Winter break ended the day after I got back from the Philippines. I went to school on Monday and taught classes for three days before they had the graduation and school closing ceremonies on Thursday and Friday. The graduation ceremony consisted of the third grade students sitting in their classrooms with parents and family crowded in the backs of the rooms and outside, watching through the open doors while the ceremony itself was broadcast on the class TVs from elsewhere in the school.
The students are usually really shy, beyond shouting "mahTEEN HI" and giggling, but the third grade students were clearly excited to be graduating, and a lot asked me to take their picture when they saw I had my camera. I didn't really know any of them since I taught only the first and second grade students. Easily the funniest part of the day was when I went up to the fifth floor, where there are only third grade classrooms. The smell of egg and vinegar and flour was instantly noticeable. Throwing this concoction on each other is one of their pranks I guess, and I was pretty impressed how the girls covered in it weren't freaking out that they had egg yolk smearing their hair, or fussing over all the flour on their clothes.
I was told that they didn't hold the ceremony communally in the gym because people complained it was too cold last year or something like that, which seemed like a lame reason to put everyone in classrooms, but I guess that's what you get for complaining. The year closing ceremony consisted of a farewell thing for the teachers that were leaving after that semester, about fifteen of them. In Korea, teachers must transfer schools every four years, no exceptions. Both days were really half days with some random cleaning and so forth in addition to the ceremonies.
That's me and most of the other English teachers, two of whom, including my main co-teacher, left. It was a pretty light week to deal with before I got another two weeks free for spring break, before the new school year started up in March. I considered going on another trip abroad, checking out Japan, China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan if I could find a cheap flight, but I only looked into it half-assed. The five day wait for a Chinese visa didn't really entice me to put much effort into it either. I wound up coming up with a plan to fly to Jeju-do for four days during the second week of spring break, the last week of February. The idea was to rent a bike and ride a loop around the island, a distance listed in my guidebook as 250 kilometers, and estimated by my friend Jeff, who moved there specifically to train for triathalons, and thus bikes around the island frequently, as slightly less.
I got into Jeju-si on Tuesday at 9AM after a one-hour flight from Daegu. I was at the bike shop recommended to me by Jeff by 9:30. The sign said it didn't open until 10AM so I sat down to wait as the owner was getting to the shop. He let me in right away and had a bike prepared for me since one of my co-teachers called to inquire about bikes the day before. It was 20K per day, which was more expensive than the places listed in my guidebook as renting bikes for between 5K and 8K per day, but I figured since Jeff takes his shit real seriously, and of all the bike shops on the island, and this was the one he told me to go to, they would hook me up with a good bike. It was a good bike, too. A Cannondale mountain bike frame with road tires put on, as per my request. Turns out it was the owners personal bike even, and he was renting it to me because the other frames would've been too small for me at 17 inches. I packed up the spare tube and whatnot he gave me and took off.
It was a gray day in the morning, but the sun came out for a bit mid-day only to disappear again in the afternoon. It took me some time to work my way out of the city and to find the 1132 (listed as the 12 on the above map). On my way there I tried to take some coastal roads once I got towards the coast, and wound up getting turned around like three times and performing such poor shifting techniques on some hills that my chain came off a couple times, leading me to believe I had some shitty gear at my feet. I eventually got on the right road and was able to detour off the bike path that runs alongside it onto smaller and less-trafficked coastal roads that, as the name implies, hug the coast for the most part. I stopped to eat some kimbap at a beach which turned out to be covered by a tarp above the high tide line. My only guess is that this prevents any of the beautiful white sand from washing away during the off-season.
The strip of sand that wasn't tarped over contrasted nicely with the jet black volcanic rock that the island is made out of, and the light green water. It looked like it could've been a tropical beach despite the fact that the air was chilly and the wind was blowing strong and steady. Probably the coolest local distinction on Jeju are the rock walls that crisscross the farmland and surround the houses. It's all made from chunks of the same black porous volcanic rock that stick out on the beaches, and almost none of the walls use cement. Some are just kinda thrown together leaving holes here and there that you can see through, and others are placed so tightly that they look solid and pretty much have dead flat tops.
I finished the first day around 4:30 at Sungsan Ilchubong, or Sunrise Peak listed above on the map. The owner of the bike shop said it was only a two-hour ride but that estimate must assume that you are in shape and know where you are going. I was pretty beat and had been planning on hunting down a jimjjilbang to stay in for cheap, but as I was rolling through the little town below the little mountain an ajumma kinda pulled me into her minbak, and I took the private room there instead of having to find a jimjjilbang and sleep in an open room with a bunch of strangers. Plus the minbak was right below the mountain and I figured I could do a sunrise hike the next morning since it was called Sunrise Peak. I couldn't even finish a bottle of beer that night I was so beat. I woke up at 5:30 to make sure I caught the sunrise. I hiked through the darkness up to the top of the peak, which isn't really so much a peak as one part of the rim of a raised crater made by volcanic activity about 5,000 years ago. It was misty and windy and there was no visibility whatsoever. I was the first one up there but a few other people came up for the sunrise which was noticeable only due to the mist and fog getting lighter. No beautiful colors creeping over the horizon like I was hoping for but oh well.
Day two I rode from about 9 to 6, with a nice lunch break to gorge myself on pizza and relax in a PC room in Seogwipo in the middle of the southern coast. My ass was killing at this point. When I tested the bike out I didn't realize how uncomfortable the seat would be after extended riding. I felt like my ass was fully bruised and sunburned, and I was sitting on a two by four. I must've made it 80 kilometers that day, from Sunrise Peak in the east to Sanbangsan in the southwest. I made a few stops along the coast to take in some nice views of the rugged coast line, and only got a little lost once trying to follow a coastal road. I wound up having to ride up this steep-ass hill with a switchback or two towards the end of the day when I was pretty beat, and at one point I had to get off and walk the bike up for about ten minutes, which I thought was pretty lame but better than killing myself. The good part about that was just before I got some pretty killer photos of the sun dipping in the sky over some coastal farm land.
I had nearly made it to Jeff's town of Museolpo, in fact I could see it from the temple on Sanbangsan, but I decided to just get another minbak below the temple and meet up with him the next morning. Thanks to my lack of functional Korean, it took me three tries to get a place. It's much easier when ajummas are standing out on the street waiting to give you a room like the night before. Anyway, I found a place, and the owner gave me some mandarin oranges, which are a big crop on Jeju, and I got some dinner and slept a solid eleven hours. In the morning Jeff and I met up by the temple on Sanbangsan and he brought me north up the west coast of the island. It was good to have someone who knows the island show me around because we went on some tiny roads I would've missed on my own. He's pretty much the only foreigner in his little corner of the island and so he just trains all the time so I know he was grateful for having someone to talk to too. He was on his mountain bike, with much bigger tires than I had, and was having a leisurely tour with me as a break from training, but I still had to push myself to keep up with him. I guess that's what happens when you ride bikes every day. Previous to leaving for Jeju, he recommended I tour the island clockwise with hopes of getting a tailwind for the final leg. That didn't happen though. For the first part of the day we were pushing right into the wind which didn't make things easier. Fortunately, my legs were in decent shape. I had been expecting them to be sore as hell after the first day, but they weren't. Then I thought for sure they would be sore after the second day, but they still weren't, so I was pretty happy about that. My knees were a bit achy though, with the cold wet wind on them all day as I was pedaling, but that's a small price to pay I suppose. We made it within a half hour of Jeju-si where Jeff and I parted ways, Jeff going back home, and me going on to the city to see if I could get an earlier flight back home since I had looped the island with one full day to spare. I rode straight to the airport, which turns out to be pretty sketchy on a bike since I was riding on the access and approach roads, but I made it alive and got a flight for the following morning, Friday, instead of my original flight on Saturday morning. Next I had to get out of the airport, which was just as sketchy as getting in, but I made it all right and went back to the bike shop to return everything and get my unused rental fee for Friday back. I went downtown, ate some Mexican food after spending fifteen minutes in a drizzle looking for the restaurant and asking confused Koreans where it was until some foreign girl saw I was clearly clueless and pointed me in the right direction. I threw some darts in an empty bar after eating, and then went to a jimjjilbang for the night. It was great soaking in the hottubs and getting all clean and fresh, but trying to sleep was miserable as there were kids running around and giggling all night long and one room was too cold and another was too smoky, and there were old dudes snoring all over. Should've brought ear plugs.
I got home at 10:30AM Friday, leaving me the whole weekend to relax which was nice since it would've sucked to go to school exhausted on Monday. My legs finally got sore at this point, making walking up and down stairs a dreadful event. My last significant event of spring break was shaving my beard. It was a big decision, since that is one of the only ways my students recognize me from other white people, and because beards are awesome and I had a pretty good one, but I thought it would be fun to mess with them by getting my hair cut (the previous week) and shaving. Also, no Korean girls would dance with me last time I was out at club, probably cause I looked too much like Jesus. Also, it was just time for some change.
I only kept the mustache for a few minutes to take the picture, but it's pretty badass, so maybe I'll grow one for real.
