Max's Visit - Friday

At long last, we finally got to bed at an hour that allowed us to wake up early (by Korean standards) Friday morning and begin our much-discussed, much-postponed hike up Bomunsan, a mountain in Daejeon. We had been cautious due to the monsoon weather, but Friday morning was just a bit drizzly and, being Seattleites, we figured that would not be a problem for us. We met Kate and Alex and after a Seattleite breakfast at Starbucks we hailed a taxi. Alex had to hop out of the cab enroute to deal with an emergency. We three remaining hikers arrived to find the rain steadily increasing in severity.

As we started up the mountain we were surprised by what seemed to be the decrepit remains of some type of amusement park. In addition to that strange chicken/duck castle there was what appeared to be some kind of overgrown former pool/water park. Most of the activity now comes from the nearby Buddhist temples; all of them are marked with swastikas and while I know it was a Buddhist symbol long before it took on its more unpleasant association, this Western Nazi-hater was still mildly uncomfortable. On the plus side, the incessant chanting brought back memories and provided an opportunity to mock Kate for our previous temple disaster.

About 10 minutes into our hike the rain was coming down very hard. Max's umbrella, a cheap Dunkin Donuts model I found in my locker at school when I arrived, was losing its battle against the wind. Our ankles were soaked. We decided to turn around and trudged back down. Unwilling at this point to give up entirely, we spotted a large temple and attempted to follow a path that would lead us there. Turned out we were just walking through some guy's back yard. Echoing the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, we declared, "F*** it Dude. Let's go bowling."

The bowling alley was fun and I broke 100 both times so I suffered no blows to my ego. The highlight was undoubtedly Max pulling off the greatest roll I've ever seen. Out of frustration, he grabbed a 10-pound ball and attempted to rip it up the gutter as hard as possible. However, such was the fury of his shot that the ball bounced immediately out of the gutter and still had enough force to knock down all 10 pins. An unlikely strike, but a strike nonetheless. Also, Kate experimented with a new hairstyle. After lunch at McDonald's (very Korean, I know) it was time for work.

After work we met up with our homies, did a bit of Soju drinking at 7-11 then headed to a traditional Korean bar. What makes it Korean? The huge number of girls working behind the bar who chat with you while you drink. I've always found this rather uncomfortable. They rarely speak much English so you either talk to them like they're 4 years old or you don't say anything at all. Despite this, they always seem to light up (genuinely, not the "Hi Guys! Welcome to Raisins!" bulls***) when foreigners come in. Perhaps saying "where are you prom?" or standing in silence is superior to listening to extremely drunk natives complain about their wives and jobs.

We did meet one pretty impressive Uzbek woman working there. She spoke 4 languages (Russian, Uzbek, Korean, and some English) and had been living in Korea for eight and a half years. After 9 years she can get Korean citizenship, which would allow her to emigrate to Canada. This is evidently easier than getting to Canada directly from Uzbekistan. The things you learn at a Korean bar . . .