Here, where it's been rainy most of August and you actually get excited when you wake up to sunlight, "Let's go to the beach this weekend" isn't as good of an idea as it sounds. Still, we put our names on the list for the Jong-Sa Beach Tour.
The morning of the expedition dawned hot and cloudy. Me and Joe and a bunch of people from Joe's unit got on a bus at 8:00 in the morning (and Joe bought me a bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit while I found seats for us, but I was still kind of sad 'cause of having no drink, but then I would've had to use the bathroom halfway through the drive, anyway.) A couple of hours on the bus went by, and it started raining, and then the bus drove 200 feet off the highway and parked in the beach's parking lot.
It had just stopped raining when we got off the bus and claimed spots under umbrellas so our stuff wouldn't get wet. Then we went to the water and walked in it. Me and Joe found a lot of cool rocks and I put them all in the pocket of his bathing suit, which was bright green and had palm trees on it, which you may know isn't exactly Joe's style, but there wasn't much of a bathing suit selection at the PX. I love Joe because his pockets are usually for my stuff.
The water was so clear you could see your feet even when you were knee-deep. Even once we got in the water up to our chins, we could see our feet down there.
Joe and some other guys tossed a football around, then I joined in but was too scared of the ball to catch it and I really couldn't throw very well, but it was fun anyway. Then we all played in the water for a while. Then we rode an inflatable water-thing towed by a JetSki. Then I got to go in a shower tent which had warm water and felt phenomenal after I was cold and sticky from the ocean. Then we ate lunch, which was a buffet of baked beans, rolls, mac & cheese, and delicious barbecued beef and some ribs, all of which was only $8 per person. I went back for seconds on the meat and would have gone back for thirds if I hadn't been so worried about looking like a weirdo.
Then we ran out of things to do.
The beach we were on was actually a smallish part of a larger beach, and the larger part of the beach was the Korean part. We decided to walk over there.
The Korean side was a lot more crowded. There were about eight of us, and I don't know about the others, but I felt really outnumbered and out-of-place and also the bottoms of my feet hurt because the sand on those beaches was pretty sharp.
We walked past a big group of young Koreans playing a game which seemed to involve trying to prevent the opposing team from hitting the females on your team with a ball that was being thrown back and forth really hard. We stopped to watch. A few of the players waved at us, and we waved back and kept watching. The group of the eight of us spectating drew more spectators. We moved along once that became boring.
It was still awkward being the only Americans on the beach (except for one other couple we passed.) Then, when we were walking past a large tent where an event had been held and people were packing up the stuff under the tent, one Korean guy in his thirties or maybe forties noticed us and got INCREDIBLY EXCITED. He started fluttering around us, saying "Oh my gosh" and "Wow" and other American-ey phrases which I don't remember, and I think speaking Korean. There were some older ladies under the tent who just gave him disgusted looks. He had us all hold up our hands with peace signs and took a few pictures of our group. Then he had someone take a picture of him with us, again with the peace signs. (It seems that Koreans consider the peace sign to be super hip, and, oddly, it's used WAY more over here than it is in the U.S.) The whole time, he was smiling and fluttering and "Oh my gosh"ing.
After the pictures, we said 'bye and walked away, giggly and confused.
The people we thought were staring as we walked along the beach...actually had been staring. It wasn't just paranoia brought about by being the only Americans among 24,536 Koreans.
As we headed back to the American side of the beach, I was still in awe. "If we were in the States and saw a group of Koreans, we wouldn't have gotten all excited or starey," I said to Joe. Then I had a brilliant thought. My theory: "America's a melting pot. Tons of different cultures. I guess we're used to seeing all sorts of people, and they're not."
So that was my culture lesson for the day.
And the Pacific Ocean is cold.
Oh - something else cool - the sun came out as our bus left the parking lot to take us home.
No comments:
Post a Comment