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The Busan International Fireworks Festival was from October 21st to October 29th. I went to it on Saturday the 22nd. I rode the bus from Geoje to Busan with a couple friends who were also headed up to see the show. The trip by bus is only about an hour and a half, and Busan is a great city full of lots of westerners and some great shopping- there is even rumored to be an American Apparel somewhere there, although we could not find it. The only problem was that I was still phoneless at this point. I spent many hours Friday night trying to get a "pay as you go/ no contract" phone after receiving my Alien ID card FINALLY on Thursday. It was a little difficult since I was by myself and none of the workers at any of the three cell phone stores I went to spoke even a little English. Finally with the help of Google Translate and a couple young Korean girls who happened to be in the shop at the time and knew a little English, I got what I hoped was what I wanted. There were a couple set backs however. Number one, as I went to pay he informed me since it was now after 8:00 pm (this is after I waited over two hours in the store) the cell phone would not actually work until after the weekend, and also, it was all in Korean. I was so tired and desperate to get out of there at this point that I just took it anyway and figured I could easily switch the language setting on the phone, as that is what many other people have done here. Turns out, after I had all of my students in my afternoon classes give it a try (I said whoever could switch it got five stamps) that it was not possible, so in the end I had to go back and get a whole other phone... another long process.
But anyway, that is another story. The way that it affected Busan was that after parting ways with the friends I had rode the bus up with in order to meet up with Morgan and a few of her friends from Jinju that were already there, I found myself in the pouring rain, in a big city I had never been to before, without a phone. After a couple hours wandering the streets and asking random stores if I could borrow their phones, I was finally able to meet up with everyone.
After that I had a great time. We took a trip to the world's largest department store, called Shinsegae Mall, which had over ten floors of clothes as well as its own ice rink inside. That night we joined the crowds and crowds of people that had also come to Busan for this event and watched the fireworks display on Gwangalli Beach. It was amazing- insane fireworks set to great background music. The rain even stopped just in time. This particular Saturday ended up being one of the two largest shows of the event in which USA, Japan, Poland, and China went head to head with four seperate 15 minute displays to prove who reigned supreme in the art of pyrotechnics.
Besides the insane crowds and the fact that the weekend ended up with three of us Geoje residents splitting a 120,000 won taxi home (as all the busses were full hours before) it was a wonderful experience! It is fun to do these different events knowing that I am only spending one full year here, and may never be back, so these truly are once in a lifetime expereinces.
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| Inside the Shinsegae mall looking up |
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