Escape to Daecheon

This past weekend was Labor Day, and even though they do not celebrate it here, we got to take a holiday anyway because we are an international school. I guess it is a tradition that the staff of ICS takes a getaway then. So we packed our bags Thursday night and escaped right behind the kids at noon Friday afternoon, driving two hours straight south to the coastal town of Daecheon.

Rest areas Korean styleIn past years, the staff has gone to the mountains on the east coast, but because it always rains, they decided to stay on the west coast this year. The weather was nasty Friday morning, but by the time we arrived, it had turned hot and sunny. We dropped off our stuff and hit the beach, which was conveniently located about 100 yards from where we were staying. It was warm and relaxing… especially in the living room chairs that had been disposed of in the grass next to the beach in typical Asian fashion.

Because there were so many of us (all the staff except for some of the older teachers) we brought most of our food with us. Friday night we had a great American/Korean barbecue of hamburgers, hotdogs, kalbi, rice and seaweed, fruit, and brownies!!! After that, we split up and I was introduced to the ridiculous world of no-rae-bang. I don’t know how to spell it, but it involved 15 of us going to this place and renting a small room with benches around the sides, 9 tv screens on one wall, a disco ball, and 2 tambourines. Basically it was karaoke, and it was hilarious. We were rocking to old English-language classics while the Korean staff were busting out the Korean pop hits… and boy do they get into it.

After an hour, we decided to hit the hay… except hay would have been more comfortable than what we slept on. We stayed in a pension, which I think is kind of like the Korean version of a hostel. Each room was very small and had a bathroom and one big room with a sink, burner, and fridge for cooking on one end. It was traditional Korean, so instead of beds, we slept on the wood floor on a thin (less than a quarter inch thick) quilted blanket called a yo, with an even thinner blanket to cover up with. We had 6 people to a room, but only 5 could fit across the room, and we only had 3 yos and 2 blankets. I lucked out since I was always a lot colder than the rest of the girls, so I got to sleep next to the luggage on my own yo doubled over as a blanket. We joked that they could make a game show out of this called “I survived a Korean pension” in the line of “I survived a Japanese game show.” In the morning, we would pick up the yos and eat our meals sitting on the floor.
Saturday was also hot and sunny, so I was happily chilling on the beach from 10am to 5:30pm. I played volleyball and soccer, laid in the sun, went climbing on the rocks up the shore with a couple teachers who are married (it was beautiful but crawling with roaches and hermit crabs), and swam in the water. There weren’t many waves, so you can rent inner tubes and float in the water. The beach was kind of crazy… it almost completely disappeared at high tide, but at low tide it was probably over 100 yards long. I decided to go back around 5:30 since my skin was looking slightly pink, but when I got in the room I was greeted by a bunch of red lobsters. Holy cow some teachers fried. I however have a nice tan, pretty decent for being in Asia (I don’t usually tan much here). I think some of the other teachers still think I’m native Spanish because they said my skin looked like it (come on, I have blue eyes), but I didn’t exactly deny it…
We went out that evening for a dinner of sam gip sam, or this meat kind of like bacon but different. You fry it in a hot pan on the table (which is also low and you sit on the floor cross-legged) and then put it in a leaf of lettuce with some rice and spicy sauce and eat it. We played games before going to bed.
Sunday morning we had our own church service on the beach, and then hung out on the beach some more until leaving at noon. We got back around 4 and unfortunately had to get back to work. It’s raining again today. I think I’d like to go to the beach every weekend…