Crowds and Coasters

Hello everyone,

So it's been 2 weeks since the last post, but you didn't really miss anything. Last weekend was a quiet one with no big adventures because Ali was sick. The only excitement was Ali getting a new haircut, which was a big change but that we both like now. This weekend, however, Ali and I went to the self-proclaimed happiest place on Earth, Everland.
Ali's new haircut

Now, probably like you, we'd never heard of Everland before we came to Korea. Once here, we heard that it was a big amusement park similar to Wonderland. However, when we read about it, we were surprised to see it regarded as one of the top three amusement parks in the world in terms of attendance. We'd been eager to see it for awhile, and this month they have a whole halloween theme going on so we thought now would be a good time to go. Korea doesn't really have Halloween. Some big grocery stores have in recent years put up decorations and starting selling costumes but there's still no trick-or-treating on the actual day.

Using the subway and a bus, the quickest time to get to Everland is about 2 and a half hours so we didn't make it there until 1:30pm. Once inside, it quickly lived it up to its repuation as one of the most visited theme parks in the world; there were thousands and thousands of people. We walked around for awhile and when we came near the Halloween parade, we were jam-packed with people. Ali started to lose her mind a little bit. It was the first Halloween parade we saw, though. We also saw a really nice garden with every color of flower, with halloween decorations everywhere. It did feel very un-Korea and a lot like home to be around Halloween stuff so that was nice.
Jesse in the rose garden

After some more aimless walking we decided to make our way towards the world's largest wooden roller coaster (according to Everland). We got in what looked like a long line up, but was moving at a normal pace, and waited for our first ride of the day. Well... after every corner we rounded, we saw that the line kept going, sometimes twisting and turning through railings, and never seemed to stop. Every time we thought we were close, our hopes would quickly deflate as we would see that what we thought was the end of the line was really just the beginning of a new even longer line. Definitely, the longest amusement park line we've ever been in. It was slightly longer than 2 hours and you would think that no 2 minute roller coaster ride could live up to that hype... well... as we suspected, it didn't. But it was a really good roller coaster and now we can kick off the "Been on the biggest wooden roller coaster" item from the bucket list.

Afterwards, we walked around some more and checked out some animal exhibits. Everland is also kind of like a zoo with several themed animal areas to look at. We went to a bird zoo and an African animal zoo. We saw lots of cool animals.
Jesse and some birds

After some dinner, we made our way to another ride called the Amazon Express. This was around 7pm and rides were now down to 50 minute waits. The ride was the standard, eight people sitting in a circular inter tube, bouncing off walls down a raging river.

We then went down to the Alpine Horror village, an area where the "ghouls and ghosts" come out at night. It ended up being people dressed up in various Halloween costumes, none of which seemed to be a ghost or a ghoul. By this time, it was 8:30 so we made our way back home.

The amusement park itself didn't have that many rides, and was probably comparable to Wonderland except for having way more people and way fewer rides. Not sure if we'll ever see that many people again in an amusement park. Ali's kids once told her that she should be there at 9:30 when it opens. Now we know how true that is.

Ali's school has finished building a new kindergarten floor so she'll start teaching in her new and amazing classrooms tomorrow.

In other news, school has been going good for both of us. Next week is Halloween and we're not sure if we'll get up to anything Halloween-related but we'll soon see.

Anyway, hope all is well at home,

Ali and Jesse

PIFF

Hi Everyone!

This weekend Jesse and I headed South for the Busan (formally Pusan - P and B are basically the same sound in Korean so the romanization changes) International Film Festival, or PIFF, for short. Jesse is much more of a movie buff than I am so this trip was really exciting for him. He went online the second tickets went on sale and got tickets to a bunch of movies and would check back daily and got more tickets through cancellations. He wanted to see a lot of movies each day, but I would hit my limit around two movies a day so, for a couple movies, he just went by himself.



We took the KTX (high-speed train) from Seoul to Busan on Friday night and got in to Busan around midnight. Jesse wanted to get up at 5 in the morning to line up for some extra movie tickets so we went to sleep right away. Unfortunately, Jesse forgot to set his alarm so he didn't wake up until 7, missing the morning line-up.

His first movie was Cruel Season - a documentary about Korean sanitation workers. We had actually been curious about them since we got here because the garbage here is picked up, not by garbage trucks, but by random people with these little carts that they just push through the streets. Apparently, they actually are employees of the sanitation department but the job has no respect and people constantly push them and yell at them and tell them they aren't allowed to speak - it sounds pretty awful.

The next one he saw was Son of Babylon - an Iraqi movie about a boy trying to find his father who had been missing since the Gulf War. This ended up being his favorite movie of the festival.

While he was at these first two movies, I met my friend Jenn and we had lunch and walked all around Busan, which was lots of fun.

At 5:00, we had a movie together called Archipelago. It was a British movie and I really enjoyed it. It was about a family and the son was going to Africa to volunteer - really good.

After that, we had to rush to our next movie, which was an outdoor movie, seating 5000 people. It was neat to sit outside and see a movie. It was like being at a drive-in, minus the cars. The movie was called Here Comes the Bride and it was from the Philippines. It was a totally insane movie about 5 people who switch bodies during a solar eclipse. It was a comedy and was really weird. What surprised me the most was that, Filipino sounds like English and Spanish mixed together. Half of it was just English talking but, apparently, that's what the language sounds like.

The Outdoor Theatre

After the movie we just walked around downtown and checked out Busan. We went to a casino and played some slot machines. I was pretty sure I was a slot machine expert after winning $60 my first time at a casino but this time I lost $30... oh well.

Jesse at the Canadian party, walking the red carpet... not really

The next day, we saw two movies. The first was a New Zealand film called Desert but it was about Koreans living in New Zealand so it was mainly in Korean. It was pretty good.

The next one was the weirdest and least enjoyable one we saw. It was called Little Baby Jesus of Flandr and was a Belgian movie about these three guys who see a baby being born in the forest and think it's Jesus. The actors all had Downs Syndrome and it was filmed in black and white but it was far too artistic to be interesting. It had crazy screeching music for the whole thing and the story was bizarre and it had these really long shots of trees for, like ten minutes at a time. Neither of us liked it very much but it was interesting anyway.

After that, we went to see the famous Busan fish market which is one of the sights you must see while in Korea and is arguably the smelliest place on earth. It was cool to see, just thousands and thousands of tanks with crazy sea creatures that you can just buy and have cut up on the spot.




After the fish market, we caught the train back to Seoul and that was the end of the weekend.

All in all, we had a great time!

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
Ali and Jesse

War Memorial

Hello everyone. For those keeping count, we just finished 7 months and now only have 5 months left. I don't know it's felt for you, but I fell like it's blown by and Ali goes back and forth between feeling like 7 weeks and 7 years.

After living here this long we've developed a weekend balance between exploring everywhere and holding onto some money. We just had Chuseok in Jeju and next weekend is in Busan, so this weekend feel into the non-adventurous category, but nonetheless, we did get up to some stuff worth noting.

There's a group called "English Cafe" that is organized by a few Korean teachers to get the foreign public teachers together. They had organized 2 trips I went on before (mountain climbing and skating, which both featured English, but neither featured a cafe) and both were fun. For Saturday, they organized a trip to "The War Memorial of Korea." Despite what images that title gives you, it is not just a big statue with flowers around it (although they do have that). It is in fact a large museum that shows artifacts and exhibitions all detailing Korea's war history, which goes far beyond the Korean war. Ali and I had wanted to go here for awhile because we had heard good things about it so Ali came along on the trip too.

We met up with everyone on the subway and again, I discovered new foreigners in Uijeongbu. It seems like there's over a 100 now. They provided lunch for us, which was nice of them since Ali isn't technically part of the group.

Once we got in the museum, we were only with the group for a short time, since everyone wanders a museum at different paces. Our first part of the museum was an outside gallery showing all the countries and names of people who died from that country in the Korean war. I didn't realize how much of the world was involved in the Korean war. The Korean war was South Korea, U.S.A, Canada, Columbia, England, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ethiopia, Australia, Philippines, Turkey, Netherlands, France, New Zealand, Thailand, Greece, Belguim and South Africa vs. North Korea, China, Russia. If you can tell yet, I'm into museums and history.


Inside, we walked through various rooms that had interesting artifacts to look at from weapons to costumes to models of what the kingdoms looked like through the centuries. Korea's history is filled with fending off invasions from Mongolia, China and Japan. It's amazing that they still exist given all the attempts to invade.

The museum was also very up-to-date since it had a display looking at the sinking of the South Korean ship from March of this year.

We arrived at 3:30 and stayed until 6:00. Unfortunately, we were slow enough that we missed the War Experience room. Somehow, it recreates the atmosphere of being on the battlefield through sound, smell and scenery. We have read lots of great things about it but it closed at 5. Might have to go back next time we're in town.

Outside, we took pictures with all the weapons, tank and plane displays. It's refreshing to not see "Do not touch" signs (or at least not being able to read the ones that say that in Korean).
Ali showing her other side.

Me getting far away from Ali.



In other news, it's business as usual for me and Ali has been putting in lots of work hours this week for speech contests. If you know anyone coming to Korea, tell them to try to get a public teaching job.

We'll let you know how the Busan (or Pusan, depending on romanization) film festival goes next weekend.

Hope you're all well,
Ali and Jesse