동해 | Donghae (Part 2)

I'm deskwarming again, so hopefully I'll finally have some time to catch up on my huge backlog of posts!

As a brief warmup, I'll wrap up the posts about my brief holiday with my co-teacher in Donghae.

Nick went home after breakfast by coach, as he'd managed to nab tickets to a SHINee concert (or so he thought, more on that later, maybe, haha)

After an incredible, yet simple, lunch of 죽 (juk, Korean rice porridge similar to arroz caldo/lugaw which I've probably mentioned quite a few times before because I adore it) with roasted chicken and salt, my co-teacher, her sister and I went to a nearby beach that was much less densely populated than any I've been to in Korea so far.

The water was so clear and the weather was fantastic, no clouds in sight. Other than a couple of families and what looked like a simple pre-wedding photoshoot, it was incredibly quiet out there. I suppose it was because we were visiting out of season. I can't imagine a beach this nice would be this quiet all the time, but one can hope.

The sand was quite rough and sharp, mostly made from seashell fragments. This is where I made a big mistake. We arrived at pretty much the sun's peak in the sky, so I didn't realise the sand would be baking hot like fire. However, the pain was delayed and I was already halfway across, barefoot, to paddle in the water. 

A painful choice between burning my feet more to run back to my sandals, or just speed up and run across the sharp, burning grains until I could rest in the water ultimately led me to standing in the waves shifting uncomfortably while I waited for my feet to recover.

동해 | Donghae

Bright and early, first thing, we all got up and had a great little breakfast together. Fresh fruit and lightly toasted bread with cream cheese and a bit of bacon. It was really simple but delicious and relaxing, especially with all that sun coming through the window.

We went to a nearby airfield where an Aerobatics Drill was going to be performed. We took an exciting shortcut through some farmland, bypassing huge queues of traffic, parked up and joined the steady flow of foot traffic heading towards the runway.

The show had just started by the time we got there, and the crowd was pretty big. Thankfully, the show is in the sky, so no worries about not being able to see anything ;p

I always find air shows really impressive. It's impossible enough that we as humans are able to fly around, let alone at those kinds of speeds, in such a tight formation.

The sounds these planes make when they whizz past is more than a little terrifying (you don't so much hear them as you do FEEL them. In your chest.) and makes me wonder how scary it must be to live in one of these countries where fighter jets are soaring around on a regular basis, and they're not just there to make pretty patterns.

But I digress.

부산 | Busan (Part 1)

Above: A beautiful sight from the Mysteron Display Team.

Towards the end of October, Nick and I went on a trip to another part of South Korea, something we haven't done so far other than visiting Gangwha and Seoul.

We went to Busan with Erin and Morgan, by way of a WINK (When IN Korea) tour, which involved catching a bus at about 9pm on a Friday straight after school and driving overnight. The map at the top is what I sent to Sammy when we were paused in Daejeon, already a few hours into our journey.

Aside from my usual travel problems (most legs suffer on a long coach ride, let alone my lanky limbs) the ride went smoothly enough. We did have a worrying moment where we were pulled over by a police car, which it turns out was for something like going a bit too fast in the bus lane. There was also the time when we pulled away from a service station and had a phone call from someone wondering where the coach was. At 2am. In the middle of nowhere. Terrifying for them, but really weird considering we saw two different people do a headcount and they'd had a seating partner! Look out for your bros, even if they are a stranger! Who knows what would have happened if she hadn't had a phone.

Anyway, we arrived unscathed at about 5am, and while some people went into a hostel to sleep for a few hours we roughed it on the beach, enjoying the fact that we could actually see STARS for the first time in about 5 months. The main bridge was all lit up and there were some interesting things going on in preparation for the big fireworks display later that evening (which is what we'd travelled down to see), so we watched that for a while and got excited for the main event.