The Week That Was

I'll try and do a quick recap on the past week.

First off, I bought a motorcycle.


This is it. It's a 2003 125cc Hyosung bike. I costed me 900,000 won, plus 100,000 won to replace the cracked cowling (which I cracked myself the next week anyway). I bought it from my friend Matt, who is featured in many of the pictures on this site.

On Sunday, it was ultimate frisbee day. Michele came with me, but she didn't want to play. She just hung out and made some friends. I kind of suck at ultimate, but it's still lots of fun. I mostly just run around and hope that someone will pass me the frisbee... and that I'll catch it when they do.

Following frisbee, we all ventured off to Benchwarmers to hang out and eat some poutine and burgers. There was probably about 20 of us, and the kitchen there was definetely not ready for 20 hungry people. It probably took around an hour and a half (or more) for everyone to get their food. I had a burger and fries, but Samantha ordered poutine (which came a fair bit earlier than my food did). Thankfully, she was full about half way though her bowl of fries, cheese and gravy, so two other guys and myself swooped down like a trio of vultures and devoured our prey (the poutine, not the girl). Apparently, we were hungry. After eating, Samantha and I left to go for a walk on the river. Aside from getting lost a lot, it was a really fun walk. While walking, we noticed that a couple of Koreans were walking off the trail with no shoes on. Perplexed, we took a closer look at things. It turns out that they were walking on a rock path. The path was made up of different sized rocks. Walking on them is supposed to be good for your feel. A diagram on a sign told us that each area of our feet cooresponds to an area on our body. When we walk on the rocks it is not only (apparently) good for our feet, but also good for our body. All it did was make my feel sore from walking on rocks. I guess I'm healthier because of it though...

Speaking of healthy activities, one of the other frisbee players, Kristie, is leading a writing group that meets at another foreigner bar called McKenzie's on Wednesday nights. She's been telling me to go for a couple of weeks now, so I went last Wednesday. It was actually a lot of fun. There was about a dozen of us there, and four or five of us read something. Being read was anything from poetry to Kristie writing about her childhood though the eyes of an imaginary friend (which was very entertaining!). A couple of people (I can't remember who. If it was you, tell me!) had spend a few days text messaging each other little bits of a freeflowing story (you say a line, I add a line...). They read it to us and it ended up being pretty funny and it was very creative. I didn't write anything, but I had a good time listening to everyone read whatever it was that they wrote. I'm sure that I'll go back a few more times in the future. Maybe I'll even write something! It seems that like to write a little bit...

Thursday was a day off, because of a strange holiday that they have hear called "Children's Day". It's basically the opposite of Mother's or Father's Day (Happy Mother's Day mum!). I'm not sure why they have this, since in reality every bloddy day is children's day. Unsurprisingly, my kids all wanted presents. Luckly, I have a bag full of Canada flag pins. There's literally hundreds of them. I didn't really think that the kids would like them, but they did. I gave them two each on Wednesday. On Friday, some of them were proudly wearing them on their shirts or jackets. That made me pretty happy that they seemed to like them.

Back to Thursday...

There was a football(soccer) game going on; Ulsan VS. Incheon. Ulsan won the game by a score of 1-0. There was a pretty good crowd of us whities there. After the game, it was Anne, CJ, Ok Young and myself. We were hungry and ended up making our way to Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut here is pretty much the same as any other Pizza Hut that I've been to, except it's more expensive. A large stuffed crust was somewhere around USD $29. A large pan pizza was around USD $20. Somewhere around here, Ok Young had to leave. The rest of us decided to go to an arcade and play a few video games. Arcade games are quite cheap here. Older games are 100 won (about 10 cents) and new games are either 300 or 500 won. It sure beats paying $1 in Canada just to play one game of the newest popular arcade game! After playing a few games of Daytona USA racing (at 300 won a game), we noticed that they had slot machines and some strange Korean gambling machines there (actually, I'd found that out a week before). We spend a couple of dollars there, and then found some small nori-ba-ng (karaokee) rooms in the arcade. They are super popular here. Each song was 200 won (about 25 cents). We all sang a few songs and had a great time.


Munsu Stadium. I live about a 10 minute walk away from here.


A cool picture of the stadium.

Saturday ended up being a lot of fun as well. A group of us went to see a play, which was put on by an English drama group here. I can't remember what the group was called (the play was called, "The Week that Was"), but they were amazingly funny. It was a little bit like a newroom skit that you would see on Saturday Night Live. They poked a lot of fun at the silly traits of Koreans and ESL teachers in Korea. The newest issue (May 2005) of the Ulsan Pear has a review of them. It can be read here: The Ulsan Pear (the May issue isn't online as of this writing, but it should be up soon).

Following the play, a group of us went to Dave's for a little party. Colin(the guy who let me stay at his place after my keys, as well as a lot of my other belongings, went "missing") was also having a going away party at his place. He's going home in a couple of days, so I make sure to go there as well. I ended up just party hopping for a few hours, until everyone made their way to Tombstone.

The next day, Sunday, Anne, CJ, Ok Young and yours truly went to the Bangeojin area. Ok Young has a car, so she drove. Bangeojin is the industrial section of Ulsan, where the port, the Hyundai plant, etc. is. We didn't go exactly there. We went to the coast (Daewangam). It was a beautiful and rocky area, featuring ajummas (middle-aged women) snorkling for shell fish and then selling their wares, a couple of lighthouses, a pine forest with some nice little hiking trails and an old bunker, which was build into a hill, for the Korean war (with a place for a gun turret on the top of the hill). During this trip, we met up with a guy from the Houston area named... I can't remember. Hopefully someone can remind me later. We was a 47-year old engineer, who is working in Ulsan for about a month. He normally works in the US, but his company had a contract to build something for some big industrial thing for a Korean company. Maybe my cousin Neal can get to see some of the world this way.

The Ulsan industrial complex.



Same, same, but different.

The area where the ajummas were selling their sea creatures was very interesting. It was in a little sheltered area, so the wind wasn't too bad. Some of them were wearing body suits and had snorkles on their heads. Most interestingly, they seemed to live right there. There was a small beach. Behind that was a rocky hill leading up to the trail. Build into the hill were at least four little shelters. It seems to me that these were the houses of these women! They seem to live right on the coast, in little one room shelters, collect oysters and the like, sell them, and just hang out. I'm not sure if they stay there in the winter as well, but I'd be curious to find out more. I'll have to go back when I have a camera.


Daewangam pine forest.


More pine forest.


The coast. You can see one of the lighthouses in this picture. Also, we crossed that little walking bridge that you can see on the left. The island there is really small. You can see about half of it in this photograph. The snorkling ajummas are just to the right of the bridge, behind some rocks.

After out little tour, we met up with our regular group of friends at an Indian (probably the only one in Ulsan) resturant for some curry. It was basically a hole in the wall. I would have never found this place if someone didn't lead me here. It turned out to be really nice inside. Other than the Korean waitress and cook, I thought that I was in India (well, how I imagine a nice resturant to be in India anyway). The curry was really good. We ordered some nam(?), which is unleavened bread, to scoop up the curry and eat with. We went though that pretty quickly, and ended up ordering some rice and spoons to eat our curry with. Overall, it was a really good experience.

Next, Leah, "Samantha" and myself decided to go for a walk. Our plan was to find the rock path from the week. We just got lost and ended up a few kilometers from where were were planning to be. It was still fun of course. Everytime I go walking with a couple of girls I have fun. :D Eventually, we realized that we were way off our trail and just hailed a cab.

Overall, I've had a nice week in Ulsan.