Don't touch, it's dirty baby! *

This Friday, as we were riding in a car to Busan, Courtney and I came to the realization that we have slowly stopped “planning” our awesome weekend trips, and just let them flow freely. This weekend we had planned to go to Busan on Friday night to see the fireworks festival. We weren’t sure who was going with us, where we were going to stay the night or even if we were going to stay the night at all. It was really all up in the air. The reason for this is because every weekend we have planned less and less and every weekend has been amazing so far. Let us tell you all about it!

Let’s start on Thursday. Courtney and I went climbing that day after school, like every other day now, and at around 9:30 we met up with Dan and Brandon and some other people at a bar called Whistlers. We took along Jea Hyun and Dong Hoon, and when we got there we joined in on the fun. We played our fun new instrument game along with a numbers game in Korean. But then we got to see something we’d never seen before. We saw our first Korean bar fight! It was pretty crazy. At first it was a big Korean Irish guy choking a little Korean dude, but when someone tried to break them up, the little guy started defending the guy who had choked him! There was a ton of yelling in a Korean/Irish accent and at one point, some US military guys got involved in the brawl. The whole thing ended with a glass being smashed and all the fighting guys “taking it outside”. The bizarre part was that the whole time the fight was inside; none of the employees lifted a finger to stop it. There was no one who seemed worried about their bar getting torn up. It was just a free for all at one point and nobody really did much except for the military guys. In the end the police were called and I’m not sure what happened to any of the guys, but it definitely was an interesting way to end a Thursday night.

As for the lack of planning for our weekend, here is how we planned. “Ok so Friday after school we are going to catch a bus to Busan. We might camp there over night, we might not. Then we wait for Johnny to text us about where we are climbing on Saturday. He hasn’t texted back in a while so it might not happen but we will see. Then Saturday night we might go camp in the mountains and then we might go climbing again on Sunday.” That was our plan. A whole much of maybe’s and I’m not sure’s.

Right from the start, our trip didn’t go according to plan, but absolutely not in a bad way! The four of us (me, Courtney, Dong Hoon and Jea Hyun) met up at the bus terminal when Dong Hoon mentioned that he could drive us. This was awesome! Now we had a car, and two Korean’s who know their way around Korea better than us! So we headed off to Busan to see the fireworks festival. The fireworks started at 8 and we got there around 8:30, but we still saw about 45 minutes worth of amazing fireworks! The show was held over a beach and a bridge so the scenery was beautiful and the fireworks were going off in sync with music playing so it was really impressive. Once the fireworks were over, we drove around for a little while to find a place to stay the night. We got a text from Johnny saying that they were going to Busan the next morning and to meet them around 9:30 am. So our plan was to stay the night and meet them somewhere the next day to climb. Oh, by them I mean, Johnny, Tony, and his girlfriend. The two guys are both foreigners like us and Tony’s girlfriend is Korean. Anyway, so we drove around for a while looking for a place to stay the night, until we stopped at a place called 시티 Motel. Courtney and I laughed really hard when we saw this, and we want everyone else to laugh too, so here is a little Korean lesson for you all. The ㅅ has an S sound. The ㅣ has an I sound like the ending sound in the word be. So if you put the two together 시 you assume they make a sound like sea. Then the ㅌ sounds just like a T and again the ㅣ sounds like and I. So lets recap, the 시 should sound like sea, and the 티 sounds like tea. So yeah that’s cool, we were going to stay in the “City Motel”. But wait! There is a rule in Korean where if the ㅅ and the ㅣ are together (like 시) then they actually make a sound like she. So we weren’t looking at the City Motel, we were looking at the She-tea Motel! As I said earlier, Courtney and I had quite a laugh at this motel’s expense. In the end we didn’t even stay there because the “She-tea Motel” was too expensive for us!

The reflection was really cool!

So we ended up finding another motel, getting some dinner and passing out pretty soon after. The next day we all woke up and showered by 9 am. We sat around the hotel for little bit before we got a text from Johnny saying they were just leaving and they would be in Busan around 11:30. We had 2 and a half hours to kill and we still needed breakfast. We knew where we were meeting them so we decided to go there first and then find somewhere to eat. It turned out that there wasn’t really anywhere to eat around the park we were at, so we took a long walk along the mountainside until we hit the mainland. The walk was really beautiful. Where we had parked the car was sort of on the other side of a mountain, ride along the water. There were tons of fishermen there. There was a red staircase/walkway, that offered a way to the mainland, but it was constructed around the mountain. The whole time we were walking we were alongside the mountain, overlooking the water. It was really windy outside, but it only made the mountainside walking more exciting! When we finally got to the mainland, no one will guess what we had for breakfast. Done trying? We had Ramen. Haha Courtney and I split a huge Ramen noodle bowl and a package of delicious Digest Cookies.

After breakfast we rushed back to the parking lot to meet up wit Johnny and the others. When we found each other, we followed Tony and his girlfriend up the mountain on a trail. The walk up was not so bad because there were semi paved stairs and we were going at a comfortable pace. At one point Tony stopped on a bridge, turned around and climbed over the fence that kept people from tumbling down the side of the mountain to their death! He said this was the way to get to where we were climbing. So one by one we climbed over the safety fence and slowly made our way down the extremely steep mountain. This was now the second time I promised myself that I would by better shoes for hiking if I survived this. When we got to where we were going to be climbing there were already two other girls climbing there, which was cool. They stayed for a little bit longer and then headed off when they had finished he routes. This place that we were climbing at was absolutely amazing! Right in front of us was a huge wall that we were about the climb, and to the left of us were waves breaking about 10 feet away. Tony and his girlfriend were the heads of the operation. They lead both of the routes and then we all took turns and climbed. I learned how to belay with a figure 8 belay device which was great. Last week Courtney got her harness and shoes, so now we are just waiting for mine to come in and we can go climbing whenever we want!

 Courtney was heading up to give Johnny a pep talk!

 Dong Hoon with a pear in his mouth.

 There was a rope someone left behind that we used to climb down with.

When we all finished climbing at that spot, we headed to another spot which was even further away from the “beaten path”. We walked a pretty dangerous trail to get to this second place, consisting of a really steep rock face and a drop down we had to climb down using a rope. But the scary route was totally worth it when we saw where we were. Our second and last climbing destination of the day was absolutely breathtaking. When we got there it was really windy. In front of us was this giant rock sticking out from he water that when we climbed to the top of it, I felt like I was showing off baby Simba to the whole world! These new routes that were about to climb were much shorter, but required a lot more strength and power. We watching in amazement as Tony’s girlfriend danced up the route like it was nothing. She lead it beautifully. We all took turns trying the route. There were quite a few (safe) falls but most of us managed to get to the top. Courtney beasted up it like it was her job, she was awesome! I was really happy that I made it to the top after a couple falls. It was really an amazing feeling. I LOVE TOP ROPING! I had never really top roped back in Florida, but here its pretty much the main thing, so when we climb, we mainly top rope (unless we are in the gym). I can’t wait until I get my harness and new shoes!! The tide was starting to come in and it was going to get dark soon, so we packed all of our things and headed back to civilization. Once we got to our cars, we decided to get Mexican food (because we were in Busan so of course there is a Mexican place somewhere).We drove for about an hour before we finally found the place, but the food was really good so it was definitely worth it! After we ate, our two parties split up and we headed back home to Pohang. Jea Hyun fell asleep, and Courtney and I were always close to dozing off the whole ride home. We finally got home around midnight on Saturday. I had come down with a slight cold earlier so I fell asleep right away when I got home.

 We watched in amazement as Courtney showed that rock who's boss. 

 I trusted Courtney with my life!

There's Johnny in the top left corner. This is the amazing view we had at this climbing spot!

The next day didn’t turn out as planned. We were planning to maybe got to a mountain festival for some more climbing with Dong Hoon, but I guess my being sick (or just exhausted from the previous day of climbing) cause me to sleep until 3 pm. Courtney, Dan, Brandon and I met up for dinner that night around 7 and we all shared our wonderful weekends with each other.

Overall I would have to say this was another amazing, fantastic, unbelievable weekend! I’m so glad things worked out so nicely, and that we got to see some really amazing sights. 

** We learned that 지지 (pronounced ji ji) means "Don't touch, it's dirty baby!" when Dong Hoon said it to us while we were picking up beach glass. It's something you say to small children. Tell them not to touch something because it's dirty. We love learning new words from these boys!