Broey in Korea!

~~ Obviously travel is about going new places; but the more you do it, the more you realize, it's so much more about the people you meet along your way. ~~

Which brings me to Friday, February 18^th ; 3AM.

I was awake well before dawn and on my way to the bus station heading north to meet good old cousin Joe at the Incheon Airport! He thought that he would be meeting Sarah for the first time (in person, although they had talked and exchanged messages online for months) there in the terminal when he arrived. What we didn't tell him though was that Sarah, being the incredible and selfless person that she is, offered to cover work for me so that I might have the honor!

When he came out of the terminal, I snuck up on him with my camera rolling and gave him a loud, “Let the mayham!!.....” In his delirious and jet-lagged state, it took him a long moment of staring at me blankly before he realized what was going on. After about 5 seconds, he smiled and said in a confused voice, “Begin!?” - That's an old thing we picked up from our first back-packing venture years ago. :)

Joe was reasonably WIPED OUT, but we had a serious errand to take care of before we could get him to our hostel in Seoul to relax. We had exactly a one-day window to get our India visa applications turned in and on their way to approval. We had to leave our passports there for 'at least a week' which meant if things went perfectly, we'd still only have a one hour opportunity to pick them up the day before we were scheduled to leave for Vietnam. We had very little room for error.

It ended up taking us a full four hours to get through the whole process. We couldn't find the office, Broey had the wrong passport photos, and the lobby was PACKED, but we toughed through it and nervously left our passports with the embassy just 8 days before we were leaving for a two-month excursion.

Finally, we checked into our hostel, ate a big traditional Korean lunch (including Joe's first real experience with chopsticks) took a long nap and then showered. We felt like new men and were ready to go and meet Sarah at the subway station. She had finished her day covering for me and everything had gone wonderfully smooth!

We decided to dedicate some hours to partying with our new hostel-mates we had met – namely, Luce from France and Leena from Finland. We guzzled 3-foot tall margaritas, sang in our karaoke room for hours and headed for Shisha in the busy college town area of Hongdae, Seoul. This particular shisha house had a new trick for us though and brought us a small dish of bubble soap to blow giant smoke bubbles with. We found this to be wildly entertaining and stayed there into the early hours of the morning. We were enjoying the company of our new-found friends so much that we ended up continuing the party at our hostel until 6 something in the morning.

Finally stumbling to bed, we'd left ourselves about 2 hours to try and sleep before we needed to be at our bus pick-up spot for our scheduled Adventure Korea temple stay at Geumsan-sa. This would be a totally new experience for all of us and we were excited for it, but left ourselves little chance to be feeling good for the event.

Luckily, I was sleep-talking so loudly that I woke Sarah up across the dorm-style hostel room which caused her to note the time and the fact that we had completely overslept. We drunkenly threw our things together and ran to catch our bus. We made it, but in a very fragile state of life.

It turned out to be a really unique and eye-opening learning experience for all of us where we learned some of the ideas, customs and moral-sets that drive the Buddhist lifestyle. We practiced bowing, meditation, and traditional eating style. I had to beg out of a couple of the activities to get my hung-over self caught up on sleep, but overall really enjoyed the first day at the temple.

The main temple at Guemsan-sa. Adventure Korea temple stay February 19th, 2011

After a long morning of similar activities, it was time for everyone else in our group to go, but we stayed behind. Since we were already very near to Daejeon, it didn't make sense to take the train all the way to Seoul. Our plan was to take a city bus from the temple into a near-by town where we could get on a train to Daejeon, but then Stonehead (our grandmaster monk that had been our host all weekend) invited us – in very broken and limited communication – to stay for a quick scenic hike and then tea in his personal chamber! Although we were more than ready to be on our way, there was no way to pass this up. This little bonus quickly proved to be the overwhelming highlight of the weekend for all of us!

Broey and 'Stonehead' up on the viewpoint above his temple complex.

Homemade tea in the grandmaster monk's personal chambers! A really unique experience!

Stonehead brought us to the train station personally and saw us onto our train. Hours later, for the first time, we brought Joe into our temporary hometown of Daejeon. I still had a busy and VERY full week of work left in front of me. Sarah was done with work but had precisely one million things to do in terms of cleaning, laundry, packing, moving out of apartments, sending boxes home, travel plans, doctors' appointments, etc. We felt a little bad that we couldn't be better hosts to Broey during his visit. It turned out to be less vacation and more witnessing our daily lives in Korea as he helped Sarah while I was at work, shadowed me at school for more than a full day, partied with my co-workers and sang plenty of Karaoke.

It was a full, action packed week. We partied lots, worked hard, slept very little but somehow in the end... we got it all done and got to enjoy a nice farewell party with most all of our Korea friends on Thursday night. We had a great dinner at Taco K and one last hurrah at the Shisha House. It was a fun, but very emotional night of memories and good-bye hugs. We were truly blessed to have met such incredible people all year and we'll not forget you guys!!

One last go-round at the Shisha House; Aussie Nic, Northwest Vin and BC Woody. Our going-away party, 02/24/2011

Friday, I headed into my last day of work with backpacks strapped on. Sarah and Joe would later wake up, polish off my apartment (which was THE apartment at this point – tight fit!) and head up to Seoul. They had to be at the Indian embassy between 4 and 5 pm in order to pick up our passports. If there were any hitches in that, our passports would be locked up in Seoul for the weekend and we would be forced to miss our flight to Vietnam and rearrange the first bit of our Southeast Asia trip.... naturally, I was a bit nervous about something going wrong, but I wouldn't know the outcome until they sent me an update online or I met them in Seoul later that night.

School was a laid-back last day. We had our graduation ceremony where I barely got 4 words out of my mouth before I started to cry while Tommy and Sannah giggled to see me reduced to tears. We gave a few tests, played a few games and said many tearful good-byes to my little tykes! I checked facebook one last time to see if I had any updates from Sarah and Joe. Nothing. The embassy had been closed for an hour and they didn't send me anything?? That didn't leave me overly settled but I tried not to worry about it before I knew what the situation had become. Suddenly, the day was over and I was no longer employed by Kids College. I was on my way to Daejeon station for one last time – indefinitely at least.

Me with a big pile of kids taking a break from my last class at Kid's College. Man, I miss these little guys already!!!!

The train station was as jammed as I had ever seen it. I barely got standing room on an already over-booked train and had something of a miserable ride. I hadn't slept all week, was hung-over, worried about the visa and now was to be wedged tightly between 4 Korean strangers for the next hour plus. One nice side-effect of being so crammed in there was that I could actually fall asleep standing up; and did! Soon, I was in Seoul and heading for our hostel.

It took about 40 more minutes of subways and a short walk, but there were Sarah and Joe in the lobby waiting for me; visa'ed passports in hand!! It was a major relief, and they gave me just a moment to enjoy the fact that we had them before adding the details of just how close we came to blowing it! All trains had been sold out, they had to transfer across town the other station where they were able to beg and connive their way onto their own over-booked train. They had to borrow cell phones to contact the embassy and tell them they would NOT be there before closing time. Luckily, the merciful people there agreed to stay open for them. Joe had to run from the taxi and bang on the door frantically, but in the end; we got our passports back at the LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT! With that massive weight off our shoulders, we enjoyed our last night in Seoul (ever?) with our same friends from the week before in that same hostel, Luce and Leena who happend to be back/still at that same hostel!

The next morning, it was off to the Incheon Airport to begin a brand new chapter! Our hope would be to meet Muc at our decided hostel and let the mayhem continue, but a LOT more still had to go perfectly our way for that to happen.