January 13

Okay well 4 duty sections and 3 days in Korea. One section got the lucky straw and had none. One had the almost lucky straw and only missed a half day.

Okay we got lost on the mountain..yes I will retell this story often. Already told it five times. So lets start from the beginning.

Woke up for duty muster in the morning to tell us we're done and turn it over to the next section at 0630.

All the friends are asleep. Stevens is in the duty section decides to go back to sleep. I went to bed early so I got 8 hours....i'm a little mad. Watched tv shows on laptop till Perschbacher woke up. Rodriguez (another SWSCC drop, he was in PT back home before I left for boot camp actually) was up. Stevens won't wake up. Finally, we decide to ditch him since he's in a bad mood. Got off the ship, went to the bus got into Busan. Browse around the knock-off shops there. Got a pair of Ray Bans (actually Rae Bans with the e looking like a y) cost me 3 bucks though. Found the sweetest hoodie ever (mere it was a cosby sweater hoodie....with skulls all over it)

Oh the cosby sweater is still huge in japan. Most teenagers dress like hipsters from America. Most older (30+) people dress in a mix of modern meets 80s meets grandpa. America is huge. LOTS of NY Yankees, NYPD, and Chicago Bears hats around. There's people wearing hats in English but the English makes no sense like University of Nebraska, California or stuff like that.

Okay so I bought a newsboy type old school hat. With my biker jacket. And leather gloves. I seriously looked like a hitman for the Irish mafia. Plus Persch is 6'4" and Rodriguez is tall too and we absolutely TOWER over everyone. Yeah people definitely stared and seemed intimidated by us.

Okay so got on the subway. Went to the fish market. Cool but unless you're buying fish to cook well...it just smelled. Lots of vendors and a very KOREAN place to go to though. Got back on the subway and went to their big outdoor shopping district. Very modern and western but no Americans oddly. Texas street, where we got dropped off is like an Engrish version of what some Korean THOUGHT America was. This shopping district was closer to the real thing than a lot of people imagined. Saw Micky D's and just had to stop since I was jonesing for a burger and every Korean vender either just serves small bite sized snacking stuff that's only enough to tide you over OR they serve it in a way that forces you to nibble away over 45 min (like Korean bbq). Ate a Big Mac in about 10 seconds and the people in the resturaunt looked at me like I unhinged my jaw like the monster from Alien and inhaled the burger. Even and McDonald's people slowly pick away at their food.

Okay so lost on the mountain. This point we were navigating by a cartoon tourist map that had the subway system on it. Saw a temple next to a stop by the end of the line so we're like lets go there. Cool. Got off. We're walking about a mile around the outskirts of the city and the streets are getting steeper as this neighborhood was on the side of a hill turning into the mountains. So we walk about a mile and a half and get out of the city into the hills and we're pointing to the map and they (Korean people) point us down this road. Ok well on the cartoon map it doesn't look all that far. So we're thinking it has to be just around the first bend in that mountain road. WRONG. Its about 3 miles uphill. Half-way up we come to a fork in the road and choose the wrong turn. This road parallels the other one so when it dead ends we're like okay lets just cut across to the other road. After trekking through what I'm pretty sure was farmers' backyards, we find out you can't get back to the other road without backtracking. So at this point we're thinking, we have WAY to much invested in this so far. End up making it and there's this 1500 year old buhdist temple. But it's kind of lame since there's no foliage (duh its winter) and no snow. Either of those would make it look pretty but now its just barren and dead. So we ran into the tour TO that temple from the ship (the tour stopped at like 3 cultural stops this being one of them. The OTHER tour went to this magestic seaside temple on the cliffs BUT there was no train or buses that stopped near there.
Sad day. So we get off the bus get on the train. Shop around some more. Find a Korean bbq place. Completely trash their grill.

See Koreans ONLY cook the meat on their grill and its easy to clean. Us dirty Americans are used to "seasoning" our skillets and grill tops by just heating it then scrapping the ash off before we cook the food. Well that happens because WE put a ton of stuff in the grill with the meat. All the vegetables got tossed on their with all the dipping sauces to cook with the pork. We took about a 1/3 of the meat, poured beer into a bowl with it and let I marinate while we made the other food then put that on the grill. Needless to say their grill was DIRTY and we kept on getting crazy looks with the whole beer marinating thing.

Made it back to the boat. Last ones on as a matter of fact from our department. (We were ON TIME).

Anyway that was the great adventure.

Good times alex

P.S. Oh I should mention I didn't BUY the cosby hoodie. See Koreans don't make my SIZE. Most sizes are below 100. I'm a 110. Its like putting on everything and it's a SMALL. It took persch about an hour to find a jacket that fit him. Found a big and tall shop there BUT it was just suits.

Also, The four of us decided that we're going to get fitted for suits at one of these ports and walk out on liberty all Reservoir Dogs style and refer to ourselves and Mr. White and Mr. Orange. IT. Will. Be. Awesome.
Cue epic slow motion walk.