On Tuesday I got a Brown Belt! That leaves me nearly four months to get a
Black Belt, from which I’m merely two belts away. Next is Red, and from Red I go to Black. And once you go black you never go back.
Anyway, let’s get on to tales from the weekend, as they are
plentiful. On Friday I got some Mexican
food with Nick and Doug. The place,
O’Taco’s, has some damn fine fajitas.
Also we filled up a card, so next time we go we get a free
quesadilla! Nice-uh.
Anyway, after our delicious meal we went to the local
convenience store to get some beers.
Suddenly, this crazy bald guy comes up and sits next to us, asking if he
can “finish this here,” referring to his beer.
Now we’d had an encounter with this guy months ago, and he is literally
nuts. I scanned the faces of my
compadres when he sat down, and the look both Nick and Doug’s faces can be
summed up as the classic “God. Damnit.” facial expression. I’m sure I was sporting it as well.
Anyway, I forget exactly what we were discussing, but it was
something that had to do with politics and, as political discussions often do,
implicated race. So the guy sits down
and the first thing he says is “I think racism is bad no matter what.” Because I thought it was funny and also
hoping he would maybe leave, I said “Well you’re with the wrong crowd, because
we are all really racist. Our group
motto is ‘If you ain’t white, that ain’t right.’” Well this guy quickly changed his tuning,
somehow making a segway between how horrible feminism wants to make men
subservient to women to using the term “feral blacks.” We all exclaim about the offensiveness of
that term, and he backtracks saying our reaction was “knee-jerk.” A few minutes later he saw a black guy that
came over to say hi, and we laughed about him being a chameleon.
A few minutes later, he starts ranting crazily again about
how society is coming apart at the seams and that there’s going to be a race
war. He kept telling us to “Put the
pieces of the puzzle together.” As Doug
described it later, “He kept calling our reactions ‘knee-jerk’ and going on
about the puzzle pieces. It’s like, ‘Listen
dude. You’ve been going on for 20
minutes and you’re not making any sense.’”
Anyhow, the race war comment really reminded me of a scene
from one of my favorite movies, In Bruges
by Martin McDonagh. There is this scene
where everyone is doing coke, and this dwarf starts going about an impending
race war. Colin Farrell’s character
(Editor’s Note: He is surprisingly excellent in this movie) starts asking the
dwarf about which side groups would fight with.
How about the Vietnamese? The
Mexicans? Would the black midgets fight
with the whites or the blacks? Would all
the white midgets fight the black midgets?”
Anyway basically asked the crazy guy these questions and it took him a
bit to realize I was toying with him.
On Saturday Doug and I headed to the train station with the
hopes of catching a 9am train. Sadly,
Adam was a little late so we took the 10am instead. We decided to wait outside the station, where
there is a very nice promenade area with plenty of seating and a gorgeous
fountain. As is often the case with
public areas, there is also a collection of homeless people hanging around one
of the corners. Anyhow, Doug and I were
just sitting around talking when we see an older guy, who didn’t really look
homeless, start to smack one of the homeless guys with an open fist on the back
of the head. He smacked him several
times, and then seemed like he was going to walk away. But just as that was winding down, a younger
guy (also not homeless, likely the older man’s son) shoved a different homeless
man to the ground. The homeless man went
down very easily, and when he was on the ground the man who pushed him kicked
him in the face. It was nuts. Thankfully, the aggressor didn’t take it any
further. But it was still a crazy thing
to see shortly passed 9am on a Saturday in a public square.
Though we have no idea what started the fight, Doug and I
are inclined to believe that the two aggressors were not unprovoked. I’m not justifying their actions, but they
were there with their family. I can’t
imagine that they just said to themselves “Hey, want to beat up a few of those
hobos who are just chillin’ over there?”
Anyhow, after the early excitement our hour of waiting
passed uneventfully. At 10am we hopped
on our train and 45 minutes later we were in Daegu. We grabbed some snacks at a convenience store
and then got tickets for the city bus tour, which would take us to the hike we
wanted and to a temple.
Our first stop was the Gatbawi Hike, which was awesome. Steep and challenging, the hike featured were
several cool shrines to see on the way up, a fun climbing area off the stairs
where we could escape crowds, and the Gatbawi Shrine at the peak. Gatbawi apparently means “Stone Hat Buddha,”
and that’s exactly what you got at the peak of the climb -- an old Buddha statue
with a square hat. I find it strange how
Buddha seems to be worshiped as a deity here.
He explicitly said he didn’t want to be.
But I suppose Jesus also made it pretty clear that you were supposed
give some scrilla to the poor, a point seemingly lost on today’s
Republicans. But I digress. The most fun part of the hike was on our way
down (at the beginning, still near the peak), where we took a trail that split
from the stairs and allowed for some free climbing. In that area we completely lost the crowd and
were treated to some spectacular views.
We had to hurry down the mountain to catch our bus, which
only runs every hour and twenty minutes.
We passed a dude hiking barefoot.
He must have the toughest feet in Korea.
The idea of personally making that climb without foot protection is
unfathomable. I think I’d turn back
after 50 yards at the most.
From the Gatbawi trailhead we bussed to Donghwasa
temple. The entrance had these huge
colorful warriors which were pretty neat.
They were almost identical to the ones I’d seen in Jeonju all the way
back in the orientation trip. I wondered
about their significance in the Buddhist religion. I know the religion doesn’t have any gods, so
I was curious as to their meaning. But
apparently I wasn’t curious enough to bother googling it, seeing as I haven’t
done so.
The temple stood out for the scenery. I’ve kinda gotten to point where temples in
Korea run together. The first ones I saw
were very impressive, because the details really are quite impressive, but I
suppose I’ve just become habituated. But
what separated Donghwasa was its gorgeous mountain location, with several impressive
views of the lush mountains/hills surrounding the temple grounds. And it certainly didn’t hurt that the weather
was beautiful.
But the highlight of the visit was a large standing Buddha
statue located at least a half mile from the entrance (the grounds were huge
and quite scenic). I would estimate that
the statue was 60 feet tall, and it stood in a large square with colorful
hanging lanterns, with a really neat walk around the back of the Buddha that
had warrior statues carved into the walls. There were also two tall shrines more towards
the front of the square which, at least aesthetically, I could have done
without. But I’m guessing they
represented something important.
After we finished admiring the Buddha statue, we realized
our bus was leaving in about 5 minutes.
Not wanting to rush (and I honestly don’t event think we could have made
it), we decided to relax and have a beer at a park near the temple
entrance. The park was expansive and
beautiful, with several sports fields, a cool fountain several children were
splashing around in, and some beautiful trees with pearl white leaves.
Once our bus came, it was about 30 minutes back to the train
station area. We all slept. Our guide, a really friendly man who didn’t
speak much English but more than made up for it in enthusiasm, guided us to the
subway and wished us goodbye. He told us
to come back and drink soju with him, which I’m not sure if I’ll have time to
do but I’m certain would be good fun.
We took the subway to our guest house, which was located
right downtown. After a shower and a
short rest, we headed to the bar/restaurant area. I think all three of us had the same
immediate reaction: holy Toledo the girls here are smoking hot. Everywhere you looked the girls were just gorgeous. It was crazy.
Anyhow, we stopped admiring just long enough to eat dinner at a BBQ
place. I gave the waitress my number but
she didn’t call me. I think I’m 0 for 3
on that now.
Post dinner we basically roamed the streets and bounced
around bars. And man the girls were
gorgeous. I was actually on top of my
game, but stung with terrible luck. The
first girl I talked to was at a table with two friends. They were all quite cute. After Doug, Adam, and I discussed how cute
they were for a few minutes, I decided to approach. I went with a good one I’ve been using
lately, in which I ask the girl the last letter of the English alphabet. Canadians call the letter Z “zed,” while
Americans call it “zee.” It’s always
interesting to hear what Koreans are taught, and it works great as an opener if
I’m out with Doug.
Anyhow, I approached the girl who I thought was the most
attractive at the table and posed the question.
Then I asked the other girls, and hailed over to Adam and Doug to weigh
in. After maybe a half hour of talking
to “my girl,” I could tell I was “in” with her.
Not necessarily because I’m a genius at reading women or anything, but
because she took my hand and put it on her leg, and then continued to keep her
hand on top of mine. Sadly, after a
short while it became apparent nothing was going to come of it. She lived with her parents, who were calling
her and wanted her home. Also her
friends were lukewarm with my friends.
So eventually we just separated.
Shortly after, my eyes met with a gorgeous girl maybe 10
feet away. She gave me a big smile, and,
knowing I shouldn’t hesitate, I approached her.
She was from Japan on an extended visit to see her boyfriend, who was a
foreign teacher. But they’d broken up
(I’m not sure how long ago), so now she was just on an extended visit. Things were going great initially (she was
very flirty, touchy, etc.), but after just a couple minutes of talking her
friend grabbed her arm and said they were leaving. I should have asked for her number but I was
so surprised by how quickly it disintegrated I just said “See ya,” and watched
her walk away.
My bad luck was contrasted with Adam’s phenomenal luck. Around 1am, we were just walking around when
Adam ran into a guy he knew (by sight only, not his name) from Frisbee. Adam plays in Busan and this other dude plays
in Daegu, and there was recently a Korea-wide tournament, which is where they’d
met. Anyway, we’re all talking to the
Frisbee dude, and suddenly a gorgeous girl walks up and says to him “Why don’t
you introduce me to one of your cute friends?”
The guy said, “Oh, ok, this is my friend Adam.” Then the girl just grabs his hand and says
“You’re with me tonight.” WHY HAS THAT
NEVER HAPPENED TO ME?!!
We ended up crashing at the guest house around 3am, and were
up by 10am to catch a train back to Busan.
The Gwangan bridge was open for pedestrians until 2pm, and I really
wanted to walk across it. Unfortunately,
I’d gotten some bad info. Because I got there
around 12:45 only to learn that the entrance had closed at 10am. That was really disappointing, because there
is a cool tower in Daegu and crazy Eastern medicine market that I would have
loved to have seen. Instead, I rushed
back for a bridge walk I had no chance of making. So instead of exploring a wild market with
lizard tails and other fun remedies, I just did laundry, cleaned my apartment,
got some shopping done at MegaMart, and went to bed early. Curse you, bridge walk. I’ll see you in hell.
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