Beach party!

Yes, I skipped a week. But mostly 'cause "I had to spend most of the last Saturday in August in a training seminar of dubious usefulness" would make for a pretty short (and dull) blog post.

Meh. Work progresses as it shall. Just yesterday, one of the Korean teachers asked me to use smaller words so the students would understand me easier. I thusly jotted "use less extensive vocabulary" in my notebook. This...might be part of the problem. Eheh.

Thankfully, I've been up to more interesting things since then! Namely, this past Saturday, I got together with My Cousin and her friends J and New K (I've decided people get rad codenames on this blog now) to hit up the beach. More specifically, we went to a beach on a little island called Muuido- it's really close to the Incheon Airport.

Unfortunately, despite being close to the airport, it was somewhat difficult in getting there. Mostly because there were two buses that headed in completely opposite directions...despite having the same number. Seriously, it wasn't even a matter of doing opposite directions of the same loop- one of the buses went to where we wanted to go...and the other didn't.

We wound up on the wrong bus. It was a bit unpleasant (if hilarious in hindsight). For the record, this was not my fault.

In any case! We finally did make it to Muuido! (It's the little island to the south, on that map) As far as beaches go, it was alright. I may be a little spoiled, having gone to Hawaii so recently. Still, the weather was nice, and the beach wasn't even that crowded. Though one of the real kickers was the fact that, when we got there, the tide was out. Way out. Ten minute walk across some mudflats out. Huh. 

And so, we were left with little else to do but sprawl out, make idle conversation...and drink crappy beer. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, I would note.

Oh, and there was a hovercraft parked on the beach. Rad as hell. I would not object to being able to put 'hovercraft driver' on my resume.

There were a bunch of other expats on the beach as well, and thus it was fun to make some idle conversation with them. A good number of them had arrived for the first annual 'Burning Man Korea.'

For anyone familliar with both Burning Man and Korea, the concept of such a thing is both amusing and somewhat confusing. Mostly because Korean culture is so buckled down, the general craziness expected from Burning Man just couldn't go down.

I'd like to note that our beach trip coincided with the whole Burning Man thing entirely by accident. I didn't know about it 'til the night before, wherein my friend the Welshman said 'oh, going to that Burning Man thing?' and my natural answer was 'Wait, what?'

In any case, I happened to know some of the folks AT said mini-burn (because the expat community is a bit incestuous like that- you'll almost always know somebody, wherever you go), so I steered by to catch up. I will say that the burners were having a good time, so good for them! Sure, there weren't truckasauruses or flamethrowers or naked people painted green, but again, it was the first year (and it was early, too).

For all I know, things may have gotten crazier once it got dark (as things tend to do). But we wound up packing it in around 7pm. Perfectly understandable, given that we'd been there since noon. I could have stayed overnight if I'd really wanted to. I'd taken the precaution of packing the survival essentials: knife, nalgene, matches, towel, etc. Ultimately, I didn't feel like going all Les Stroud, so I didn't. Probably for the best, given how much sand I've got in everything as-is. 

I think this was an important Hite, because I took a picture of it.

Sunday was, as the best Sundays are, 'laze around and work off that hangover' day. And back into the workaday schedule and all that. Though this next weekend is Chuseok- essentially, 'Korean Thanksgiving.' I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do during the holiday, but you can rest assured I will keep you posted on these misadventures.

...once the hangover's passed.