This past weekend was a long weekend giving me a full four days off from school. I wanted to take full opportunity of the chance to travel and went to Busan, a large port city in the South of Korea, with a few friends. Busan is about 6 six hours from Hwacheon so I had only been there once before even though it’s the second largest city in South Korea. Last time I went to Busan it was for the Busan International Film Festival and I went down on Friday and came back on Sunday so I was very eager to spend more time exploring the city this time around.
Luckily, my co-teachers were thrilled that I was traveling to Busan and printed a guide that discussed many of Busan’s highlights. This guide was very helpful when my friends and I went to the famous Jalgachi Market. The market is extremely famous for it’s seafood and is located right on the water. Nearby there are other markets that sold numerous goods and that sold delicious food. My teacher’s guide directed my friends and I to the best odeng restaurant. Odeng is what Koreans call fishcake and I’m not sure I really want to think any harder about what it actually is composed of. We also had delicious hoddeok. Hoddeok is a popular Korean street food that is basically fried dough filled with cinnamon and ground up peanuts. The Nampo Market area in Busan is famous for a special type of hoddeok where the patty is sliced open and stuffed with sunflower seeds. It was absolutely delicious.
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| Our breakfast of odeng |
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| My friends eating seafood pancake- we tried to eat as much seafood as possible |
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| Sarah and I with our hoddeok |
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| Rachel and I outside Jagalchi Market |
Another highlight of the weekend was visiting the Pusan National University area. One of my friends taught at the University during the winter and was really knowledgeable of the area. He also joined a CrossFit gym in the area during the two months he lived at PNU. The owners of the gym knew he was in town for the long weekend and invited him to a workout. Since Ben knows how much I enjoy a good workout he invited me to join. I was extremely intimidated by the workout that was posted on the board and the intense warm-up did not ease my fears. Once the clock started though I was able to kick it into high gear and completed the workout in a really good time. I even beat two of the regulars and more importantly, proved to myself that I can do a tough workout that included doing 20 pull-ups in a row!
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| Ben and I after our workout. Our instructor is in the middle. |
This weekend was also a wonderful weekend to be in Busan because of the Haeundae Sand Festival. There were lots of performances throughout the weekend and the beach was covered with impressive sand sculptures. Most of the sculptures were based off movies because Busan is also home to an international film festival. The festival drew large crowds and lucky for me many of my Fulbright friends decided to also come check out the festival.
I don’t want to make this blog entry too long but I did save the best part of my weekend for last. On Saturday, I was able to live out one of my dreams by swimming with sharks without a cage. The Busan Aquarium offers cage-free shark diving and I had been planning to go for a long time. I was unbelievably thrilled that my time had finally come to get up close and personal with sharks. I absolutely loved cage diving with great whites in South Africa and was thrilled to have another chance to interact so closely with sharks. When I arrived at the aquarium I underwent some training to learn how to use the scuba equipment and then I was escorted on a 30 minute dive in the main tank of the aquarium. The tank contained stingrays, massive groupers, smaller fish, sand tiger sharks, white tip reef sharks and blacktip reef sharks. One of the highlights of the whole program was actually the training because the reef sharks swam in between my legs twice and even rubbed up against my legs! During the actual dive the reef sharks stayed further away because they were intimidated by the group of five divers. Luckily, the sand tiger sharks and groupers were not intimidated and came right up to us. It was an amazing experience. I even was able to collect shark teeth off the floor of the aquarium during the dive. I can’t imagine a better way to end my year in Korea then with this shark dive.
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| My friends and I right before our dive |
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| Inside the main tank |
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