Colleen and Jake's Excellent Adventure: Baseball and an Island Getaway

With several handy long weekends in May and June, we've been able to get around a bit more, especially with the weather warming up, and the sun shining strong. We had 2 consecutive Monday's in May off, and one Friday in June.

On one of these weekends we made it to our first Korean baseball game. It was the Busan Lotte Giant's v.s. the Woori something-or-others.... haha.
We organized some lovers of the game, and some that had never seen one (mainly Brit's and Scot's) and met at the Ulsan bus terminal. We took an hour bus to Busan, just south of our city down the coast and rushed to make the first pitch. Those of us on the beer run missed out on this, but the sacrifice was a necessary one. In Korea, it's amazing. There are only a few vendors in the baseball stadium, but there are 711's and Family Marts outside that you buy beer and food etc. at to bring into the game. I'm sure it's technically "illegal", but it's so common that it can't be stopped. I mean, come on! They built a 711 on stadium grounds, what do you expect. So with beer in tow we started what would become a ridiculously fun and frothy night in South Korea's 2nd largest city.

There were a total of 13 of us, mainly English teachers, 11 from Ulsan, and 2 Busaners (who were obviously the ones that encouraged the extreme shenanigans...hahaha. jks). We had a medley of Canadians, Americans, Brits, Koreans, and one Aussie. At one point, I walked both in and out of security at the front gates to restock on beer, with an OPEN TALL BOY IN MY HANDDD! Haha. I smiled at the nervous security guard, took a swig of Cass Red, flashed my ticket, and walked in with a backpack stocked with 2 more pitchers of Hite. It was freedom at it's peak. Canada could take a few pointers from the Busan Lotte Giant's...

The next weekend we sporadically took a bus to Geo Je Do which is an island just south of Busan. Though you can take a ferry and be there in about 45 minutes, the bus took a startling 6 and a half hours! We arrived in the little fishing town just in time for beer o'clock, had a few of the most gigantic beers on this planet, got some dak galbi and settled into a nice love motel for the night. The next day we explored, confused and without a plan. It was Buddha's birthday so we visited a local temple that was nestled into one of the mountains near a fishing bay and wished the tubby guy a happy 2571st birthday or something like that. Unfortunately because of high winds, all ferries had been canceled, so we had to tackle the bus ride again.

On the June 6th long weekend, we made our way down to Busan again for the sand festival. It was a typical Korean festival, with lots of families, a free umbrella give away, and some sand mounds with pictures on the side. Not quite the sand sculptures we were expecting, but a fabulous weekend with a lot of sun and waygook's (foreigners) freaking out the Korean's by wearing bathing suits, women in bikini's and men with "naked uppers" (as our boss describes the 'horrible' and 'strange' phenomenon of us Westerner's)