Meet Josh near library. Have a cup of coffee before boarding #13 Bus towards Suwon station. Go to Burger King and get a Bulgogi burger before meeting Brett, Jess, and Matt on the second floor of the station. Head to the platform and board a subway train bound for Seoul. Relish in the light, easy conversation amongst American friends after a long week of slowing down and carefully enunciating my English.
Get off train at Anyang Station. Struggle to find the long distance bus for Ganghwa Island amidst the chaos of the city. Meet some nice police officers that point us in the right direction. Find the bus. The destination is spelled only in Korean. I consider how helpless I’d be if I never took time to learn how to read the language. Make a last minute stop at Family Mart for Cass before boarding the bus and departing the city.
We laugh and joke jovially. Halfway into the trip a man in a black suit boards the bus. He doesn’t appear drunk but he is starting a loud argument with a woman at the front of the bus. We stare interested but don’t interfere. I take out my camera and begin recording video. The argument escalates dramatically and we theorize as to what it’s about. Still we don’t interfere. The man slaps the woman forcefully across the face. Brett and I interfere. The man apologizes and gets off the bus.
The bus arrives at a deserted bus station on Ganghwa Island. We spot a map ten feet tall that is spelled on in Korean. Again I am thankful that my companions and myself have taken the time to learn how to read. We hail a cab and drive to Donmak beach.
It is dark. Nearly ten-o-clock at night. The stretch of ocean property appears to be a place for beach goers but it is deserted save for a random couple here and there. Evidence suggests that peak vacation season for Koreans has come and went. We buy food and drinks, find a place to set up a tent, and pick an open spot in the sand. The first thing we notice is that the ocean is gone. There is a sandy beach that runs down to a noticeable water line but it stops at thick brown mud stretching out as far as the eye can see. It is as if a hole opened far out in the seabed, draining all of the water from the coast.
We build a fire on the beach. No permits. No harassment from police or neighbors. Just starry night, cool breeze, and crackling flames – a priceless moment of freedom rarely afforded in the modern age. We talk and laugh. In time three Korean fellows join us. Their company is entertaining and adds an inimitable dimension to the evening. The conversation is spotty English but the enjoyable moment hardly demands comprehension. We take a cool picture where a trick of the light makes my headlamp appear to be forming a triangle.
Towards three in the morning the ocean comes back quickly but stays only for two hours before drifting back off towards the horizon.
In the light of morning we watch Koreans trekking out into the muddy distance to search for things we could not begin to speculate on. We can also see several large fishing boats lying helpless in the soft earth, their anchor lines cast but unnecessary in their current predicament.
We begin the taxi, bus, train trip back towards home. I leave the group in Anyang station. They head back to Suwon. I head towards Yongsan. In anticipation of editing AVCHD video files in a few weeks I peruse the electronics market for a good deal on computer upgrades. I find 2 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM (the max my laptop will allow) and a 320 gigabyte SATA harddrive for about $80. Both components are sold in a shady back-alley and wrapped in aluminum foil. The nefarious nature of the situation makes me laugh. I might as well be buying methamphetamine from a crack head in an old Monte Carlo parked near a strip club in Atlantic City.
At home I install hardware upgrades without any difficulty. The remainder of my weekend will be dedicated to reinstalling the latest build of OSX Snow Leopard, iLife 09, The Adobe Master Suite, countless other programs I had backed up, writing a blog entry, thinking about Rachael, continuing the on-going pursuit of web design knowledge and applying it to my semi-complete website, listening to the complete works of Rush, and drinking coffee.
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