A very serious goodbye from Korea!
Looking down into the volcanic crater on Ulleung Island.
Dear blogging faithful, I have begun a new chapter in the fairytale life and will have to begin a new blog if I am to keep you posted on it.
I arrived in Norway yesterday evening after a 40 hour journey from the Far East after a blown propeller forced the plane to turn around and go back to Frankfurt 20 minutes into the second leg of the trip and thus I was forced to stay in the hotel airport and eat two buffets courtesy of SAS Airlines. After that I was forced to chill in the Oslo airport for 7 hours while I waited for my new connecting flight to Trondheim. I was immensely relieved to arrive in my room last night and slept marvelously despite no pillow or bedding. We begin orientation tomorrow so today is just unpacking and exploring a bit.
My new home in Norway.
Let me tell about my housing. I am back in the dorms after a two year respite. Moholt is the name of the large dorm complex which consists of 40 or so 6 story brick dorms. Each floor has 4 singles which are connected to a common kitchen/dining area and also a bathroom. I have one Iranian roommate named Ali and two Norwegian roommates. Ali and I just returned from checking out the campus and surrounding neighborhood. After walking for a few hours we finally found a place to get some food and we had some pizza. Just about everything is closed on Sunday which is frustrating when you have just arrived and have nothing in the pantry.
My first impressions of Norway are that it is a beautiful, clean, scenic, well-managed country and that it is expensive! I had heard that everything is about 2x the price as North America and mainland Europe, but it's almost $5 to ride the city bus! We just got a large pizza for over $20 and it was at a little student pizzeria. I presume that I will have to be cooking a lot unless I can find some cheap meals near campus. Not really sure what Norwegian food is yet, I have seen some coleslaw looking stuff, tubes of fish mayonnaise sauce and lots of bread and jam. This is just in my kitchen. My room is pretty nice and chalk full of Ikea cabinets and shelves. This place must have been designed for a girl because there is enough room here for a Hollywood celeb's wardrobe. There is also a nice big window which can open in 3 or 4 different ways.
Before leaving Korea there were many adventures that happened and I failed to mention until now. First was Mudfest in Boryeong which was about a month ago now. We took a bus 4 hours out to the coast, with several hundred others from Daegu, where there is a medicinal mud that is well known in the hills. They truck it down every year to the beach where people go crazy spreading it on themselves and wrestling and sliding and every other mud activity you can think of. The highlights would have to be waiting several hours for a famous Korean girl pop band that didn't show (we couldn't wait any longer), infiltrating the kitchen with Thomas in an outdoor seafood restaurant and having us both fall in a giant bucket of water there on accident, and finally sleeping in a freezing cold mold-smelling dungeon with 60 others while being wet from hours of rain. Also, getting an email the next week explaining that someone on the bus had picked up swine flu.
Thomas cooking a Korean pancake at Mudfest.
The scene at the beach in Busan. Koreans do not like the sun!
After that, we had a barbecue at a plum farm. Then, the next weekend Reid, Eric the new teacher, Maria swarthmore friend and Danny korean teacher and I went down to the hottest beach in Korea - Haeundae in Busan. We hit the biggest nightclub in Busan and then the beach the next day where it was nice and sunny but most of the Koreans chose to swam in t-shirts and shorts. This leads to my last weekend in Korea when I went to Ulleung island in the East Sea. I took a very rough 3 hour ferry ride to get there, during which people were puking 30 minutes into the trip. I focused on my breathing and eventually fell asleep to bypass the nightmarish hours. There was also nowhere you cold go outside on the boat so there was no escape from the sounds of vomiting. On the way home, fortunately, the trip was much smoother and I had a nice American guy to talk with. While on the island I explored and hiked and got sick from eating raw fish. I stayed at three different places, two were small hotels and the other a room in a restaurant / house in the center of the volcano. I hiked up to the top of the mountain on my second day which had an amazing view. While it was mostly cloudy on the island, the clouds moved by so quick that after waiting for 20 minutes, the clouds had completely cleared and I looked down into the long-dormant volcano which was one of the most amazing views I think I have ever experienced. After returning from that I had a quick one day rafting trip on a river north of Daegu and then a going away party in the local neighborhood with a jaunt to the local nightclub and then a karaoke room.
Stepping out of the nightclub in Busan with Maria.
Whenever we go out we like to take pictures with strange girls.
Now is time for my heartfelt reflection on Korea which I will probably brush off lightly.
It was hard to leave Korea, a place and culture that I had really begun to love. I met many Korean people that I will really miss and hope to see again in the future. It was a pleasure to learn the language and converse with people. The food was usually wonderful though sometimes foul. There are many delicious Korean dishes that I will be licking my lips for in a few months I am sure. It was a year of enormous growth for me and I would recommend it for anyone looking to get out of their status quo. I think there may be no where else on Earth as welcoming as Korea (for white, native English speakers, of course).
Well, thanks so much for following and commenting. I hope you had as much fun as I had.
See you later on down the trail...
The Daegu Devils playing at the Daegu Stadium in May.
