Korean Cab Driver

A selfie-obsessed seat neighbor. A no-nonesense Korean cab driver. Two grannies gossiping while taking a break from a hike. Yes, I've met all sorts of colourful characters in Busan, South Korea, and I've only been here for one day so far.

My seat neighbor was one of the two worst kinds of seat neighbors. The two types of seat neighbors I dread are the extremely chatty ones who talk to you from tarmac to tarmac, and the obnoxiously rude ones. Yes, people, there is nice middle ground. My seat neighbor was a Korean girl who looked to me to be about 20. However, she may have been 40 for all I know- Asian women are blessed with wrinkle-free baby skin until they are like, 70. I want those genes... Anyway, I was sitting in the aisle and she had the window seat. Instead of saying "excuse me" in any language or at the very least gesturing to the window seat so that I could get up and provide her access to her seat, she climbed over me and whacked me in the face with her purse and didn't say a word. Real nice. She then proceeded to take the pillow from the spare seat between us, because of course I wouldn't want it, and then she put all of her belongings on the spare seat. Real nice. When the dreaded turbulence of death started, all I could think was that she was the last person I'd want to crash sitting next to. Because yes, I always assume that turbulence equals inevitable crash.

Prior to taking off, she spent about 10 minutes arranging every single strand of hair on her head and practicing a number of pouty faces for a number of selfies she took. What is this world coming to?

Dear God, please make this woman stop

Anyway... eventually I landed, giddy to be in a brand new, shiny country. I immediately loved it, but felt like I was back at square one as far as being completely unable to communicate. It felt like I JUST got to the point where I could understand and converse even the slightest bit in Japanese. Time to start all over. I blew through customs quicker than a determined tumbleweed, and was ready to head to my destination.

That is one determined tumbleweed.

The first thing I came to adore about the lovely city of Busan was the abundance of free WiFi. Seriously, Japan needs to get on that. Even when I do find free WiFi in Japan, it is extremely slow. I know, I know- first world problems.

It's a hard-knock life. Just ask Annie.

So back to my story! I planned to take the metro. I had it all mapped out. But, sometimes, plans change. In this case, someone changed my plans for me. As I exited the airport, a stout little Korean man began yammering to me. I realized he was asking if I needed his taxi services, and I said I was alright, but he didn't understand me and kept insisting, so I asked how much it would be and he kept saying "one zero." I didn't know if he meant 10,000 won, or 10 won, or 100 won or what other mixture of ones and zeros he meant. A little fuzzy on the conversions still, I caved and let the determined little man take my suitcase and place it in the trunk. As I got begn to get in the back seat, he shook his head and wagged his finger at me and pointed at the passenger seat. Okay, sure, I'll sit next to you, sir.

The ride was a hilarious event during which he talked on and on in Korean, and I replied in English, and I had no idea what he was saying whatsoever. At one point, he reached in the glovebox and handed me a piece of gum. I hope he wasn't trying to tell me something about my breath. Anyways, once we arrived I realized that yes, the 30 minute cab ride was only $10. I loved the little man so much that I gave him a little extra because he was so rad.

The next morning I decided to conquer one of Busan's many peaks. I almost diverted from my plan, however, when I stepped outside into the frigid air.

I have been in Colorado, Minnesota and Chicago in the wintertime. I know cold. This cold made all of those colds look like a Miami beach vacation. This was the kind of cold that violently rips through your layers, renders your handwarmers useless and freezes you to the deepest depths of your core, down to your very soul. Okay, that sounds dramatic. But it's not too far off. The frigidness of the air was augmented greatly by the harsh wind, as well.

Finally, I decided it was all about the attitude. I was all like:

Actually, it did, like five minutes ago...

Tune in next time to read about my epic hike!

 

I'm Cold

Yep, I understand the ominous foreboding from everyone regarding the oncoming cold. The cold is no longer oncoming; it is here. And it sucks.

In complete and total honesty, it isn’t that cold outside. It climbs up to about 50 degrees during the sunny part of the day, and then dips to 30 or 40 at night. It could be a lot worse. The challenging part is the lack of heating in Japanese buildings.

At school, warmth and colour are constantly absent from my hands. The same goes for my face, always void of colour. I have to drink coffee or tea at all times to ward off shivering fits making me look like a living maraca. Sometimes I do dishes in the kitchen just to enjoy the feeling of warm water cascading over my skin.

The major head scratcher for me is that the school always leaves the windows open. I really can’t for the life of me understand the reasoning behind this action. Because of this, at times it is warmer outside than in.

I would have abandoned the gym entirely if not for the promise of five hot tubs and a sauna awaiting me there after my workout. The internal heat generated by the workouts alone is motivation enough to keep moving by any means necessary. I ride my bike about ten times faster now just to stay warm.

I honestly can’t figure it out, though. Even when it isn’t that cold outside, it feels like it is a Siberian, frozen wasteland to me. I wear the same hat, scarf, gloves and boots as I do in Colorado, but somehow they seem a powerless defense against the frigid air here. Maybe the Japanese wind and air have a mystical ability to render American winter wear useless. That is the only logical answer, really.

Winter is Coming

I feel like I’m in a never-ending episode of Game of Thrones where everyone constantly reminds me that winter is coming. Just like in the show, I feel like I am waiting in suspense and starting to wonder if it is ever going to come. Everyday is full of foreboding comments like “oh no… it’s starting to get cold already…” (to which my mind automatically attaches an ominous “dun, dun, dun!”). Japanese artwork is full of depictions of people’s excitement over the return of spring, because it means an end of the dreaded winter season. There are countless symbols of springtime that are all seen in an overwhelmingly positive light for this same reason.

On the plus side, the arrival of the cold, snowy season means the coming of exciting things like Christmas carols on the radio, pretty lights on trees, and Starbucks Christmas Blend coffee (even in Japan). Yet, it also signifies the coming of horrible weather, as I am constantly warned. The way Japanese people where I live speak of the oncoming season with dread and expressions of fear as if they were discussing a forthcoming zombie invasion fill me with anticipatory nerves. Perhaps my one jacket, scarf, and pair of mittens will not suffice after all. When I packed my modest amount of winter clothing in preparation for my stay in Japan, I did so intentionally, figuring I wasn’t about to head into a Siberian wasteland. The way a teacher at my school described winter here was particularly concerning. He said “oh yes, big, big wind from Siberia blow down. So cold in winter, people no go outside. Stay inside with book.” Oh, dear…

Perhaps I will discover that, similar to my being horrible at living in a rainy climate, I will fail completely when trying to deal with the cold in a place where central heating isn’t really a thing. Foreboding visions of myself with clattering teeth shivering beneath an unsubstantial number of blankets plague my mind daily.

Bad grammar aside, this will be me

Not so much...

On that note, maybe everyone is overreacting. In Northern India there was no central heating in my home stay and I managed to do just fine by constantly wearing thick socks and a sweatshirt even indoors. However, that was spring, and temperatures often surpassed 60 degrees on good days. Here, the average winter weather involves harsh winds, snow, and bone-chilling cold. Or so I hear. At least, unlike in Game of Thrones, I don’t have to worry about any ice zombies heading for my town. At least, not that I know of…

Not the ice zombies!

Mocked By Plastic Deer

After informing new acquaintances that I am from Colorado, the first question they ask without fail is "so, you do you ski or do you board?" This question never seemed just to me- where is the "neither" option? Yet, being presented with an either/or scenario, I typically opt with the former and identify myself as a skier. I usually leave out the part where I am one of those skiers that makes four-year-old children look like Olympic athletes by comparison and cause those with higher aptitudes for the sport (essentially, everyone else on the run at the time) to sharpen their senses in my presence as I tend to unintentionally cause a lot of accidents.

The motivating factors to actually get me to ski are scant. Usually, I am convinced by friends and begrudgingly head to the ski rental shop where my mind begins to cloud over with a sense of dread at the day to follow. The causes of the aforementioned dread range from fear that my hands and feet which already have poor circulation will incur frostbite and require amputation from the insane cold and wind to the simple fear of hitting an ice patch (which tend to comprise the ski runs at Eldora) and falling over dead. Of course, there is always the fear of hitting a renegade tree like Sonny Bono. The list goes on, but you can use your imagination to come up with the rest of my ski-induced fears. I'll just say I've thought of basically all scenarios.

I'm not sure of the exact basis from which my ski-related fears stem. I could trace it back to my childhood days, when my parents enrolled me in ski school. At some point during the lessons, my little 6-year-old self decided she had had enough and booked it out of there to find Mommy and Daddy- an excursion which failed and reduced me to a fit of tears and a sense of abandonment. If my timorous nature did not stem from that instance, perhaps it came from an incident which occurred a couple of years ago in the infamous "Fun Gully" run at Eldora. Things were going surprisingly well for me that day- I had not caused anyone to wipe out in a desperate attempt to avoid hitting me as I swerved down the runs and I had not injured myself. The combination of these two things led me to acquire a faulty sense of overconfidence. As you can likely infer from the name "Fun Gully," it is a green run designed for little kids with tiny jumps and creepy, plastic deer watching as you weave through the trees. 

My friends and I had gone down Fun Gully a couple of times without incident. At the end of our trip, when Eldora was about to close, my friend and I opted to take the Fun Gully path one more time. My confidence boosted by lack of negative incidents during the rest of the day, I decided to pick up my speed a little bit over the mini "jumps" along the gully (if you can even call them jumps- they were more like slight raises of snow about 6 inches tall. I probably shouldn't say that- it makes my situation even more pathetic). Well, it turns out my skills had not actually improved- I hit one of the bumps at a slight angle and went flying, landing directly onto my left shoulder. 

My friends laughing at me was only made worse as I could feel the steely-cold stares of the plastic deer as they mocked me while I was down. Anyways, the outcome was Marisa in physical therapy to try and set her shoulder straight and it never entirely healed. I cannot express how overjoyed I was when Fun Gully was closed during my most recent ski trip. 

Don't do it! (Photo from staticflikr.com)