herro korea!!

Sunday, September 18, 2005

boat trip to korea. traveling on the beetle, a huge ass hydrofoil, to pusan korea. we arrived on their thanksgiving so there was nothing really happening. it was kinda sad. not only was it dark, gloomy and humid, we were all hungary and nothing was open. we apparently arrived on korea's thanksgiving so everyone was at home with their families. dude. sucks. our korean tourguide did find a place for us to eat and we gourged on kimchi, tempura, assorted seafood and pickled vegetables with our metal chopsticks. did you know that when you're not supposed to pick up any of the plates when you're eating at a korean restaurant? it is very rude and your just supposed to pick everything up with your chopsticks. (as opposed to, lets say, picking up your rice bowl and eating with the bowl close to your mouth.)

we spent the rest of the day at a shopping mall where i bought a 2-liter bottle of water, razors and a pillow, random huh? and then at the beach. all in all i don't think that i would go back to korea. it kinda felt just like la, rude people, kinda dirty, but in it's defense we did show up on a bad day and we were there for only a couple of hours. so i'm not totally dissmissing korea, it still deserves a second chance.
just in case you're wondering that's the captain! sheah right, there were these captain jackets at the bottom of the stair well in the boat. the two guys are in my program and they're just hamming it up. the girl was taking pictures with her boyfriend before but i guess she wanted one with the american captains...


after the boat ride, we arrived in fukuoka and headed striaight to tokyo on another shinkansen. it was seriously non stop! and of course i over packed so i was lugging around my fat luggage and my laptop. good lord were my arms getting tired. we went straight to a kabuki theater once we arrived in tokyo. it was fun to go, but i was falling asleep... dude traveling all day takes a lot out of a person...

anyways well the next day we went to this traditional japanese puppet theater called jyouruli, and afterward... SUMO!!! the arena that we were in is where all of the grand champion matches, acutally all of the matches are held. i'm pretty excited to be there huh?