Busan!

I spent two weekends ago camping with my Korean family, which I will fill you in on shortly. I will also finish my class bios soon, too, but wanted to fill you in on my parents' visit before either of those.


By now they have come and gone, so I'll spend the next few days catching you up on the happenings of their 10 days here. They arrived on Thursday, April 29 late in the evening and then met me at school on Friday afternoon for a quick lunch at Kimbap Heaven. We ate bibimbap (mixed vegetables, egg, and rice), mondu dduk gu (a soup with rice cakes, beef, and dumpings), donkas (a friend pork tenderloin with gravy) and kimbap (a seaweed roll with rice, egg, crab, cucumber, some kind of root, and a pickled radish inside).



After school, we boarded a bus to Busan.


Busan (or Pusan) is a coastal city on the southeast corner of Korea. It is the second largest city in the country at around 4 million people. I debated between living in Busan and living in Seoul for a long time before eventually deciding to go where I at least new of one person. I knew that once I visited Busan I would have wished I lived there... and I did.


This was the view of Haeundae Beach from our hotel balcony when we woke up Saturday morning.


We showered, ate some breakfast at the hotel and then took a taxi to Haedong Yonggungsa, which is a Buddhist temple that sits right on the cliffs on the water. Here's Mom and Dad in front of a pagoda statue outside of the temple:

Most temples in Korea are situated up in the mountains as sanctuaries. Haedong Yonggungsa is unique in that it is situated on the water. It is known as a "floating temple" because of its location. Isn't it beautiful?

Here we are in front of it:

There was a cave with a shrine inside. We went down into it and drank water from the well. The spring water is naturally clean, supposedly.

As we were walking to the temple, we crossed a bridge. From the bridge, you could toss a coin toward a statue of a turtle with a bowl on its back. Landing the coin in the bowl will bring good luck. My dad, Mr. Basketball, nailed it. All the Korean's around him cheered. It was hilarious.

After the temple, we took a taxi to Jagalchi Fish Market. Dad was playing paparazzi and snapped this as we were walking toward it.

Before going into the market itself, we checked out the boats of the fishermen. Here's the captain with his fleet:

Some shots from the market:

Octopus!

We bought some fried fish and shrimp at the market, plopped down on the side of the road to eat it.

Then, we made our way down into the subway station for Mom and Dad's first subway ride! Here they are!

We got off at a subway station near the UN Cemetary and walked about 10 minutes to find it. We arrived at 5:05 pm, and the cemetary had closed at 5:00. Dad and I relinquished to taking photos outside of the cemetary, while Mom worked a deal with the guard to let us in for 10 minutes. The cemetary houses 2300 bodies of UN soldiers, 23 of which are American (American soldiers are usually sent home).

We beelined for the American section, naturally, as we only had 10 minutes. Dad immediately found a soldier from Indiana.

We deduced from a lot of the dates of death on these tombstones that most of these soldiers' deaths weren't in combat, but rather that they had established lives in Korea and upon death, were buried here. Mr. McCune, from Indiana, perished in 1962 (nearly ten years after the Korean War was paused) at the age of 66, a little old to be in combat.

After our ten minutes were up, we boarded a taxi for the hotel. We quickly changed into our bathing suits and took a swim in the hot springs to relax away the day. Here are my seemingly bi-racial parents soaking in the hot water.

We ate dinner at the hotel and then my mother and I went to the casino for the remainder of the evening. As a team we came out ahead. I had a really big, lucky, last hand and more than doubled my money to make up for my mom's loss :-).

The next morning we woke up and went for a long walk along the water. We walked from Haeundae Beach to Dongbaek Park where there was a lighthouse and an awesome view of Gawngalli Bridge.

Mom and Dad with the Sea of Japan and Gwangalli Bridge in the backround.

After our walk, we took a taxi to the bus terminal and then a bus back to Dongbaek.

We ate dinner with my friends, Liz, Betsy and Ryan at the "5500." My mom was shocked that everyone just ate out of shared dishes, but did her best to get over it. Dad was just excited to see a grill. We ordered pork and beef and grilled it at our table, just like I did in this post.

After a yummy dinner, we bought some ice cream and then hit the sheets like a ton of bricks. We were so tired.