30 Second Stories

A lot has happened since I last made a post and I haven't really had time to muse about it. So, I thought I'd cover a lot of topics in little 30 second stories.

Scarecrow Festival
I went with Danny, Tane, Rie, Mr. Hahn, and his photography club the city of Hadong where we went to a scarecrow festival. An entire mountainside has been deemed historically significant and was sealed like a time capsule. New developments are not allowed to be made, but you can see Korea like it used to be. So picture any old timey educational place that you've visited and add some elements of Korea and that's what it was. What was odd, was that we were treated like celebrities. First, we were videotaped eating chestnuts by a TV station. Then, we had a group photo taken with the mayor of the city. Later, we sat on the floor and drank flower tea with several journalist and posed for photos with different newspapers. Then, we received free food and traditional booze from the Provincial politician.

Lantern Festival
After the paparazzi, we drove to a different city for their lantern festival. Traffic was congested and it took us 45 minutes to go 10km. The lanterns were wonderfully elaborate paper constructions of different figures and art that were lit up internally with lots of different colors. It was a gorgeous sight/site. We also toured an ancient castle that repelled an outnumbering Korean invasion. We gave gentle ribbing to our Japanese accompaniment. After, we drove a long way back to Busan and went out for dinner at midnight with Mr. Hahn. He'd never had vodka before, so we poured him a couple drinks. I left at 1 am because I was too tired, but they said that Karaoke afterwards was very fun.

Praying Mantises
I've seen several different praying mantises here, but they've always been squished. They've been of intimidating size at around 3 to 4 inches and always squashed. It doesn't seem to have been by accident because they're always on footpaths and crunched right in the middle.

Turtles
I was walking through the produce section of Gukje market when I spied an unusual cage. While the cage, a bucket with a net, was not unusual the contents were. Inside, I saw five colorful turtles. Unless you're naive, you know what those turtles were doing in the food section. Upon asking the price of these wares, I was informed that they were only 5,000 won. That seemed like a very cheap pet, but I had no means to care for them. I suggested to the group that we chip in and buy them to have our own turtle races. This idea was discussed favorably, but we did not know what to do with them afterwards.

Books
I recently grabbed some boks from a nice English language section. They have all the classics, basically anything without a copyright, and some of the more popular current items. I picked up a couple of nuggest because I found them really cheap. I grabbed Nabakov's Glory, Don Quixote, World War Z, and a drink mixing guide that I thought was only 5,000. It turns out it was 15,000 and just had the one scratched off the price tag. I also found a Time Magazine in a convenience store. I bought it because I was desperate for reading some print news. I usually just read online. I don't think I'll buy it again though because it was 7,000. That's not worth the price of news.

Apartment
I'm going to be moving into my new apartment tomorrow. I just need to seperate the trash in my place and they'll do everything else. They'll move the furniture, take all the dishes out my cupboards, and they have a mobile refrigerator to keep my contents cold while they move. It sounds fairly easy, but I need to bring all my valuables and money to school because they might swipe them. Hopefully, I'll find myself in my new apartment safe and sound tomorrow.

More later.