. I will post more about it after the race happens. There are 16 people in a giant canoe-like boat. I'm sure you can imagine the challenges that will come along with this kind of competition. We did have some excitement during practice when a small fish decided to join us. Let's hope all goes well next weekend!
Taewha River
some of the crew
Ulsan is absolutely beautiful. The city size is smaller than Busan, with large spaces devoted to parks and greenery. We walked through a bamboo forest that randomly had giant hoola-hoops to enjoy. I desperately needed to get away from the pollution, cars, and skyscrapers of my area to enjoy trees and grass! It's so hard to find green spaces in Busan. Although Koreans are highly effective in using space, it makes it hard to be happy. It's so bad that my students call grass, "fields." :(
This is a field!
Sunday was a day at the beach! The weather is getting quite hot (upper 80s) so I enjoyed swimming in the ocean. Thankfully, sharks are not a danger in this part of Korea. Watermelon on the beach and being lazy reminded me of a good day at the cottage. Oh, I have so many good summer memories at Lake Michigan, it was good to be reminded of them. Michigan in the summer is the best so I'm happy to get a little slice of that here.
So there it is: water activities, watermelon, noraebang, outdoor music, good weather, and great company.
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