Eric speaks fairly good English, and we arranged for him to pick me up along with the others. When he arrived, I was delighted to see so many English speakers in the van! Although I've only been here for 10 days, I've heard virtually no English, except what I'm teaching. It was lovely.
On the trip were Jazmin and Jenn (who work at an English village outside of Daegu on the opposite side from me), Jenny and Jay (both Korean, with excellent English), and Nic and I. We set off from Daegu around 2pm, arriving in Busan about 1 1/2 hours later. I was warned it would rain in Daegu that day, but we actually missed it. We drove past a bit, but never got wet.
View along the drive to Busan.
Rest stop.
We arrived close to the beach, and followed the crowd to the main area. We found a good spot, and set up shop. (If you don't stake out a spot early, you don't get one.) By 5 o'clock the beach was full, and the armed guard wouldn't allow any more onto it. (It was crazy...the place looked like martial law was in effect.) We had to try and explain that we had already been there, and had a spot, each time we ventured to the (terribly crowded) bathroom. I was delighted to find western toilets everywhere. Other than at my house, I hadn't seen any since arriving.
The beach, getting ready for the festivities. (Not sure which beach, as Busan has many, but the bridge here is famous.)
The "Smiley Face Building".
We talked about anything and everything over the course of the 4+ hours we sat on the beach waiting for the festivities to begin. I quickly made a connection with Jenn, who is similar to me, but more the "me if I didn't care at all what people thought"~~the wilder version, shall we say. Jay and Jenny are very sweet, and I had fun with them too.
Jenn.
Jay and Jenny.
We each bought some food, and ended up with a shared smorgasboard of junk food.
People near us, and the smiley building.
They had several blimps also, which were mini remoted-controlled things that they kept making crowd-dive over people. Highly amusing.
Dusk, and watching the buildings light up.
Around 8pm, bands started playing. It was truly amazing. It literally went from a classical string orchestra, to traditional music and drums, to K-Pop groups which cheerleading backup dancers, to opera. It was the most eclectic music concert I've ever seen. There were huge screens set up so that everyone could see from various places on the beach. I was highly amused, and quipped to Jazmin that maybe in America we get the two-second lag between what we see and what we hear in Asian dubbed movies because that's how they really talk. We were watching LIVE people singing and speaking, but what we heard was still 2 seconds behind what we saw. :) It was hilarious. I mean, I understand having the soundtrack slightly off in a movie, but LIVE? We have the technology to works these things out, at this point.
Finally, the fireworks came. I have tons and tons of photos, but honestly, once you've seen fireworks, you don't need a bunch of photos to show you what they look like. There were some original things though, like a couple of remote-control birds that were lighted and set off fireworks of their own. That was super cool to see. (But very hard to photograph!)
The fireworks themselves actually lasted nearly 45 minutes, with accompanying music like at home. But I'm so used to seeing the Columbus 4th of July fireworks, that I kept expecting songs like "God Bless America", "God Bless the USA", and Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" to play, which, of course, didn't happen. Instead we got the music from the disparate groups which had performed live. It was quite odd, but lovely.
When the show was over and we had been thanked by the mayor of Busan City, we prepared to leave, along with the 1.5 million other spectators. We thought we'd wait a few minutes to avoid the trampling, and maybe get to put out toes in the bay, but it wasn't to be. We joined the crowd, and headed for the car.
The cops and National Guard closed many important intersections to pedestrians, so a few fights broke out, some too close to us for comfort. I had never truly felt what a sardine would feel in the can until that moment, squished so close to everyone around me, and still some people trying to pass through the stopped crowd. We finally made it to the van, but realized we wouldn't move in it for a while, and instead decided on dinner. It was my first true experience with a Korean dinner spread. It was spectacular.
Jay surveying the spread.
Jenn nonchalantly thinking "I'll have what she's having".
The group: Me, Nic, Jay, Jenny, Eric, and Jenn. Behind the camera: Jazmin.
I never knew until that meal that something could be terribly spicy and clear. I had clear soup broth that I thought was safe, but I was wrong. So spicy!
After dinner, it took us two hours to get out of Busan. Along the way I spotted a Papa John's pizza. I was thrilled! Jenn said there was one in Daegu also, and Nic and I made a plan to find it soon! By the time we made it onto the tollway home, most of us were asleep. A great, exhausted field trip was had by all.
Eagle Tour, Eric Jeon, Daegu, South Korea.
No comments:
Post a Comment