Chuseok Plans

Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving. It's in early October, generally. I guess the date changes as it is based on the lunar calendar. Either way, for foreigners in Korea, this means a long weekend to do whatever we want while Koreans are off with their families doing traditional family ceremony stuff. Last year I went to Seoraksan, generally considered to be Korea's most beautiful national park. It was a great weekend of a bit of hiking and climbing, with great weather, and not too many people.

This year I have a five day weekend and I intend to ride my motorcycle to Jirisan, generally regarded as Korea's second most beautiful national park, hike the 45 kilometer ridge line with some friends, and then ride my bike back to Daegu. The descriptions of the hike can be found here (hike number four). We intend to go west to east, from Hwaeomsa to Daewonsa in three days. Dan booked shelters for the four of us. I know I said that usually Koreans are busy doing family stuff on Chuseok, but it seems we won't be the only ones doing this hike, as all the shelters filled up within minutes of the reservations being open. This is pretty standard according to Dan, who's been there before.



Our plan is to start hiking early Friday morning. My plan is to leave Daegu on Thursday morning, ride my bike to the east entrance where we finish our trip, and then somehow get to the west entrance that evening and meet up with the other hikers, allowing me to hopefully just ride away when the hike is finished on Sunday. How I will get from one side of the park to the other, I'm not so sure. If I were to use public transportation, I would have to go way out of my way, so I may end up resorting to hitchhiking. We'll see. And that is also assuming my bike makes it there too. I went on a 70 kilometer ride today, and that is the longest I've been on it at one stretch before, and the trip to Jirisan will probably be at least three times that length. Plus traffic. Chuseok weekend is renowned for traffic. I hope that won't be a huge issue for me as I plan on taking the smaller roads to the mountain - motorcycles are banned on highways.

I bought hiking boots today, which I am currently breaking in. Merrell Switchbacks, size 9.5, half off of 220K. I thought the size would be too small, but my feet seem to fit into them alright, and I'm attributing the tingling in my feet to the fact that they're new boots and I have them tightly laced. This better just be part of the normal break-in process...

Buffets

Last Friday night was another EPIK welcoming dinner for the new batch of teachers that arrived. I guess this is my third one as they bring in new teachers every six months. Just like the previous dinners, I met maybe one or two new teachers whom I spoke with briefly before spending the rest of my time hanging out with my friends or catching up with people I hadn't seen before. It was an all you can eat and drink buffet in the brewery at Daegu Hotel and just like every other buffet I've been to in Korea, the food was crap.

That was my second time at Daegu Hotel. I've been to the buffet at Ariana Brewery twice and that one is actually passable. I've been to the buffet at the New Yeongnam Hotel, and that one is bad, and there was the Christmas dinner at the Eldis Regent Hotel. I was at an Italian buffet in a Homeplus in Seoul a couple weeks back, and that was also passable I suppose.

All the buffets are exactly the same. They have some excuse for lettuce and then not enough vegetables to make a proper salad, usually just big ass wedges of tomato which you have to cut up into three or four normal sized bites, and some weird kiwi-flavored dressing that's generally the only available dressing at any given buffet. There's pasta with watery sauce, there's dry slices of pork next to the mystery meat tubes that exist in some category between hotdogs and sausage, and dwengjjang paste that is mistakenly labeled "bbq sauce". There is always a selection of standard Korean food like kimbap and sundae, and there are plates of fruit which is easily the most delicious and reliable selection. There's also always some form of sushi and some seafood dishes, and even though I don't eat seafood, I'm willing to bet its not worth much attention based on the quality of the dishes that I do eat. For dessert there is also a plate of little Korean roll-cake type desserts which aren't too bad, but certainly not something that stands out. If you're lucky there is also a pot of assorted fried potatoes and a bowl of ketchup to go with it. Ariana and the Italian place at the Seoul Homeplus have thin-crust pizza which, again, is no standout, but it does help.

So the buffets in Korea are pretty consistently mediocre. Fortunately, my standards for Western food have gone down significantly as it is no longer feeding me for three meals a day.

Summer Vacation

Summer vacation started with a night in a hotel in Busan, south of the train station where I saw some hookers get hustled into a waiting car. The street seemed much more innocent the next morning when I caught a pre-dawn taxi to the airport. Twenty-something hours later Ben was waiting for me in the baggage claim at Logan and Paul and Maury showed up about five minutes later. We met Adam and Chad at a house party outside of Boston, and I couldn't imagine a better way to start off a visit home than hanging out, as a single group for the first time in god knows how long, with my five best high school homies, most of whom just happened to be in town visiting on plans unrelated to my vacation.



The next day, I got home to see my parents and my brother, also visiting from out of town, and I got to spend the week with my family, the four of us not having been all together in Exeter also for god knows how long.



The first week I spent mostly with my family and Andy's girlfriend Allie, playing mini golf, running with Andy who finally started to exercise for once in his life, getting up into northern NH for Big Dave's wedding, going for a boat ride down the Squamscott into Great Bay, and eating American food unobtainable in Korea including, but not limited to: homemade baked mac and cheese, lasagna, homemade and deli-made sandwiches, decent pizza, strawberry-rhubarb pie, Cuban sandwiches, and barbeque.



The second week included an epic party at Alissa's farm house in scenic Kensington which featured a cornhole (game) driven all nighter and was capped off with probably the most beautiful morning I have ever seen as the darkness cleared and the mist began to rise from the marshland behind the house, two trips to the beach with two beautiful women, tennis, and visits with Ed, Scott, Lee and Stacy and their newborn Ava, swimming in the Lamprey, minor league baseball in Manchester, and was capped off by a visit from my Utah homies and newlyweds Mark and Annie who drove down from their new home in Burlington.



Summer vacation ended with me packing my entire apartment onto the back of a truck with a bed not much larger than a Ranger's, unloading the bed, fridge, washing machine, table, chairs, etc. at my old school, and dragging the remaining items belonging to me into my new apartment downtown, and then spending hours cleaning the ever living shit out of my new place before I could unpack. That took two days. Summer vacation ended on a Tuesday morning, September the 1st, when I went back to work at my new school Samdeok Elementary School.