The trip to Seoul was obligatory. My boss needed someone to go to the conference about the new books they were making available to their students and that someone was me. I decided to make the most of it, though, and lengthened my stay in Seoul over night and on until morning. That way, I could venture out to Paju Book City and Heyri, which were featured in my guidebook for their "small scale contemporary buildings". It brings me within spitting distance of the South Korean/North Korean border, which means, ironically, it brings me closer to nature, peace, and solitude.

I arrived in Heyri about seven o'clock. I had rather enjoyed the bus ride, which consisted primarily of me looking out the window as the highway whipped by. As we got closer to Heyri, more and more people pressed the button to get off and I was forced to assume my role as the bumbling travel, spewing Engrean phrases out onto the floor hoping that someone was fluent enough in Konglish to understand my dialect. They were. In fact, I was soon to find out that, while the Busanites were rather fluent in Enlglish, they did not hold a candle to the people in Heyri.

I looked up my survial phrase in my Korean phrasebook: "Hotel odi issoyo?" Which means "Where is the hotel" or "Hotel, it is where?" I was very proud of myself for having stowed it temporarily in my brain and set out to find a restuarant on which to use it. The restaurants were combination swanky food joint and gallery. This was, of course, the day I happened to be wearing the fat shirt and the wrinkled pants, something that made me look even more touristy than I already was. So, it was not all that surprising that when I came in, babbling my one Korean phrase, the waitress simply smiled politely at me and ran to get someone who spoke better English.

"Hotel odi issoyo?" I asked, cluthing my phrasebook.
"You can speak English," the Korean man said in even, unaccented English.
"Oh," I said, "Where can I find a hotel."
"Do you see those lights?" he said, pointing out of the village, "The red light?"
It took me a while to see them, but I did and nodded.
"Just go up there, turn right and walk for thirty minutes."
Great. I thought, banished from Heyri my first night here, but after asking a very nice family coming back from dinner, a family which reminded me mysteriously of ones I had grown up with, I found out that there really were no hotels in Heyri and I'd have been luck thirty minutes walk down the road.

As I started to get my bearing, I could not help but realize that was fresh and good. My nose and throat, which had rebelled so violently against me herein now opened up and took large gasps of the surrounding air without protest. My shoulders relaxed, my eyes opened and all the misery and discomfort who had been my constant companions for the past four months, lifted without effort or thought.

But this was not the only good the air carried. The roar of traffic, construction and murmuring voices had dissappated. It was not quite. There were still cars, still people, still Korean, but it was not so crowded, angry and rushed.

I had walked almost ten minutes when I ran into three foriegners and their dogs (a dachshund and some kind of mix, I think). I was so glad to see them that I stopped and smiled a little at the dogs.

"Hey," I said, trying to recover from staring, "Do you know where a hotel is?"

"Yeah, sure," they said, "Just go up this road a little ways and you'll find a whole row of them."

They were a little surprised that I was up in their area of the world. What on Earth would provoke me to leave the city to come and visit them? I realized that the shoddy description of Heyri and Paju had very little affect on my decision, it was this cool and calm I was feeling right then.

"I wanted to get away," I explained.
They nodded, perfectly satisfied with the response, "Well, there isn't much around here. The Koreans think the buildings are pretty cool, if you're into architechture. Then there is Odusan Observatory."

I didn't really want to leave them, they seemed like such decent people, but I ended up heading out anyway. I waved goodbye and headed up to the hotel they recommended, but I will leave that half of the story until tommorow.

yeah, I've been limping all day. It looked like someone had been murdered on the stairs. :P The blood is seeping through my band-aid. But luckily it isn't a very wide or long cut, more like a puncture. :(

Heyri sounds like a breath of fresh air (literally), can't wait to hear the end of the story. I've been talking to a woman at Montana State, she's been telling me to apply to be a professor there. Wouldn't that be something? I thought of it because that town, too, is a bit of a breath of fresh air.

Too bad Stephanie is in the USA, or you could have seen her in Seoul!>D
» Zanzibar on 2010-09-25 08:09:39

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