A Failing Success

I've pleasantly misunderstood my coteacher again. I was under the assumption that I had to make my appearance at work Thursday and Friday of this week. Before leaving on Wednesday, I went down to the teachers office to find out if lunch was being served that day. Upon my exit, LJ shouted a "Have fun at your camp next week!" If there's one thing to learn about Korea, it's that typical goodbyes, such as that one, that have really no meaning outside of being simple pleasantries in the US, have meanings in Korea. I quickly turn around and say, "You mean tomorrow right? See you tomorrow?" All of the other teachers, who have a newly vested interest in eaves dropping on my conversations when I'm in that room, stop working and start laughing at me. At her apparent first attempt at mocking someone in English, one teacher says, "Yes! If you want to work on sidewalk!" Followed by more laughter. Long story short, save more embarrassment, I have another long weekend!

So yesterday I decided I would wake up super early and catch a bus to this place,

Cloud Bride. This place isn't in Daegu. From what I gathered, it is about four hours from. I woke up at 7am, armed only with a backpack full of nothing I really need and a Korea guidebook I received as a gift from LJ, circa 1999 (Did you know there's a rumored second subway line in the works for Daegu?). Apparently, bus times and destinations change over the course of a decade, as do my abilities to think that out-dated books will probably provide inaccurate information. So now I'm sitting at a bus station on the complete opposite side of the city from the bus station I need to be at. Knowing that the bridge is at least 4 hours away, and the proper bus station is another hour, I decide to quit. Most people probably wouldn't and would argue it's like opening a strategy guide upon entering the second room of the Water Temple, but I had no desire to arrive at the bridge at the late hour waiting would incur.

I was already wearing my hiking shoes, so I decided to do a Daegu mountain, Apsan. I got there really early, so there was virtually no one on the paths. It was still overcast and quite cool, so a very pleasant journey to the top was my reward. Upon getting to the top, I met with a group of old Korean men and women who immediately took me under their wing (one of them speaking English) and we all hopped and skipped down together and had a delicious galbi/soju lunch. They laughed at how much I sweat, I laughed at how little they do. A rather uncomfortable tear-filled goodbye ensued, and the rest of my day was spent discovering where random city buses end up, when not at my apartment. I found lovely markets on the outskirts of town, a huge department store that seemed eerily misplaced in a more slummish part of town, even a children's performance of what I could gather as being 'Fiddler on the Roof' outside of a school. I wasn't aiming to go to this, but a newly acquired Korean friend thought it would be the perfect thing for me to see following our awkward conversation on the bus.

I hope I fail as successfully as today in the future.

RIP Boss. What a week for the Yanks.