Catching up on the week & Girls' Weekend in Busan

Right... I've been bad about not updating this week. Maybe it's because I've been super-busy, but nothing seems that interesting -- or not enough to blog. But then, that's not entirely true. Monday and Tuesday were typical nights of meeting up with friends, Wednesday was French night, Thursday was a night to reacquaint myself with the television, and Friday, I was off to Suncheon, then Busan for a fun weekend.

Well, okay, there was one thing during the week that I should have written about but didn't: My friend Jen found a wee orange kitten and I took her in for a few days (Jakob was absolutely unimpressed by that!) and learned that two cats in a tiny apartment leads to space-management and noise issues. However, after a full 24 hours of hissing and wailing, they both calmed down for the next day or so (just in time for Jen to take the little one home).

On Friday, I had a half-day at school, and hit the road to Suncheon - the first leg of my trip across Korea (from coast to coast) to Busan. I hung out with Nina, eating an amazing home-made lasagne, then meeting up with Steve. He quite generously drove me, Jessika and Emma to Busan (his girlfriend lives there, so he makes the trip every weekend). We got to Kristin's place, had a few drinks, then went off to the Haeundae Beach area to find a good hotel.


The next day, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that our hotel was only about 2 minutes' walk from the beach. We ran down, shed our cold-weather gear, then cavorted around in bare feet. It wasn't really that cold - and oh-so-nice to sink your feet into beach sand in the middle of November.


From there, we headed to the Busan Aquarium - visiting with penguins, sharks and fishies of all kinds (we even did the ultimate tourist thing of a glass-bottomed boat ride over the shark tank). It was really awesome, and made me even more impatient to go scuba-diving in January (which I said ad nauseum to Jessika).



Then, it was off to the Pusan National University area to meet up with Monique and do some retail therapy. We meandered around the overwhelming shopping streets, laughing ourselves silly, until general fatigue and sensory overload sent us back to our hotel.

For supper, Emma and I introduced Monique and Jessika to Indian food. But first, we wandered up to Haeundae Beach to drink and look at people lighting off fireworks. We bumped into a couple of waygookin - Jack and April - and made plans to go see some live music (yay!) later that night.

Exhausted and over-full on nan, basmati rice, lassis and various curries, we didn't last too long at the Star Face Club (yeah, that's the real name), even though the music was awesome. We all headed home instead of trying another place. Yeah, I'm getting boring in my old age....

The next day, Monique and I had a five hour bus ride back to Mokpo, while Emma and Jessika went their way back to Suncheon.


It was a fun, though tiring, weekend with lots of laughing and general random silliness, good food, good friends, new friends.... it just wasn't long enough!