Namhae Beach

So Kate and I went to Namhae Beach this past weekend. We were communicating with people through a Facebook message, since we still don't have a cell phone. Many of the people in the message thread were people we had not met yet, including Rob, who was sort of facilitating directions, Ian, our driver, and Lizzie, his girlfriend. Rob told us to meet at String Bar at noon on Saturday and Ian ad Lizzie would take us to Home Plus and then to the beach. We got there right around 12:00, at least a few minutes early and we sat on the curb and waited and waited....

Finally, after a light rain shower and thinking we got stood up, we recognize some people from their Facebook pictures. Relieved, we meet them and after about another 20 minutes, we head to Home Plus to buy food and alcohol.

The ride to the beach was an adventure in itself because Lizzie and Ian had their rescue dog, Walter (read it with an English accent, Walta). Plus, we experienced our first non Korean driver in Korea. Ian is from Australia but he's been all over and he, I assume, has his licence here and a car. Their traffic rules still confound me with stopping at red lights being optional and having no real stop signs. However, we arrived to our destination safely, read: in one piece, and in a very timely manner- at least twenty minutes earlier than we should have.

Once In Namhae, we had to park before actually walking to the beach. There were Korean men charging people to park and Ian just blew past the guy like he didn't know what he was supposed to do. Ian has been here 2 years, speaks decent Korean and parking was less than $5, so he definitely knew what was going on. He ended up having to drop us off, leave the parking area, go back around, pay and then park.

When we finally walked onto the beach, into the gorgeous sand, I was immediately taken aback by the beauty of the land. You can see for yourself. We met up with the rest of our group, about 25 other people, and began to relax. Someone in our group brought a giant 8 person circular raft that stuck out like a sore thumb and people were on it drinking and goofing off. They went out too far and came back with jellyfish stings all over them. I wish I would have taken a picture of the jellyfish because they were so tiny and completely clear- very easy to miss. There were easily hundreds washed up on the beach.

There was a lot of drinking that night including a cooler full of what Ian called Jungle Juice, but not the American college version. This Jungle Juice consisted of a lot of wine, Sangria and fresh fruit, not a random mix of vodka and juices. They also had a lot of Soju which they called Korean beer, but it tastes like Vodka and Soju translates to "burned liquor" so I'm not really sure what it is.

We stayed in something called a Mimbok, or something like that.. I tried to find it on Google and it took me to some Russian thing.. Anyway it's just a small room where you lay on a blanket and small pillow. It was really uncomfortable but luckily ours had A/C so it wasn't completely unbearable, and it was ridiculously cheap.

Well I think that's all for now. I'm sitting here at work on Tuesday morning and this is all I have to show for it :)

I'll try to start taking more pictures, with myself and people I've met!! Some people are leaving really soon!!