Bus Driver Blues (June 21)

• Today I spent SO many hours on a bus! Up way too early to go to Daegu (1 h 15 m). Then we rendezvous-ed at the POE office and boarded our chartered buses, which we rode to Pyeongtaek (4 h). This is a naval base that has been classified as a city, because of the number of servicemen that live there. We went to a memorial and a museum – which were both pretty cool, BUT 1) it was extremely hot, 2) the museum was all in Korean, 3) we weren’t really allowed to take pictures and 4) we kept getting shuffled on and off the bus to different areas around the base, which was annoying. After all that, we went to the Cheonan Ship. This was actually very cool. The ship was destroyed by a North Korean torpedo in 2010, but the pieces were recovered in the months following. What made this visit interesting for me is that this happened so recently…the conflict between North and South Korea is still a real threat. And the remnants of the ship are very jagged, crude and tangible. In a weird way, the colors of the rust and twisted steel were quite pretty. So after that, we got back on the bus to go to another military place (1 hr 30 m). This one was kind of weird. We arrived and were shuffled into an auditorium where we watched a slideshow/video about helicopters and weapons, which was totally in Korean. And before it started we were warned not to repeat anything we heard…good thing I wasn’t really paying attention or I could spill Korea’s military secrets all over the internet. After all that, we did get to go in some helicopters that they had out for us to “play” in, which were pretty cool. Though one of the military guys described one of them, which was made in 1988, as being almost 30 years old…um, NO SIR THAT MACHINE IS NOT ALMOST 30. After this place, we climbed back on the buses, rode to the hotel we were staying at (2 h), and ate dinner. And then we got started with the after-party :) It was so fun because there was just enough drinking, many new drinking games and it was a fabulous way to get to know new people. I just wish we’d had his trip earlier this term so we could have had more time to spend with new friends. But it was fantastic to hang out and the weather was perfect, so we partied outside, where no one could tell us to be quiet.