KSU Club Night~ Busan

"BUSAN, South Korea -- Saturday the 25th will witness an evening (and probably early morning) of the peninsula’s top hip hop spread out between Vinyl Underground and Blue Monkey in Kyungsung. $10 gets you in both bars with a free drink in each and a long night of rappers spinning their yarns and DJ’s scratching."

The Deserts and Da Meegook Movement are playing their final out-of-town concert this coming weekend, and I know they've been working hard at getting ready for it. Stephanie and I are going to Busan Friday night (the boys will be playing/watching another concert in Daegu), and we'll catch the band in the exciting Kyungsung University District Saturday night. It should be a great show. There's a huge lineup, featuring:

*THE TROUBLE MAKERZ
*PINNACLE THEHUSTLER w/ DJ TOM SLICK
*BLACK ILUMIN & JUDONOMI
*DJ FENNER
*Da MEGOOK MOVEMENT
*THE DESERTS
*SAMMY CLAY

To find out more about some of these artists, check out Busan's English News Website here: http://www.busanhaps.com/article/hip-hop-descends-kyungsung

Parent's Visit- Busan

After Daegu, we took the bus to Busan for two nights. We had a great hotel, Sunset Hotel, right on Haeundae Beach. The weather was great the first day, so I'm glad we did a lot of sightseeing then, because the second day was rainy and a bit cooler.

It was so nice being on the beach, the three of us enjoyed walking on the boardwalk and watching the numerous boats out at sea. There weren't many people on the beach, since it was a Thursday, but there were a ton of adorable students going to the Haeundae Aquarium, and they all wanted to say "hi" to us.

We did see two "touristy" sights on Thursday, the Busan Tower and Jalgachi Fish Market, both near the port downtown. Mom and Dad really enjoyed the $3 trip up to the top of the tower- the view of the port is stunning. There are so many boats and containers! We must have taken hundreds of pictures between us.



The Fish Market was something I'd always been meaning to see whenever I visited. It was much larger than I expected. The first floor had lots of vendors selling crab, prawns, fish, oysters, clams, and various other sea creatures. We knew that we wanted to buy crab, so I was able to ask how many we should buy for three people, and the ladies advised us to buy two. I think we chose just the right amount.

Another lady took our two King Crabs up to the second level, where we had them prepared for just a little more. While it took longer than we expected (but still not too long), it was worth the wait. It was the best, freshest, sweetest crab I've ever had. It was simply steamed, and they gave us some scissors to help crack the shell. We didn't talk too much during the meal, we were enjoying it too much! By the time we finished, we were so sticky and the table was covered with bits of crab.



Friday brought with it rainy weather, so we entertained ourselves by exploring Shinsaegae and being interviewed by the Busan English Radio channel (which I'll try to post later). Busan's such a fun town, and I'll be going back sometime this summer to see Haeundae in it's prime.

Haeundae Sand Festival (해운대해수욕장)

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to go to the Haeundae Sand Festival. 해운대해수욕장 (Haeundae Beach) is the most famous beach in the country. It's located in Busan, and is about 1.5 km long.

Haeundae Beach is incredibly popular during the hot summer months, and is known for it's numerous beach umbrellas.



I spent the weekend with my friend Neil, who visits Gwangju quite often. He's got an amazing apartment (albeit small) at Minam Station, in central Busan. It was good to see him. This is a view from his helipad atop the 27th story early Saturday morning:



We went out for lunch the day of the sand festival at a local burger joint, Burts Breeze, very close to the beach. It's been about 9 months since I'd had a good burger, and this one came loaded! It was impossibly huge to take a bite of.



Here are some pictures from the sand festival and my captions below:


Ajuma's practicing safe sun.


Lot's of Koreans don't have swimming suits, so they just wear their clothes.


We didn't realize how cold the water was until we got our feet wet!


Pretty impressive! This was at the main entrance to the beach.


These sand sculptures were pretty big and it was neat to see them still sculpting them. Wonder how long they last...

For more pictures, check out: http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=2208360&id=59501140

Food of the Week- Dakgalbi- 닭갈비

When I traveled to 부산 (Busan)a few months back, my friend Dinah was very excited to take me to eat 닭갈비 (Dak-galbi). It is one of her favorite Korean foods, and I'd have to say, I really enjoyed it also. Here are Gabe and Dinah nearing the end of our meal.



닭갈비 is a stir fry chicken dish with lots of flavors. This is cooked in the center of the table for everyone to have easy access to, and it is usually cooked by the waiter or waitress. You just get to sit back and watch them prepare it for you.

The chicken is pretty spicy, but theres lots of other ingredients, like cabbage, sesame leaves, leeks, sweet potatoes, dduk (rice cakes), and the base sauce, yang nmum jang (a combo of chili pepper paste, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, pepper, and sugar).

The mix is cooked for about 10-15 minutes. At the very end, the rice is added and it gets crispy. Because of the spices, I'd definitely recommend having some 맥주 (Mekju/Beer) on hand to cut the spice!

"I can't wait to have fish come and eat my feet!"

I decided that it was about time to visit my good friend Dinah in Busan last week. I bought a bus ticket for Friday night, and got there a little late. Traffic on the roads were especially bad because this was the weekend of the 14th annual PIFF festival (Pusan International Film Festival). I happend to be riding the bus with two other EPIK teachers from Gwangju, Brian and Carleigh. A lot of other people from Gwangju were going to Busan too (Brian and Emily, Alex and Allie, Gabe, me, Carlo, Ann, Amanda, Shabana, Amandeep, and Mechele) but everyone traveled separately for the most part.

When I got in Friday, we went basically straight out to one of the downtown areas in Busan. We went to two places, Keno-eye and Ghetto Bar. It wasn't really that Ghetto! I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen for a while, Dinah, Ben, Neil, and Natalie, and got introducted to a lot of other Busan EPIK teachers. It made for a good but late night (we got back to Dinah's apartment at 6 am!).

Saturday we slept most of the day. We finally got out of bed around 1, and left around three. We met one of Dinah's friends from church, John, and he showed Gabe, Dinah, and I around town. We saw the Jung-gu area of town. Highlights there included Yongdusan Park, Jagalchi Fish Market area, and Busan tower. We also went to a huge market area, but I can't remember the name off the top of my head. We went up to the top of Busan tower (118 m), and got a good view of the port. Busan has the 5th largest container port in the world, and the biggest in Korea. It was a lot of fun to see the boats coming in. I took a lot of pictures and will post them soon.

We met some friends for dinner in a different part of town. It was really good- fried rice, chicken, and spicy sauce. It is called DakGalbi, or 달갈비. We got to see Brian, Emily, Neil, Allie, and Alex. Dinah and I ducked out of dinner a little early to get our feet eaten by fish.

We went to Dr. Fish, a place that is similar to a Borders or Barnes and Nobles. However, they have an area where for 2,000 won you can get your feet eaten by fish. What happens is you wash your feet, and put them in a tank where there are at least a hundred small fish. They come and eat the dead skin off your feet. At first, Dinah and I were shrieking with laughter and causing a comotion. It tickled so much! It was the strangest feeling. It almost felt like you were getting poked with a needle all over but it didn't hurt at all. I took a few video clips of that too. It was quite the experience. Once we got used to the sensation, it was a lot of fun. It would make for a great first date! I'd really like to find one of those places here in Gwangju. We stayed for about 30 minutes, but we could have stayed 2 hours if we wanted. My feet did feel a lot smoother after just the 30 minutes though!

Saturday night we took it easy and checked out the Gwangalli Beach area. That part of town is known for the Diamond Bridge which lights up and is quite beautiful. There were plenty of bars and cafe's to choose from, but the Busan's crowd's favorite is Thursday Party. It was pretty fun, and it was good to have the Gwangju group back with the Busan group.

There was a person selling fireworks on the beach, and Alex really like lighting those off. It made for some great pictures. It was a really good time, but we headed home early (2am) because we wanted to do church in the morning.

Dinah goes to a place called ICC, so we made it there by 10:30 am on Sunday morning. It is a church for foreigners and is non-demoninational to accompany everyone. It was pretty nice and the people were really welcoming.

We wanted to go to a place in Haeundae Beach (often the beach is compared to Wikiki) for lunch, but kinda ran out of time. Instead we got Burger King there. The beach is the headquarters for PIFF, and Dinah and I had our picture taken on the red carpet where the stars come and stand to promote their films. That was pretty cool. We didn't have time to see any movies, but that was okay with me. I've heard that between 75-80 countries are represented at the fest, and Josh Hartnet was even in town promoting a film. It is a really big deal for Busan, and it is the largest film fest in Asia.

Gabe and I got the bus back at 3:30 on Sunday, and we were both pretty tired. I'll be sure to put up pictures soon so you can see the city!