The problem with teaching on this island is that you can develop a solid reputation for ten years, and all it takes to get kicked out of the country is driving your car into the ocean.
Two weeks ago me and a friend, Aaron, were supposed to get picked up and go to a pension.
Aaron Demay made a big point that he wanted it to publicized that he went to Udo island, to prove that he DOES take advantage of the natural beauty of the place. Here is photographic proof that he spent a weekend on Udo:
Anyway, at around 2 in the morning we were both really drunk and wandering around a deserted (not desert) island until we found a building with lights. (ADDENDUM: Lindsay Drinkard was with us as well). I wasn’t wearing any shoes and my toe started bleeding. The first lighted building we found was the hospital. I waltzed in and, surprise! Somebody we knew-a foreigner-was also in the lobby.
“Hello! Hey! Ho there!” I shouted. “We’re staying with you in the pension! Where’s the pension?”
“I can’t talk right now, my best friend is in serious condition,” they replied.
I hate it when that happens.
But eventually we got a ride in an ambulance back to the pension for a miserable night’s sleep on the floor (with a bloody toe and my contacts in-damn).
The next morning I asked about what happened.
“How’s your friend?”
“Oh, they’re going to be fine. They have a cast on their arm but that’s about it.”
“What happened?”
“They drove their car into the ocean.”
I thought this was a joke. Then we went outside and saw a tow truck hauling the car out of the harbor. So it wasn’t a joke any more, but that didn’t make it any less funny.
As it turns out, me and Aaron (the other Aaron, I’m not referring to myself in third person. Although it does help to have people refer to you by a contrived and bombastic nickname like “Dakota” when there’s another Aaron around) were the culprits, sort of. Indirectly.
Alcohol was probably the more direct culprit here. Although the driver passed their breathalizer test, which might have been nearly as miraculous as the fact that they survived with not much more than a mild scraping.
The pension holders asked this driver to go pick us up. The driver wasn’t very happy about this. So she wasn’t in the fullest capacity when, as the road veered left, she turned left too soon, missed the road completely, and drove into the water.
The second-hand story goes that she was knocked unconscious by the immediate impact, and that only when the car hit a boat did she come to again.
Her reaction to the whole episode the next day was really inspiring.
“This is the last time I go out of my way to help friends,” she muttered, which is a great attitude to have. There’s a lot of societal and peer pressure, when you go through a near-death experience, to have to dedicate yourself to being a better person, or at least think about the choices that brought you to where you are at that point.
It’s refreshing to find that, instead of trying to better yourself, at least one person has taken such a moment to become less generous than before the incident.
Now, onto sunsets:
The hill to the far left, just above the heads of the boys, is the big volcano Hallasan. The smaller mound to the furthest right is Jimibong, an oreum on the water which offers great views and I was going to climb it the next day. Then China sent some yellow dust eastward and instead I stayed on the beach. Here’s “Jimi” again:
There are a lot more Udo photos, hopefully I’ll dump them onto the blog later this week.
I’m fully moved into my apartment and I’ll have to write about that too. Yesterday I saw “Snow White,” a really boring film but Charlize Theron is beautiful and bitchy and she can be my evil queen whenever the opportunity arises. All I ask in return is continued access to the Mets on my laptop.
DID I MENTION JOHAN SANTANA PITCHED A NO-HITTER?
Now I did!
Back to Jeju: the movie theaters up north in Shin really suck. Back in Seogwipo, you can sneak into almost any movie you want. But they’ve designed the Jeju theaters so that you exit the theater entirely upon completion of the film. I was really looking forward to seeing bits and pieces of “Men in Black” again or “Prometheus” into I got bored. Oh well.
I’ll wait until I take pictures to write something substantial about my new apartment but I will say that it’s really great to be moving in to a place designed for a couple for several reasons:
1. The apartment is designed for a couple, so its basically twice as large (at least) as it needs to be to accommodate me.
2. They were a couple so at least one person gave a shit about what the place looked like. Hopefully this will inspire me to do the same.
Culture Time 