SoKo post #1

So it's day....2 (??) here.  We arrived late Sunday night and now it's Tuesday morning.  We've done so much it's hard to remember it all!  Both my friends Kristen and Brittani (Bird) live here teaching English.  It's great, because while they haven't been here long, and don't know the language, they have been forced to learn a few small things to get them around in this unique culture.  I've really enjoyed watching them interact with the Korean world here.  To watch them communicate is so interesting.  They each can say a few Korean words, enough to USUALLY help us out.  I've learned that if a Korean is able to understand you enough to know what you are looking for, they will go out of their way to help you.  You try to look for the young people when you need help with something because they are more likely to know some English.  If asked if you are Russian, turn and walk the other way because you don't want to try and have a conversation with someone who is looking for a prostitute.  It is amazing how safe you feel here-both Kristen and Brittani walk almost everywhere, usually at night, and usually alone.  The climate is quite similar to the States despite being on the other side of the continent.

I love observing other cultures.  It's been very interesting and I still have 5 more days to do it in.  I can't wait.

Alright, I am going to try and use this as well as a travel journal, writing down what we've done while here.  Right now we are on Wednesday morning so I need to try and go back in my mind through Monday and Tuesday (wow - we've only been here TWO days!?)

Well first the flight... Heidi and I stepped on the flight to INC airport after a looooong 4 hour layover in Detroit.  I knew it was going to be 14 hours flying, but I hadn't really prepared my mind for what 14 hours on a plane would actually feel like.  My only plan was to put on a movie, take some Tylonal PM, and sleep 8 hours straight like I had done on my flight home from Israel.  Weeeeellll... the TV's kept needing a reboot because they only worked in certain sections of the plane, and the Tylonal must have expired or something because it sure didn't work that well.  I mean, it wasn't awful, I just wished I could have slept a lot more and been in an isle seat so we could have felt more free to get up and walk around whenever we wanted.  We got up just a couple times and just stood near the exit doors and stretched out legs.  We were fed 2 meals and a small sandwitch/snack.  I watched Dispicable Me, Toy Story 3, part of Grown Ups, and most of Letters to Juliet.  I also listened to a couple podcasts and started reading Into The Woods.  So overall, the flight was okay, I was just trying to make myself forget that I had to do it again in exactly one week.  Oh, and good news - we all received a $100 voucher to purchase another Delta flight for the inconvenience of the TV's.  Worth it.  So we arrived at the airport, went through customs easily (another stamp, yay!), got our luggage and found Teresa!  We exchanged our money, got Heidi a Trac phone and went to buy a bus ticket.  We found it and made our first Won purchase, 40,500 Won which was about $40.  We attempt to read the bus ticket and head to 'terminal' 10C.  There was a bus there so we stashed our luggage underneath and hopped on.  We gave the guy our tickets and relaxed.  Not long after figuring out the leg rests, the driver came yelling at us and pointing for us to get off.  We were so confused but he was pretty persistant so we grabbed our purses and got off.  We got our luggage and he kept yelling, "2 hour, 2 hour".  We finally realized that we either read the ticket time wrong, or our watches were wrong.... but we had gotten on the wrong bus and had to wait almost 2 hours for the next one.  A nice Korean man noticed our confused looks and asked, in engilsh, if he could help us.  We explained our dilema and he said that we had the right terminal, we just had to wait for our bus to show up there.  He told us that our bus would actually say 'Changwon' on it, that was helpful.  Two hours passed and we hopped on our bus and pretty much slept the next 4 hours until we arrived at the final stop of the night, Changwon bus terminal (with only one slightly confusing moment in the meantime, waking up to think we were there after only 2 hours.  Turned out to be just a rest stop).  We called Kristen and her and Bird showed up not long after!  Bird even had a sign for us, it was so sweet.  We all came back to Kristen's and talked for a while and finally just went to bed.  She had a full size bed for 2 people and the floor for everyone else.  It was small and I had no idea how we were going to make this work with all of our stuff, but we have so far!  It's so nice to be able to stay with a friend!

The next morning, Monday, we woke up and made some scrambled eggs for breakfast, turned on the hot water, took showers, and waited for Kristen to get home from work at 10:15.  Once she got home, we all walked to the bus stop and took that to Masan to go for our first hike.  She told us we were looking for these pillars built from stones, called Bagoda's.  She had been once before and was really excited about them so we hiked.  It was steep!  And I was amazed at all the older people on the mountain hiking as well.  We ended up making it to the top, trying to ask everyone along the way where the bagoda's were, and followed the direction of one woman who pointed us in a certain direciton.  We ended up finding the most beautiful view.  We could see the mountains, beautiful mountains, and the city, and the water.  It was so amazing.  We hoped we would see the Bagoda's on our way back down, but we didn't.  We walked around the city for a while and Kristen found a younger girl to ask and she pointed us straight to them.  I'm glad we ended up finding it.  There were thousands!  They had built something of a park around them because it sure was something to behold.  The plack said that a man had a dream for the reunification of South and North Korea so he would come up here everyday and build a new one to represent each of his prayers.  I guess he's had some help over the past few years, but it was pretty incredible.  After our hike, we took a taxi back to Masan and tried to find a restaurant that had pictures of their food.  We ended up making a great choice and had ________ for lunch, our first, traditional Korean meal!  It was so spicy, but it was fun, our waiter cooked the food right at our table!  We also had our first Kimchi experience.  Kimchi is super important to Korean culture.  It is basically fermented cabbage cooked with a varitety of spices and served many ways.  Lunch was great, but we had to hurry back so Kristen could make it on time to her next class.  We got her back home and met up with Bird.  We wanted to see the sights and sounds of Changwon so she took us around.  We walked A LOT.  We toured a couple gardens and did a little shopping.  Probably one of the coolest experiences was in a pottery/tea shop we decided to go into.  We walked around a little and a lady asked if we wanted to sit down.  We could tell she spoke very little english, if any, so we decided that we'd just give it and try and see what was going on.  She started trying to speak to us, we understood a few words.  It is awesome here how they try so hard to speak our language and to communicate with us.  She was so sweet.  She started boiling some water and making tea for us!  It was such a neat experience.  She taught us how to hold our cups and we just talked as we drank.  She made more when we finished and then made a different kind.  I am not that familiar with tea, but i think they were both white teas, they were very good.  We finally had to tell her we were getting full because we thought this may last all afternoon.  Brittani asked if we owed her anything and she refused payment.  We said "kamsamnida", which means thank you, and walked out, excited about the experience we had just had.  We walked in a few other shops and decided to grab a quick snack before we headed to the house of one of Bird's students for dinner.  We ate sushi rolls and __________ (which was actually very good).  We walked around a little longer and finally headed to Fred's house around 8:30.  I was immidiately excited because he had this long, low table set up for us to sit on the floor as we ate.  His wife prepared the meal for us, 4 courses.  We started off with a yummy appitizer of toast triangles with a sort of mushroom sauce on top.  Next came the raw fish.  We knew it was coming and braced ourselves.  We were served raw salmon and flounder.  The salmon was okay, I liked the texture... the flounder was very tough and I couldn't chew through it all so i had to just swallow it.  After we finished, we were given a piece of flounder fin - still tough.  After that we had something else and then finished up with spicy rice which we were hardly able to eat because we were so full.  For dessert we had fruit which was nice.  Wine isn't very good with spicy food, it didn't help, but I didn't want to ask for water.  We talked with Fred for a little while and then he called a taxi and we left.  ALL that was only Monday.