busan

My first week in Korea was spent in Busan. More and more people in Korea live in these huge apartment complexes. The apartment I was in had the main living room area, a small kitchen, a bathroom, a balcony, and three other rooms. The parents stayed in one room, another lady who kind of was like a nanny but more of a friend stayed in another room (last time I was here her husband and child were also there) and then the kids just sleep in the living room. I slept in the third room, which was kind of the computer room/study room. So it was nice, but kind of crowded. And while there is a kitchen table and chairs, the living room has no sitting furniture. Most of the time you just sit on the floor, which is kind of cool. But not for long periods of time when you're not really used to it.

During my time in Busan I got to do a little sightseeing. First we went to Haewondo, which has a famous beach. We didn't go to the actual beach, but we went to this really beautiful area next to it. It was kind of like a really small hill/peninsula. It was covered with these beautiful trees that are kind of tall and mostly just have a bunch of leaves a the top, but not so much on the trunk. The coast there was rocky, but very beautiful. There was also a lighthouse and the APEC building. I don't know too much about it, but there was some big summit meeting about the world economy with various world leaders in 2005 and it was held there. There was a picture there of President Bush, along with other world leaders, wearing traditional Korean dress and I thought that was pretty funny because he's so... white (I mean I am too, but anyway).

Afterwards we went to this really nice bakery in Korea. There are a lot of bakeries in Korea that sell bread and a lot of really nice little pastries and cakes. We stopped for snacks and drinks and met a few other people. One of the people we met was the architect for the APEC building along with the city hall for Busan. Pretty amazing. Still, he wasn't as amazing as the red bean shaved ice we had. Really good. The bakery was kind of like a cafe too. There was an outdoor seating area and they played music (popular American music from maybe 10 years ago like Aaliyah and Destiny's Child) and the area was decorated really nicely. There were these wooden planters that were painted in nice pastel colors and had little phrases written on them. Some were in French, and some were in English, such as "It's nice as it is genuine, the savor full of love." Haha, I love it. I also went to the downtown area in Busan. During the day it is super humid in Korea, so I guess people go out a lot at night. Even though it was dark, the streets in the downtown were packed with stores and street vendors selling phones, socks, hats, belts, clothes, food, whatever. There were lots of restaurants and bars and other stores. Really there were so many stores, and each building is several stories. So there are stores on upper floors and lower floors below the ground. And there were young people everywhere, it was a lot of fun just walking around.