Tea, Beach, Town, Baseball

Today's fun-filled activities began with a trip to the Boseong Tea Plantation. The group was pretty impressed with the plantation, but I have to admit that I was a bit surprised when we drove up in our big tour bus, and we had to pay an admission fee and walk past at least 15 souvenir shops before actually arriving to the tea hills. The last time I saw a tea plantation was in India, and we just parked our bicycles on the side of the road and started venturing into the plantations. No ticket booth, no green tea ice cream, no $120 tea cups for sale... just the locals and the tea. But then, I remembered that I am now in Korea - better known as the Land of Endless Souvenirs (kitsch). Anyway, the hike to the top was humid and sweaty, but beautiful.

Next stop was for lunch at an enormous hotel. We ate our bibimbap (veggies, egg and rice, with chilli sauce mixed in), and headed over to the beach. It was more of a fisherman's beach than a suntanning beach, but was pleasant nonetheless. Again, humid and sweaty, but beautiful.

The old Korean town we visited had been in existence since the 13th century. There were thatched roof mud brick houses, a temple, flower gardens, lily ponds, mountain scenery and... a ton of tourist shops. Also, when you visit an "olden days" town in Canada, everything is re-created and there are actors playing their parts. However, people still live in this old Korean town! There was laundry hanging out to dry and trucks parked in the yard. A few of the thatched roof mud brick houses even had glass windows. Good to see that all space is being put to good use!

This evening we went to a Gwangju (the city) Kia (the car company) Tigers baseball game. The fans were very excited - constantly keeping up rhythms and songs. There were also lots of kids, including the ones sitting next to us. They spent most of the game taking pictures of the foreigners with camera phones. No joke - I had my picture taken for a straight hour and a half! I feel like quite the celebrity. (Especially after yesterday's encounter with the press at the Gwangju Cultural Museum! There were about 10 professional photographers with 10" lenses, all simultaneously sticking their cameras in my face. I was playing my instrument and pretending not to notice them... Andrea told me that I'm probably in all the Gwangju papers today, but I haven't actually bought any papers to check.)

We just got back from the game, and it's off to bed now. Alden has decided to get up early to work out first thing tomorrow morning... unfortunately/fortunately for me, it's a men's only gym, so I don't even have the option of working out. Ah, Confucianism.