Beach Bums

Yesterday my CDI friends and I headed to Hyundae Beach on the other side of town. First, we grabbed some veggie burgers (great find!) and cheese fries (not as exciting, unfortunately). It's off season now, even though the day we went the sun was shining and it was probably in the upper 70s/low 80s and perfect for a day on the beach. We went swimming for about an hour, until my friend and I saw a jellyfish...and then another...and we ran, shouting, out of the water. The area was beautiful, with clean sand, clear water, the mountains and some islets in the distance, and the strip of stores and restaurants lining the water. It was perfect. I was so blissfully happy.

It got even better, too, when we went for a walk along a trail that snakes through the hills nearby along the coast. It was dusk, so we didn't walk too far, but we stopped at a lookout point where you could see the mountains and the rocky coast on one side, and the lights of the strip lining the beach on the other. It was stunning. We stayed until darkness fell, mostly in silence, all of us lost in our thoughts. It's a good group of people I've got around me, and they're all relatively new - 1-3months here - so we're in it together for the long haul.

Afterwards we went to another beach to meet up with one of my co-worker's friends for a birthday celebration on the beach. We went to a bar with a lot of foreigners and met a ton of new people. A few of us decided to go night swimming, and it was great to just dive in the surf, and ride the waves in. We had a small fire on the beach, and people were mulling about, and it felt like a scene out of movie. I had to stop on a number of occasions just to take in the fact that I was really there, on this beach in Busan, in Korea, where I live. I live here. It's crazy when I stop and think about it - crazy and fantastic.

The night hit it's peak there, and things got a bit rocky after that. One of my co-workers fractured her ankle on the street where the ground wasn't level. We split up, and a few of them headed back, but the rest of us stayed out. I hadn't seen the area at all and wanted to see what it had to offer. In the end, I wished I'd just gone back with them, because, like in any city, anywhere in the world, the later it gets the more rude drunks guys you have to avoid, and that can put a damper on things.

Still, the day on the whole was amazing, and I'm very excited about finding more great places to explore in the coming months, and I'm glad I've got a good group of people to do that with!