After work on friday Michelle and I went to Ulsan World Music Festival. It was pretty good. We had the pleasure of hearing Lil John sung by a couple thousand Korean's. It was just magical....
We were on our way home when we ran into another teacher that I had worked with when I was doing some hours at another school in my first week. We ended up checking out a few bars with his friend. Our first time out in Ulsan. The only thing was that we were checking out the western bars, which made me feel strange. Here I was surrounded by westerners and all I felt was hugely uncomfortable. I think it's the fact that for everyone who comes across here, it's their little thing. It's such a big leap. To see fifty other people doing the exact same thing kind of ruins the whole mystery of living in the unknown. That said, a few whiskeys later, I cared not. I blame those Korean barmen and their long pours.
The next day we slept off any hangover and got a bus down to Busan to see some friends we met at orientation. Our aim was to check out this huge film festival that was going on, but as usual in Korea, it wasn't nearly as easy as you'd expect. First, we went to Jagalchi where we'd heard that you could buy tickets. The woman behind the desk ensured us that their weren't, and to check somewhere else. So no tickets, but there were around 1000 riot police hanging around and chilling out. I've never seen so many in my life...
I later got told that it was because of some march going on about jobs being taken away from Korea by a huge company. After that we checked out the fish market. What's really cool is that you can pick out anything and they will take it to the restaurant upstairs and cook it for you. So you can eat fish that was literally swimming around 5 minutes before. Pretty dang fresh if ask me.
Anyway, next we went to Centum City's cinema complex. Amazing building. Unbelievable at night. It sucks that my camera died before we got there. This is that picture I would have taken...
Apparently it opened last week. It's probably one of the best building's I've ever seen. Good job Korea!
Anyway, we got to the cinema centre at 10:30pm to find that the ticket office closed at 8pm. Ha. Amazing. People were even camped out by the ticket office waiting for them for the next day. It wasn't looking good. BUT, someone then remembered that there was an online ticket website which we could use to try book tickets for the next day. The only problem was that none of us could access it on our phones. All that money on a smart phones and Korea decides to only except Internet Explorer for it's film festival. Madness.
Aaanyway, we decided to wait it out until the morning, then get online and book for whatever we could that day. No problem...
By this point it was 11:30pm, and we had to hop back on the subway home as the last tube was around midnight. So we got on at 11:56pm, only for the subway to go through exactly 4 minutes of stops before it screeched to a halt and everyone got off. Exactly midnight. Unbelievable. Right in the middle of the line, a good 10 miles from where we needed to be. I guess when they say the subway stops at midnight they REALLY mean it.
We decided to all crash at one of our friends places in north Busan. The taxi ride was shared and pretty damn cheap this way. We got there and picked up a couple cans of Golden OB, easily the best Korean beer I've had here. The five of us bowed out at about 2am, all sprawled across the apartment...
In the morning Michelle and I went with Eric to book tickets. We went to a PC bang and went through all the steps. Brilliantly you could only book 2 tickets online at one time. Fantastic. A warning in Korean was translated on Google to tell us that you couldn't even buy on the day online. What a mess.
We decided to just go with it and find some when we got there. Literally, we would see anything. In the end it was 'Terrafirma', an Italian film about illegal immigrants on an island. So we went up and sat inside waiting to go watch it. When the time came we got up and went to give our tickets in, but Eric's had gone. Literally vanished. He'd shown it to a member of staff minutes earlier and now it was toast. We never did find out what happened to that little swine.
Thanks to an amazing member of staff there, we got in. He literally walked us all the way in, saw that there were actually three spare seats and just said it was no problem. Well, I guess thats what his Korean mumble meant anyway.
Pretty soon after the film we had to make tracks back to Ulsan. For dinner we got our first Mr Pizza, which was unbelievably delicious.
This week has been same old same old at work. I'm getting into the old Powerpoint games and the kids and my co-teacher seem to like them. Somehow I knew that my slick ppt skills wouldn't be forgotten after uni.
This afternoon at 3pm I went to play volleyball with the teachers in the gym also. It was awesome, if not a little daunting. My first time to do so much as handle a volleyball. I only made a fool of myself a few times as well! Playing against your principal, with your vice-principal behind you is a little scary though. The whole time I was just trying to not look stupid and to not hit my principal, directly across the net from me. Because i'm tall, they just stick me at the net to 'spike'. I just jump and slam the ball over when it comes to me. Simple really. High fives all round. Afterwards we ate grapes and drank Makgeolli, which is a sweet Korean rice wine. Not bad at all. They eat grapes weird here though. They suck the insides out and spit out the skin into a paper cup or something. It just odd. That's Korea I guess.
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