Parents' Visit Week – Day 6

Day 6 – Thursday

Thursday dawned beautifully through our huge window with a great view of the little harbor in Yeosu.  As I mentioned, I earned us some free breakfast by sleeping on the floor of the hotel, so we meandered down to the “American-style” breakfast buffet.  It wasn’t exactly “American,” but it was a pretty nice spread.  There was some spicy green sausage that Dr. Seuss would have probably enjoyed, and I loved the hazelnut coffee and funny Korean grapes.   

We took the shuttle to the Expo again and got there in time for a light Korean lunch (snack) of udon donkus soup – big udon noodles with breaded pork cutlet pieces.  Yum!  We followed that up with the Peru, Australia, and Russia Pavilions, but the lines were atrocious!  We waited over an hour for Russia, which was a cool exhibit, but not THAT cool.  We wanted to go to Sky Tower to see the desalinated water technology (and have a taste!), but the line was going to be TWO HOURS just to get in one of the TWO elevators that only held about TWENTY people each!  WHO THOUGHT UP THAT PLAN??  I want to punch them in the face... C’mon, folks, it’s a global attraction for thousands and thousands of people a day.  Think. It. Through!  Yeah, we didn’t wait in that line. 

We saw some fun street performers, and even got pictures with some eastern-Europeans on stilts!  There's also a huge puppet on a crane named Yeonani that we were creeped out by took a picture with.  My parents were just as impressed as I was with the stellar digital ceiling, too.  The Expo just had so much to see and do, like I said last time, that there isn't time to do it all in two days even if you're there *one time* and *without lines!*  We had a good time, though, all-in-all.  

We ate again in Argentina, which had my FAVORITEST food ever last time!  We had some empanadas and these amazing hot-dog-ciabatta-sandwich-things with a pico-type salsa... mmmmmmmmmmmm love!  I need to go to Argentina now.  It’s added to my list.  Way to go, tourism department, you did your job at the expo.  (And Lithuania, for that matter.  It’s added to my list too.  Well done, folks.)  Dad didn’t like the sandwich much, but Mom and I were pretty over the moon about the taste and the texture.  We also had some incredible Argentinian wine which made us pretty happy!  We found Dad some Cass after Argentina, so we were all happy and content with our time at the Expo.  We decided to leave on a good note (thank you Argentina!) and forgo the rest of the exhibits and, with them, the brutal lines.

We headed back to get ready to go to Gwangju.  At the bus terminal, we actually ran into the lady I was sitting with on the shuttle the night before!  Small world!  She and her family were visiting from Hong Kong and were headed to Busan.  We were completely crossing paths.  She and her sister were really fun to talk to and we helped them talk to the ticket folks and get where they needed to go. 


We made it safely to Gwangju and, after lugging all that luggage all over the country, we were finally able to deposit my suitcase-care-package at my apartment!  My mom had packed a bunch of stuff I’d asked for, plus my aunt included a real care package for me with Lucky Charms, Texas stuff, and a book with stuffed animal characters to read with my students!  It was so fun to go through it all!!  (Thanks Aunt Snue!!)

My parents checked into the Best Motel, where I stayed my first week, to get their own “love motel” experience.  They even were given the same exact room that I got when I first arrived!  In case you don’t know, love motels are all over Korea and they’re a great, mostly-clean, cheap place to stay a night if you’re traveling.  Since I have a tiny apartment, my parents couldn’t stay with me in Gwangju, so it worked out that they could get the unique Korean experience of a love motel during their trip.

We ended the day with dinner at my favorite galbi place in Pungam Dong (my neighborhood) and made plans to meet the next morning, when my parents got to go to school with me and meet my students! And so ends a good Thursday.   To be continued...

Goodbye Expo 2012!!!

Parents' Visit Week – Day 5

I'm going to try to finish up these last few posts as quickly as I can edit them, cause it's almost been a month since the trip!  I've been pretty busy this month, so they've taken a back burner, but I'll do my best to wrap it up quickly.  Here's Day 5... 

Day 5 – Wednesday

Wednesday was interesting... it was the most frustrating day of the trip because things just didn't go as I planned at all.  Delusions of grandeur, I guess!  I’ll post the jist of it and try to move quickly to Thursday.  

We took our time getting ready, thinking it’d be easy to find something quick to eat.  You’d think we’d have learned.  Nothing is ever open when we’re looking for breakfast/lunch.  Plus, we were told that there was a Bennigan’s in Busan, which was apparently a lie.  We walked around for over half an hour looking for it before finally settling on TGI Fridays right on the beach.  We only ate some appetizers, cause we figured we’d get to the Expo and gorge ourselves on delicious things there... yeah...

After lunch, we headed to the bus terminal.  Turns out that Busan has one of the lamest bus terminals I’ve been to in Korea.  My frame of reference is Gwangju, of course, which is only the 6^th largest city in Korea, but it’s got a rockin’ bus terminal: there are cafes, restaurants, an Imax movie theater, a department store that rivals Nordstrom, etc.  So along those lines, you’d think that the 2^nd largest city in South Korea would have a stellar bus terminal, but you’d be wrong.  (To be fair, there are 2 bus terminals in Busan, but both times I’ve been, I’ve been at this particular station, so I don’t have experience with the other.  It may be lovely.  I don’t know.)  Anyway, we had to wait an hour for the bus to Yeosu to get to the Expo, but we didn’t realize that there was a Paris Baguette café and a Lotteria fast food joint upstairs that we could have waited in (which I found out when I went to the beach a week ago), so we sat for an hour in a grungy hallway on one grungy stool.  How lame.  

Anyway, the bus ride itself was WAY longer than I anticipated for us.  I figured two hours max... and then I was wrong.  When we finally arrived in Yeosu, the bus drove around the city for another half hour after passing the bus station just to get to the rear of the terminal.  Why?  Just, why?

So by the time we got to the hotel, we were pretty grumpy, then we got to our room (which was BEAUTIFUL) and only had 2 single beds (but oh my gosh, the view!).  I ran down to inquire... and it turns out they were all full, blah blah blah, so I’d be sleeping on the floor (no bigs) but I was all “well if I sleep on the floor, what are yall gonna do for me?” and scored us free breakfast the next morning!  15,000 won buffet?  Heck yes!!!  (shout out to the Dave Ramsey class for teaching me to bargain)

We FINALLY got to the Expo at around 8 pm (holy smokes, where did the day go?) and saw the Pavilions for Korea, Lithuania, and Belgium.  Lithuania was one of my favorites last time I was there, and it didn’t disappoint!  The Lithuanian guy that we chatted with was really nice (and cute) and we talked Olympic basketball with him, cause Antonas Kavalauskas is a Lithuanian basketball player who played for my university (Gig’em Aggies) and he was playing for the Lithuanian Olympic team (who ended up losing to Team USA (whoop) but they up in a valiant effort).  

 

We finally ate some food (sausage, fries, and beer) in Belgium, and then headed over to watch the Big O Multimedia Night Show!  We were packed in like sardines and some of the Koreans around us kept mumbling about the megooken (Americans) in the way, but pretty much everyone was in the way of someone else.  It was CRAZY how packed it was!  The show was cool, though, and the fireworks afterwards were SPECTACULAR!!!  I’d be willing to bet you’ve never seen fireworks that awesome.  They just don’t sell them like that in the States, let alone choreograph a production that intense!  They were going off in an astonishing display, all over the sky.  Dad kept toting Mom and me toward the shuttle bus line while we stared and stared at the gorgeous sky.  

Then we waited in line for the shuttle bus for an hour and fifteen minutes.  Holy smokes.

It was mostly a day of waiting for a bus or riding on a bus, with very little awesome thrown in; however, the awesome that did happen was pretty legit. 

Busan - Haeundae Beach

Prosperity piggy that we thought was cute while we wandered around Busan in search of lunch

Our beautiful room in Yeosu!

Just check that view.  Mmm

"Guys, make a face that says we've been on a bus all day and we're really grumpy"

Korea Pavilion

Lithuania Pavilion

Waiting in an absurd line for the shuttle.

Thursday was better.  Stay tuned :)

Yeosu Expo 2012

Have you ever heard of the famous World Fairs of old?  The ones that they show in history books and memorialize in musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis?  Did you also think that they ended a long time ago?  I mean, it'd make sense that they haven't happened in a long time because no one ever talks about the neat-o inventions that happened at World Fairs (the way ice cream cones were invented at the World Fair in St. Louis around 1900 or so)?

Were you thinking that?  Cause that's what I thought.

Turns out I was (or we were, if you were thinking that too) WRONG!

The World Fair changed its name to World Expo around 50 years ago.  From what I understand, it was cause too many companies were hosting their own expos successfully, so the traditional get-together-to-showcase-new-ideas was losing its draw (or something along those lines).  Instead, they started holding the Expos every few years around a central theme each year, with the participating countries bringing their technological advancements to fit the themes, rather than the broad-stroke innovations-of-all-sorts. 

For example, the Expo in Shanghai in 2010 had a wood theme, so each country's pavillion had to do with wood.  The next expo in Milan in 2015 is going to be focused on food!!  Who wants to come with me?!

This year's theme was "The Living Ocean and Coast," so every country brought their take on the ocean theme.  It is happening all summer, through mid-August, in Yeosu, South Korea, only about an hour away from Gwagnju.  I didn't think that it was really a world fair while I was there, cause it was big (too big to see everything in one day, for sure), but it wasn't as big as I expected a WORLD FAIR to be.  Turns out it's a small one, but a legit one nonetheless.  The Shanghai Expo was 3x its size and the Milan Expo will be 4x its size.  Thaaat explains it! 

I had so much fun though!  I'm going to drag my parents to see it when they get here in LESS THAN A MONTH!!!  Hopefully we'll spend two days :)

The basic idea: there's a few big exhibits put on by the host country, like the aquarium, the huge Korea Pavillion, and the robot exhibit.  One of my favorite things was the digital ceiling in the main entry-way.  I didn't know at the time, but the giant photo-filled whale is called the "Dreaming Whale." The Dreaming Whale is comprised of photos taken and uploaded by visitors using their smart phones, getting larger as more photos are uploaded. It's also trained/programed to swim toward you if you shout at it!  (Though how it can hear you with all that din, I don't know.)  I wish I'd known all of that before I went! Technology is super-duper-awesome, right?  Smart phones were a major player in this year's expo.  Many of the pavilions had smart phone interactions, as I learned about after the fact.  So what's the lesson that I learned from all that?  Read up on it before you go! 

And then there are the International Pavilions!  There were sooo many countries represented!  Our goal was to eat and drink our way through the whole world, and we darn near accomplished it.  I didn't know about them until we were well underway, but there are passports that you can buy and collect stamps in each pavilion.  I'll do that next time!  What a neat way to commemorate your trip. 

If you ever get a chance to see one, do it!!  You can join me in Milan in 2015.  I hear Google's bringing some new-fangled "augmented reality glasses" to the party. They overlay what you really see with data about it.  How in the heck?  It'll be neat to see :)  I think Yeosu created an Expo-loving monster in me!

If you want to check out more about the Expo, especially if you're going to be able to visit it, check out this website: http://eng.expo2012.kr/main.html?mobile_at=Y (and make sure you reserve a spot in line to see the big Aquarium or the Korean Pavilion, cause those lines were crazy-mess). 


And now for a smattering of pictures to round out your idea of the Expo!

Blue Yeosu water drop theme character, cause of the ocean theme

Digital ceiling!

Robot exhibit - not as awesome as you'd hope

Viva Mexico

Italy, con gelato

Belgium

Lithuania really brought their A-game!  Thinking out of the box with the amber theme, cause they harvest the beautiful rocks out of the Baltic Sea (ergo: ocean theme, check)

We loved Lithuania

Israel

Denmark

Egypt

India

Band of Indonesians?  Not sure the represented country, they were out in the atrium jammin'

'MURRICAH!

Australia

Turkey! Turkish ice cream and COFFEE!!!

Digital ceiling at night!

The Big O (awkwardly named, right?)

A good night for a water show

Multimedia at its finest :)  Well done, Expo 2012

If you've enjoyed these and you'd like to see more, just check out the facebook album I made.  I posted a few more there ;)