Hey yall! Anyo Osayo! So the weekend before this last weekend I went off to Incheon Beach by myself. It was at the end of the week from my break from work. I went with my co-workers dog because I agreed to help take care of her since he was going off on the weekend. It was quite funny because I took the subway where I had to switch the lines 3 times. Then I took a bus to a village where my friend told me where the beach would be. So I get there and I was trying to communicate with a Korean lady about with simple words and hand motions, “This—go—to---swimming --- sea??” she kept on talking to me in Korean and then she called someone to see if they can speak to me in English. A nice father came up to me asking me “can I help you?” He told me I had to take ferry to the beach. So I’m thinking oh man! Oh well… it was kinda cool actually because I got to ride on a boat for ridiculously cheap ride that was only about 20 minutes to the place I had to get to. On my way on the ferry I noticed three English speaking people. There were two guys from New Zealand and one guy from England. I kinda followed them from a distance and just walked up to them and said “Hi! Are you guys English teachers?” They told me obviously where they were from. It was a really interesting conversation. I told them that “I’m kinda lost and I really don’t know where I’m going, do you?” They showed me the map of where they were going. Thank GOD I met them. They were quite gentlemanly and down to earth. We just got into conversations about how long have they been here, how do you like it here… ya know the usual conversation when your meeting people overseas. When the ride was over I actually asked them really politely “do you mind if I tag along? I’m not a crazy stalking American, I just need help knowing where I’m going.” They were really cool about it and they said “Don’t worry, we know what its like to me new, we’ll help you out.” So we had to take a bus after the ferry to get to the beach and the guys were planning on having a night where they were spending the night in a hotel room. So while they were looking for a hotel room I went to the beach and just hung out with the dog by myself enjoying the beautiful nature. The beach was quite over-crowded!! South Korea is really overcrowded in certain parts and I’m still not used it of course coming from Cleveland, a small city. So my Korean friend met me at the beach from Seoul. When she and her friend that she invited arrived to the beach near Incheon. We were just chatting and I saw the lovely mates that I met on my journey to the beach. Ha-ha…. They waved at me and I waved back. So we moved over to where they were and we chatted with them. Oh my goodness! The conversation was absolutely hilarious!! We were laughing so hard! The one guy was named Ben and he had a really thick accent. I work with a native New Zealander and had some very interesting sayings like “oh that fruit was DIVINE and oh what a bugger”. He’ll use the words atrocious and dreadful a lot. Since I’m not used to that language I laugh usually. New Zealanders emphasize /a/ sounds with the e letters in words. Now this guy Ben had an even thicker accent that my co-worker. When he introduced himself to my Korean friend he said “Ban”. HA! My Korean friend looked at me and was thinking huh? But then I just looked at her and said “Ben”. When we were talking on the beach I was imitating their accents. All in good fun teasing of course, they were very lighthearted about it. When Ben meant to say, “let’s go have a beer”, instead he said, “let’s have a bare”. His England friend looked at him and started laughing and said, “Bare?” Ben made the hand gesture for beer and his England friend told him “you said bare”. Ben responds, “Did I?” It was so funny! When I asked them how do say December or November. The England guy says “Decemba” and the New Zealander guys said “Decamba”. It was so funny! The England guy said, “I feel like I’m drunk”. So towards the end of the conversation Ben says “well, we betta go take a showa”. Everytime they talked in their accent I just laughed. It was great though because they just laughed along with me. They were quite lovely young men and we were bonding about how it’s been for me being new to Korean culture and how I’ve been adapting. They all had traveled a lot more than I have. I was talking to them a lot about the other countries that they visited and what it was like.

So on the beach as native English speaking teachers we’re kind of like celebrities in some ways. While we were on the beach a guy approached us from China who wanted to take a picture with us. After the guys left I was approached by a group of little Korean girls and their friend from Bangladesh, along with their mom. It was really cute and funny! They were so excited to meet me. They were communicating to me through my Korean friend translating to me in English. They told me “Your so speedy!” At least that’s what I heard. It was hilarious and confusing. I looked at Heeyoon and I said “speedy?” She responded, “They’re trying to tell you, you’re so pretty”. Then the light bulb when off… ohhhh!!! HA! They were jumping around and smiling. The Korean mom took a picture of me holding her baby girl. I was touched and flattered. It’s kinda cool to be noticed like that. They don’t see us that often, so if I was them I would have probably done the same thing

So later on we had dinner with the New Zealanders and England guy at a Korean restaurant outside. We had Korean barbeque, which was amazing! We also had clams on the grill too, which was really good to! During the meal, we became celebrities to the Asian people again! Ha ha! A guy from Vietnam took our picture. Towards the end of the meal there was fireworks! So cool! Then after dinner we sadly departed, but we got their contact information. My Korean friends went home and I took a bus home. After a lovely long day and trip to the beach full of adventures and laughs, I was exhausted and plopped into bed!

Sorry I don’t have much photos from this lovely experience. But there are more photos from the countryside of Jinju! The next trip I had was the rafting experience here! Which was so hilarious and amazing! I’ll tell you about that soon! Much love to all!