I had planned on starting in Busan. It just seemed like the place to go...it's a big city (second only to Seoul) it's on the coast and has a lot of beaches (not that I'm a big beach guy, but hey, at least I'd have options) and it has a pretty big expat community. I'm basing this on what I've heard/read, you see, I didn't actually make it to Busan.
'Work' on Thursday was fine, we were prematurely celebrating Children's day by playing a bunch of games with the kids and selling them cheap wares which they purchased with the 'dollars' they 'earned.' Let me explain. In preschool, when a kid does something good (which is pretty rare) s/he gets a sticker on his/her grape sheet. The grape sheet is a sheet of paper with the image of an oversized bunch of grapes. Each sheet has, I dunno, 30 or so grapes on it. When you fill up your sheet with stickers, you get a dollar. The more dollars you get, the more crap you can buy on Market Day (which was Thursday). In Rabbit/Horse classes (the two I teach everyday with my coteacher) stickers have been pretty hard to come by. Two days before Market Day I think we had three or four kids with 1 dollar...out of 20. Now, the shit they buy on Market day costs 2-3 dollars, and every kid is supposed to have at least two. So on the Wednesday before Market Day we were handing them out when the little brats tried to pretend to be caring about learning. Of course, in a just world, the idiotic Jin Kyungs out there would be dollar-less and crying in a corner on Market Day, but preschool is just as unjust as everywhere else, only moreso. An example of the charade:
Wayne Teacher: What day is today, Jin Kyung?
Jin Kyung: Twu-dae is...
Wayne Teacher: Yes...
Other Students: Wednesday! Wednesday! WEDNESDAY!
The Smart Student Who Likes to Make Fun of the Dumb Ones by Feeding Them Wrong Answers: Monday!
Jin Kyung: Mu dae...
Wayne Teacher: No, today is Wednesday.
Jin Kyung: We dae...
Wayne Teacher: Fine, here's a dollar.
So because we had all of this crap to do on Thursday, in place of teaching, (I'm not really complaining about not having to teach, but escorting the munchkins around from one pointless activity to another and feigning interest in who wins the soccer kicking game can be tedious, too) it was an early day. We were permitted to leave at 5. So when the whistle blew I high tailed it back to my apartment, packed, and made it to the Express Bus Terminal in Seoul a coupla hours later.
The chica at the ticket booth didn't speak much English, but she had one phrase down pat: "Sold out," she said, when I asked for a ticket to Busan. I was disappointed, I guess, but not upset. There were plenty more places to go. So I stepped out of line, dug my Lonely Planet guide outta by bag, and started flipping through looking for the pages I'd dog eared. I wanted to go to a city, but not necessarily a big one. I wanted to be able to meet expats there, but I wasn't looking for Itaewon South. I wanted a place with a little culture, maybe a sight or two to see. I wanted to get laid.
I settled on Gwangju Sure enough, there were tickets left for the penultimate bus that evening. After four or so hours in the back of a bus, I arrived around 2. I was not impressed. Maybe it was the KFC at the bus station, maybe it was the neon 'DISCO' signs, but I kept thinking about what someone had told me about Korea: "everywhere you go, it looks the same."
Well, that person may have been half right....I found out the next day (Friday) that Gwangju was a little different, under the surface. I still don't have a camera (at least not a digital one) so instead of showing you I'm gonna have to rely on my limited descriptive abilities. But Gwangju is in many ways like Seoul/Incheon/Bucheon. There are the same HOFs/PC bangs/Vespas/barber poles/red-light-running buses that you see everywhere else. But for me it had a real small town feel that I liked a lot. The people were very friendly, and they seemed eager to speak to a foreigner, especially one who was visiting their city. I get that where I live, too, but I also get a lot of surly ajoshis (I think that's the word...) and people with their noses stuck up in the air. I didn't find that in Gwangju. I even had one guy come up to me in a bar and ask for English lessons...that hasn't happened in 2 months in Incheon.
What I really liked was how un-crowded it was compared to where I live. Maybe it was b/c of the long weekend and a lot of natives had left town, but I never felt the press of people like you do sometimes in Seoul. And I don't think I heard a single horn honked, which was nice.
The nightlife was kinda dead, again, maybe because of the long weekend. I didn't see many foreigners, and the only ones who tried to strike up a conversation with me were a drunk German couple. That didn't work out so well. But I did see a lot of the city during the day. I saw a couple of the memorials in the city, one dedicated to students who protested Japanese occupation 80 years ago, and a park dedicated to the students who died in the Gwangju Massacre I tried to make it out to the cemetery where they're buried which is supposed to be a sort of holy place in Korea, but I couldn't find a bus and the cabbie wanted to charge me 20K.
I saw the World Cup Stadium up close, which was cool as hell. But the highlight of the trip, I guess, was my visit to the art museum.
Gwangju is apparently known as one of the (if not THE) artistic centers in S Korea...they even had an 'Art St' which is not something I expected to come across in this country. So I was ready to be impressed with the museum...
Well, not so much. There's only so many times you can look at another variation of some 15th Century Chinese guy's take on rural life. I swear to god there were at least a dozen of these in one room and every single one was the same: a broad river in the foreground that snakes away into a mountain in the distance which has a few wispy clouds around it. The only difference was what the peasants were doing. If you covered their farming/fishing/eating/whatever you couldn't've told them apart.
But the modern rooms were a real treat. There was one artist who's apparently obsessed with snarling dogs and there were all these portraits of scary mutts under yellow moons...me gusta. And there was the usual WTF? stuff like bees collecting honey from a guitar and shit like that. But the highlight was this one large piece which was apparently set in a swamp and there were several oversized frogs resting in it and staring with contempt out at the viewer. At the top, written in English, was: "Frog is Life: Frog Live!"
I think I've found another pseudo-philosophy to live by: Frog Live!
No comments:
Post a Comment