Boryeong Beach

My apologies for not updating sooner. Things have been a bit hectic here. The new job is not quite as easy as I thought. Now, my prep time is filled with grading essays and making phone calls. Once a semester, teachers call the kids to check in and make sure everything is going fine. That keeps me busy for about an hour and will last a total of two weeks. Also, every week, I have about 80 essays to correct. When I say correct, I really mean red on every sentence. These are elementary kids who are not native speakers. So, every sentence is missing a particle or the tense is wrong. There are even some statements that make absolutely no sense and I will sit there for a few minutes trying to figure out exactly what the student is attempting to say.

Enough about work. Last weekend, a colleague at work, Johnathan, invited Katrina and I to go camping. We talked a bit during work and I found out him and his girlfriend are really in to hiking and camping. In fact, they were both vegetarians before coming to Korea. He played ice hockey and is from Alaska. His girlfriend's name is Lisa. They are the two in the picture eating dinner which I will explain later.

I had my small bivy tent which Katrina and I were going to use. However, when we woke up Saturday morning before leaving and I realized I did not have the tent poles. So, we were off to Homeplus in search of a tent. Katrina had heard there were kids tents for around 15,000 won so that was our goal. When we arrived at Homeplus around 7:30 in the morning, we found out that the upstairs did not open until 9 am. Mind you, our train left at 11 am. We got some muffins and milk and waited.

To make a long story short, we found an English speaker and found the tent. We caught a taxi to the train station and arrived around 10:35 am, plenty of time in order to meet Johnathan and Lisa. We ended up purchasing standing room tickets but sat in the food cart on the train, not a bad deal if I do say so myself. I'll get pictures the next time we are on a train. We got to the beach, set up our tent, unpacked, and headed to the water. There was nothing special about the beach. The tides probably moved in and out over a hundred feet. There was a paved walkway from one end to the other. The whole town had a 'beach town' feel to it which was nice.

(Beach Shot)

The beach was small in my opinion seeing as how I could see from one end of the beach to the other. The waves were tiny, no higher than my knees, nothing like on the East Coast. However, I got in the water just so I could say I did. We ended up meeting some guys from New Zealand and played touch rugby. My first time playing was quite fun and it is something I will play in the future given the chance. The best way to describe it is football with no forward pass.

(First rugby match with the boys. Our team won!)

After hanging on the beach for a while, everyone went up to the campsite, showered in the sink, and changed for dinner. We went to a seafood BBQ place where you cook your own food. The seafood was quite delicious and Katrina even enjoyed it until a few hours later when it came back up. I do not know if it was because of the fact that she hasn't eaten that much seafood in so long or her consumption of soju. To cook the food, everything was brought in its shell or aluminum foil and we were given a glove to grab it off of the pit. There were clams, oysters, conchs, razor clams, and all sorts of goodies. It was very enjoyable. After dinner we set off Roman candles and hit the sack.

(Items in their shell or foil on the grill. If you look closely you can see the two large coals in the center under the grate.)

(Pile of shell fish that was brought to our table. The clams were delicious.)

(Katrina in her glory as she sets off a firework!)

The next day we hung at the beach for most of the day and relaxed. After our time on the beach we all went to a bath house. It cost about $3, you walk in, take off your clothes, shower, hop in the hot bath, then into the sea salt bath or mud bath (which Boryeong is famous for), next it is on to the sauna, then cold bath, then you paint yourself in mud. Finally, you take a shower to clean off again. It took an hour and a half and felt wonderful after being at the beach for two days. Nothing else major happened until we saw two old ladies get into it at the train station. I wondered why two old ladies would be fighting? Then I realized, it could be over anything. You need to know that old ladies rule the country in Korea. Men and women stand up so they can have a seat on a bus, train, or the subway. When they are walking, you move out of their way. They can pretty much do whatever they want. We got back to the station and shared a cab home with a girl we met on the trip.

(Second day on the beach it got a bit cold)

(A rock outcropping we walked to at the beach)