The Heating is off and no longer necessary. I ride my
scooter in leggings and no gloves. Every weekend there is a message to say
“COME TO THE BEACH” and I have shocked at least a few Koreans with several barefoot
showings.
Never before have I truly known the meaning of spring like I
do now. In fact, save for one little blossom tree at the bottom of the garden,
when Spring came to South Africa there really wasn’t much of a change. Now, I am glad that I don’t have to deal with the ugly hopelessness
that is the Korean winter at home but OH WOW the absolute joy and excitement that I
have experienced while watching vile barren landscapes suddenly transform into
an EXPLOSION of pink blossom trees and, after a few very short weeks of soft
snowy petals scattering in the wind, the most heavenly GREEN has emerged from
underneath, with brilliant coloured flowers lining the streets and thus, lining
my heart.
 | |
| Camping in a Korean Graveyard |
Myself and 2 of my adventure buddies drove to Gyeongjiu
where everyone goes to celebrate this mad blooming of the cherry blossoms.
Thinking camping the night before the festival would be a vibe I asked my
Supervisor about campsites but she seemed confused. “In Korea”, she said, “We
just go to the lake. Then we put up… tent” What news! This elated me, not that
I have a problem with just camping anywhere, but for it to be a legitimate
cultural norm gave me that funny warm feeling that I feel quite often these
days of “Oh I love Korea!” So we drove to Gyeongjiu the night before and went
searching down some random farm roads to find a tiny path which we followed.
This brought us into a little clearing with large grassy mounds which we know
to be Korean graves. It was protected from the road, it was flat, I could see mountains
and I don’t have an issue with sleeping near dead bodies (as long as I cannot
smell them or see them) so the 3 of us huddled into our 2 man tent with 2
sleeping bags and spent an incredibly squashed and EXTREMELY chilly night. It
wasn’t a picnic but I was camping in a Korean graveyard with 2 of my favourite
people and it was Spring! 
So the cherry blossom festival wasn’t really a festival just
a multitude of people and traffic going to one small town to see a mad load of
cherry blossom trees. We tried to find some sort of festivities but I think the
point was to rent a bicycle and cycle around the traffic while trying not to be
killed by the bumper to bumper traffic. Luckily that is why the cool kids drive
scooters; we rode through the traffic and under the blossoms and took in the
mountains that had simply come alive with colour. After a long journey past
lakes and mountains and hills and tiny towns surrounded by a ring of mountains,
we arrived back in our city and rolled onto the beach where rugby, frisbee and
handstanding activities continued into the evening. 
And so much sporting fun has exploded into
action. I was climbing three times a week, and now I have added some squash,
soccer and beach festivities to the mix. Exercise is something that the more
you get the more you want and so on an energetic morning I woke up with the
drive for a 2 hour cycle to this really pretty beach named Chilpo outside of
Pohang (where I live). I was listening to my Ipod and happily humming along,
glorying in the beautiful day and noticing how exquisitely green this forest
below the road looked, when I glanced back at the ground to see the lovely
smooth concrete had turned into a mesh of mounds and I was skidding along on
the edge and finally tumbling into an almighty heap, for a second I was one
with my bicycle and then I was lying there bloodying the pavement with a very
twisted looking bicycle. The cars were zooming past (I wasn’t really on a
cycling road methinks) and in telling myself repeatedly I was ok I jumped over
the road barrier and down a hill so I could sit down and cry in peace without
feeling the zoom of very fast cars go unsympathetically by. I viewed a bit of
the damage. The bicycle handle bars looked like a backward cycling circus bike
and my body looked like the makings of a good zombie movie. I was now next to
the forest I had previously been appreciating and in my pain I started
laughing. How glorious it is sometimes to be able to feel physical pain, to go
for a huge tumble on a busy road and to be able to go and sit in the sun with
blood pouring down and to realize that actually in fact, I
will be alright, in fact, I AM alright and finally, I am ALIVE. In that time I felt my whole body just
beating that strong beat of life. I cycled painfully back home, boasted about
my new wounds on facebook (don’t we all love attention?) and headed off to
work. The best place to be taken care of is definitely a kindergarten and
concerned Korean motherly types put plasters on my face and antiseptic all over
my mutualized arm.
My shoulder pain after the affair was no picnic and some
painkillers later and forceful recommendations from various friends I thought
it may be fun to see what the hospital has to say. With a sister who is a
doctor and parents who tell me to go to bed or phone my sister when I’m sick I
don’t get to go to doctors very often. And since I was younger I had always
dreamed of being sick enough to go to the hospital. All that attention! How
fabulous. I prayed and prayed for a tonsillitis that would take me to jelly and
ice-cream and tonsil removal and when the doctor finally said “Next time you have
tonsillitis you should get them removed” I never got tonsillitis again.
So I took myself to this most coveted place and had the most
wonderful of times. The doctor examined me, the x-ray lady x-rayed me and
stretched out my painful shoulder then the doctor told me I was fine and I
should get some physiotherapy and the physiotherapist then proceeded to massage
me, and then I lay down with deep heat cooling my shoulder and a heat pad
heating it up, he returned and said “now, shock therapy, you know?” I freaked
out a little bit as he put lots of weird things on my body and turned the shock
on. Such a weird sensation but I lay there and got a text from my boss saying I
didn’t have to come in in the morning if I was at the hospital and after being
giving a lot of colourful drugs and a
ridiculously low bill I sauntered off home. Happy that I only had to work 3
hours on this sunny Friday.
 |
| The Bridge of No Return |
 |
| Very very tall North Korean Flag Pole |
So there are certain things one is supposed to do when you
go to a country. Like seeing the Vatican if you are in Rome. And I suppose
that’s the DMZ in Korea. Not that it’s the same thing but it’s the same sort of
“You have to”. So as luck would have it, a dear friend of mine found a friend
in the military and this military man said we could come to his military tour
of the DMZ for free. I like free stuff so we concurred and soon we were
standing at an American military base at 5.30 in the morning, herded into a bus
with a very barky military man doing role call and on our way across the
country to see this thing that I pretty much “had” to see. Well the bus was
long and 5 hours later we stopped in Seoul at the American military base. After getting 2 sets of ID checked we were allowed in
as military guests and we entered mini America within Korea. Gone were
multitudes of Koreans and the ever present smell of fish or some other strange food and incomprehensible signs. There were American children on bicycles
with their American parents enjoying a lazy Sunday, parks and buildings and
shops and American fast food and, FAT PEOPLE. We ate a bunch of American/Mexican
food, had some awkward conversations with military men, gaped at the fat people
and got rejected from the military store because we didn’t have ration cards
and our hopes of cheap cheese and wine were mutilated to the ground.
 | |
| Stone Soldier |
We returned to the bus with another barking military role
call and another hour and a half found us in the Demilitared Zone. Another
military man began his introduction to the tour, beginning his speech at such a
pace I could not hear a word for a few sentences and after he slowed down a
touch he used so many acronyms that I continued to be rather lost. We took
photos of some sights where various scuffles with North Koreans had happened,
and listened to a few insults about North Koreans, got told repeatedly to not
make any unfavourable gestures towards the watching Koreans and to only take photos
in certain directions. We were taken to a room where both the North Koreans and
the South Koreans can use and we saw and photographed the stone soldiers,
people who had to stand so still in a ready-to-fight position that I had to
keep looking at the veins on their hands to really believe they were actually
real people. We took photos of the “Bridge
of No Return” where North and South Korea’s prisoners of war were told that if
they crossed it they could never return into the country they were coming from.
We took photos of the landscape and a
very very tall flagpole in the distance as well as the
anti-reception tower that cuts North Korea off from the rest of the world.
At the end of the journey we had a rather strange and
expedition down a very, very long tunnel that I suppose takes you into North
Korea. It was wet and we got cool hard hats but we seemed to be walking for
ages waiting for the light at the end of it but instead a dead end saying “do
not go further!” which was impossible in it being a dead end. I raced a
military guy back up the tunnel and won which pleased me :) It was a long and steep and as it was
the only exercise I had had all day besides eating it was welcome yet seemed
a smidgeon pointless. It was an educational day, being with military men
all with identical haircuts, going to a military base within Korea and thinking
about how bizarre it is that this place of conflict is now opened as a tourist place. I found it somewhat incomprehensible why we
are invited to make this war a spectacle. It’s an extremely sad place and
seemed portrayed in a “look at those North Koreans, what idiots” sort of way. I
understand the tour is given by American soldiers who live there and deal with
a constant war zone but I felt so strange about the whole thing, and really, me
being there, taking pictures of such an ugly thing, of the stone soldiers who
had to stand completely still in a rigid position during the entire tour and of
a place that is STILL a war zone. It seemed wrong but I hope that in the future
I will be able to see these countries become one country or at least become two
amicable countries and then perhaps, I will be truly glad that I went on this day.  | |
| Beach Fun |
With incredibly mixed feelings I got back on the bus towards
Seoul. I had arranged to see some friends in Seoul that evening, go to the
second hand English bookstore, maybe buy some underwear that would actually fit
me and ultimately, buy some cheese. However, this was when the American
military brought out their favouite word “liability”. I asked the main military
guy if I could leave them in Seoul but they said that because they took me to the
DMZ, they have to take me back to Pohang. It was with a bit more than a
frustrated sigh that I sat on that bus for a further 6 hours. Watching really
loud obnoxious action movies and just dreaming of being out of the bus and in
freedom. I was angry that they took up a whole Saturday of my time, how
precious are these weekends I have! But then I realized, it wasn’t necessarily
that the day was really, really bad, it was more that lately my days have been
really really good, and I was just stamping my foot like a spoilt child “Why
can’t I have fun ALL the time???”  | |
| Snowboarding in the forest... you don't go far, but man is it pretty |
And fun all the time is how life normally is. Teaching itself of course is up and down and upside down and there is so much more to say, of classes and children and all the things Koreans say and other adventures
but that will have to be another day and another time for now it is time to go
back (after a week of shoulder recovery) to all the fun things that this fabulous
spring has been offering to me.
