Wando: A Blog by Alex
How to have a stressful vacation:
1) Injuries are a must.
2) Drinking Helps
3) Sunburn
4) Uncomfortable situations
5) Massive language barriers
6) Food poisoning, maybe
7) Sunstroke, also a maybe
8) Illness
First, we went to the beach and met some Koreans there who wanted to show us how to be on the beach in Korea, which involved a lot of drinking and eating fish. On my fist venture into the ocean I was hit by a wave in a strange way and ruptured my eardrum. I knew it right away. Luckily, I had the same thing happen about five or six years ago and I knew there was nothing to do about it but keep it dry. So I wasn’t too worried. On my second time in I was attacked by a submerged tree and nearly lost my middle bits. I escaped with some nasty looking but shallow scratches on my inner thighs. I decided it was best to stay out of the water for the rest of the day.
We eventually extricated ourselves from the Koreans and headed home, sun burnt, bleeding (on my part), and dehydrated. We had a very nice taxi driver and the ferry trip back was quite beautiful. In fact all of Wando is beautiful, mountainous, wooded, capped by blue sky and ringed by ocean. We decided to have a nap and go out later that night, when we had fried chicken, which might or might not have been undercooked, and beer. We went to sleep with big plans for the next day.
Unfortunately, we both slept terribly. I woke up feeling okay and we decided to go ahead with our plan of visiting the arboretum. After getting ready to go I started to feel a little sick to my stomach, but I figured a little food and some water would help me. It did help for a bit and we tried to find the bus that ran to the arboretum area, eventually we gave up and took a taxi. The Arboretum was beautiful; they had a new greenhouse, which was really great. It reminded me of Garfield Park in Chicago. The Arboretum was relatively new, meaning less shady trees, and the sun seemed to be much more intense. I needed to rest for a bit, so I slept in a little shade and Audrey went to take some pictures. When she came back I got up and promptly threw up. I thought that I would feel better, but I didn’t and we decided to head back. We were in for a long walk, fortunately some more generous Koreans gave us a ride to the bus station and we got home relatively easily. When we got back I slept for two more hours. Getting up after the nap I felt a lot better.
We decided that we couldn’t leave Wando without trying some seafood, so we set out in search of a good dinner. There was a good-looking restaurant with a number of semi private rooms, and we went. It was amazingly difficult to verbally communicate our desires and eventually the waitress came back and wrote out some options that we recognized. We ordered hot fish soup for two. It was delicious. We ended the night with a walk and some ice cream. We returned home to Gwangju early the next day.
Ultimately, the vacation really left us drained and discouraged about our lack of language skills and inability to communicate, but also more determined to learn Korean and adapt to this country. Now it is back to school and hopefully an end to Audrey’s stress over teaching. Last week, fingers crossed.
1) Injuries are a must.
2) Drinking Helps
3) Sunburn
4) Uncomfortable situations
5) Massive language barriers
6) Food poisoning, maybe
7) Sunstroke, also a maybe
8) Illness
First, we went to the beach and met some Koreans there who wanted to show us how to be on the beach in Korea, which involved a lot of drinking and eating fish. On my fist venture into the ocean I was hit by a wave in a strange way and ruptured my eardrum. I knew it right away. Luckily, I had the same thing happen about five or six years ago and I knew there was nothing to do about it but keep it dry. So I wasn’t too worried. On my second time in I was attacked by a submerged tree and nearly lost my middle bits. I escaped with some nasty looking but shallow scratches on my inner thighs. I decided it was best to stay out of the water for the rest of the day.
We eventually extricated ourselves from the Koreans and headed home, sun burnt, bleeding (on my part), and dehydrated. We had a very nice taxi driver and the ferry trip back was quite beautiful. In fact all of Wando is beautiful, mountainous, wooded, capped by blue sky and ringed by ocean. We decided to have a nap and go out later that night, when we had fried chicken, which might or might not have been undercooked, and beer. We went to sleep with big plans for the next day.
Unfortunately, we both slept terribly. I woke up feeling okay and we decided to go ahead with our plan of visiting the arboretum. After getting ready to go I started to feel a little sick to my stomach, but I figured a little food and some water would help me. It did help for a bit and we tried to find the bus that ran to the arboretum area, eventually we gave up and took a taxi. The Arboretum was beautiful; they had a new greenhouse, which was really great. It reminded me of Garfield Park in Chicago. The Arboretum was relatively new, meaning less shady trees, and the sun seemed to be much more intense. I needed to rest for a bit, so I slept in a little shade and Audrey went to take some pictures. When she came back I got up and promptly threw up. I thought that I would feel better, but I didn’t and we decided to head back. We were in for a long walk, fortunately some more generous Koreans gave us a ride to the bus station and we got home relatively easily. When we got back I slept for two more hours. Getting up after the nap I felt a lot better.
We decided that we couldn’t leave Wando without trying some seafood, so we set out in search of a good dinner. There was a good-looking restaurant with a number of semi private rooms, and we went. It was amazingly difficult to verbally communicate our desires and eventually the waitress came back and wrote out some options that we recognized. We ordered hot fish soup for two. It was delicious. We ended the night with a walk and some ice cream. We returned home to Gwangju early the next day.
Ultimately, the vacation really left us drained and discouraged about our lack of language skills and inability to communicate, but also more determined to learn Korean and adapt to this country. Now it is back to school and hopefully an end to Audrey’s stress over teaching. Last week, fingers crossed.
Comments
What an unbelievable vacation. You will tell your children about this story some day and laugh as loud as we did reading about it! Alex how is your ear? Did the food poisoning leave you? Audrey, very funny dialogue. Hope your last week is good.
Love,
Dad M