Mrah! Attack of the gulls, and other Busan fun...

Have you seen the Hitchcock film "The Birds"? Cuz, I haven't. Well, I kind of have. I've made three attempts and have yet to be able to sit through the full film. The first time, I was alone. I shut it off at the first appearance of scary attacking birds. The second time, I was with Bryan. We got a bit further into the film before it freaked him out too much (sorry for outing you on this one, Bry!) so we shut it off. Third time, alone again. I got as far as a death and (maybe a hospital room?) and shut it off.

So Liz and I went on a little boat tour of the Oryuk Islands in Busan on Saturday. Our boat was under siege for most of the journey.

This situation was not in any way helped by the woman sitting in front of us, who was giving the birds shrimp crackers. Every time they swooped in and dove for a cracker, she'd shout "oh yea". It was almost as if she'd never seen seagulls before.

The islands themselves were beautiful... and the cruise was quite fun...
Post-boat cruise, we trucked on over to O'Briens, an ex-pat bar in the downtown area of Busan, where we split a feast of nachos, a burger and fries. Now I know, nachos, not a big deal, but you have to understand that it can be SO hard to find non-Korean food here, even the chinese food and japanese food is "Korean" style. Sometimes, a girl needs her nachos. (LIZ!) That said, I really do like O'Briens, the whole place is so friendly. We ended up shooting some pool (North American-style) with these two guys from Changwon, and in an unrelated conversation I learned a few more variations on how to use the verb 가다 (to go). Wooo! I used it in the cab on the way home (호계동 가추새요) and this seemed to indicate to the cab driver that my fluency level was much higher than it was. Mrahhhh!

Sorry for getting sidetracked. So, 11-11 (Saturday) was Pepero Day (see the posting before this one). And as lovebirds and children gave each other Pepero and other candies, Liz and I did what any good Canucks in a foreign land would do, we started our day in Busan at the UN Memorial Cemetery. The history of the Korean War is amazing - I've been reading up on it since coming here. The idea of the Pusan Perimeter blows my mind. Knowing that so much of this country was destroyed only 50 years ago... as a sidenote, one of the reasons why SPAM is so popular here is because during the war, American soldiers distributed it to Korean citizens... it was a time where there was little food - absolute devistation - SPAM was fantastic! And now, it appears in many (many, many) Korean dishes regularly... I think I can physically see the difference in nutrition, too, this generation of Koreans seems taller than the last, which in turn seems taller than their parents. (of course, my sample group is my neighbourhood...) Sorry, sidetracked again.

Liz has great photos of our time there on her website, as well as some background - so I encourage you to hop on over to her blog and check it out.

Tonight I have a dinner with my fellow "English teachers" at my school here. The last time we went out, it was the "welcome Katrina" lunch and even though they are all ENGLISH teachers(so one would suspect they speak English) my entire "welcome" lunch was in Korean. So I'm not holding my breath on this one, but Wednesday night is the night that us foreign teachers seem to land at the WA Bar and I am looking forward to that :-)

I'm sorry this is so long, but I have one more thing - Friday night, Tom, Chris and I met up with three Korean guys that we'd met before (the restaurant owner and friends...) it was MUCH fun, I left at 2:30am, when they were on their way to norae bang, because I had to get up early the next morning. So fun, and proof that one does not need to be fluent in a lingua franca to have a great time. We all communicated just fine!