Trip to Andong

This past weekend Julie, Kathi and I went on a day trip to a city 2 hours away by bus to visit. The city, Andong, is famous for the traditional villages it has and for it's Mask Festival. The first village we went to was alright. Korea was still pretty brown when we went, it's starting to bloom now, so things are becomming prettier, but then the buildings seemed to blend into the surroundings. Doesn't help when the buildings have straw roofs and mud walls. The buildings were cool, the first village didn't really meet my expectations though. I had envisioned a Barkerville sort of situation, people working in the houses and stores, showing us how things were back then....but nope, it was just a bunch of empty buildings, surrounded by garbage. We didn't have to pay to see the first one though, and I'm glad. The only good thing about the first traditional village was that it was beside a big dam and there were signs everywhere leading to the dam office. I didn't care so much that the village sucked...because Kathi and I just couldn't get over that people actually worked in the dam office and how lucky they were that every morning they got to actually legitly say that they "had to go to the dam office." ....ya, we were bored.
The next village, Hahoe was way better. We had to ride on a city bus about half an hour out of Andong. Sadly, we got the bus filled with male high school students, but that was ok. There was also a really nice man on the bus, he spoke awesome English. He lived in Seoul but also had a house in Hahoe. He'd visited Vancouver a few times and also Halifax. The guy actually knew French too...I met a Korean who knows more French than I do. Kinda felt like a pitiful Canadian at that moment, and then it passed, cuz who needs French in BC anyways? He told us where to go once we got off the bus and I'm glad he did, around the corner from the bus stop was a Traditional Dance Stage. We stood and watched the traditional dance, which is a play done to music (drums) for awhile, then moved on. It was a nice day and pretty crowded. Being taller than everyone else, I start to feel uncomfortable blocking everyone's view. We then headed into the village. Again, not really what I had expected, this wasn't like Barkerville either, but we did see some ladies walking around in traditional Korean dress (Hanbok). I bought some souveniers (magnets and two miniatures of these funky looking statues that you find all over Korea, they're supposed to guard against evil spirits). Mainly it was just neat to see old-style Korean buildings that had actually been maintained. We walked around for a long while and then headed back to Andong.
We were starved so we stopped to get something to eat before boarding a bus. I like Korean food and so do Kathi and Julie. It's a good thing, since once you leave a medium-sized city like Gumi, western food is hard to come by. We sat down and ordered. Another wonderous thing about Korean food is it takes hardly any time to be served to you. The lady promptly brought us out forks to eat with. I've become quite apt at using chopsticks. Julie and Kathi have been here twice as long as me and have also mastered the skill. They (Koreans) just assume that we don't know. Normally they're almost embarassed though to offer us forks, they do it to be polite to us. This lady was bordering on rude with the forks. She pretty much slammed them down in front of us as if to say "here, I know you'll need these." This of course, made us determined NOT to use the forks. She then stood behind me as we ate and stared at Kathi and Julie. Poor Julie got so nervous, she broke under the pressure. She dropped her Mandu (kinda like a perogie) into her broth and it splashed everywhere. We were laughing, but the lady wasn't. She came over, took away Julie's chopsticks and gave her another fork. Well, that was it, we were laughing so hard. Julie was actually banned from using chopsticks! Try using chopsticks when you're laughing, it's hard. Kathi and I managed to make it through the meal unscathed, however I'm not sure our hostess was all that impressed with us. Anyways, we paid, we left and headed to the bus station. When we got there and bought our tickets we noted that the bus was leaving in 15 minutes. There already was a pretty good chunk of people waiting for the bus so I went to wait in line while Kathi and Julie went to the bathroom. The bus pulled up and the "line" surged. There is no order in Korea. It's all about me, me ,me. I just don't get it, line up for Christ sakes. Pushing isn't going to help, it just serves to make any westerner in the way of your pushing very angry. That was me, I pushed back. I sent three different people behind me flying. One guy landed on his butt. I didn't care, I had passed my Korean limit for the day. I like Korea, I like Koreans, I like Korean food, but I can only take a little bit of it at a time. That usually means 1 day of travelling. Everywhere we go we get pointed at, laughed at, stared at and made fun of. This is a very rude society. Very inclusive, very anti anything non-Korean. Anyways, I got on the bus and made my way to the back. I found 3 seats still available in the last row and plopped all of my stuff down on them. By this time it was standing room only on the bus and trust me, I was not a popular person holding 2 empty seats for foreigners who were still in the bathroom. I didn't care, I wasn't in the mood. I wanted to sit and there was no way that my friends were going to be standing for 2 hours. Long story short, they got on the bus, we all sat down, the Koreans stood and we zoned out until we were home.
It's not all as bad as I make it sound. I had just had my fill. Please, do come to Korea and make your own opinions. There's probably a nice Korea out there somewhere, I just havn't found it yet! I'm going to Seoul this coming weekend to go to the De-Militarized Zone with some friends. We're doing the DMZ on Saturday and exploring Seoul on Sunday. It should be a good time. Maybe Seoul holds the key to the friendly Korea! I've heard that we'll blend in way more. It's just the smaller towns where we all stick out like sore thumbs and draw the most attention. Seoul, with it's 14 million people, is not as homogenous as the rest of Korea. I'm looking forward to the somewhat annonymity and also to the DMZ..I'll make sure to post any pictures I get of North Korea on here. I don't think we are allowed to take pictures of the North Korean guards.....I'll do my best though!