Road Trip 2010… Jeju-do

So the typhoon has passed.  That doesn’t mean that getting to Jeju was completely smooth sailing.  When I got to the ferry terminal I was informed that my rsvp was for the next day.  When I made my booking I clearly stated the day.  I even repeated it a couple times because I was talking in Korean I had to make sure that my info was correct.  I was diplomatic about everything but my temperature was rising.  One of the ticket agents led me to another building and after about 20 minutes I was sorted out.   I would be getting the ferry after all.

The boat ride itself was great, the seascape was blanketed with calm water and dotted with little islands.  I spent most of the time reading and practicing some new Korean phrases.  A couple of times some of the locals came up to me for some brief chit-chat.  The first batch asked me to take their photo, and once they realized I spoke Korean the conversation continued for a few minutes until they had all the usual info, my age, marital status, where I worked, where I’m from, and how do I like living in Korea.   

The second person was a nursing student and he told me outright he’d like to speak for a bit because he needed to practice his English.  The honesty was refreshing and it turned out to be one of the more interesting chats I’ve had with the locals.  We covered basketball, baseball, travel plans, we even discussed English.  He wanted to have the classic American accent.  I told him accents lend flavour to a language.  He didn’t quite get the meaning until I put it to him in familiar terms:  

Me: Do Jeju girls sound like Seoul girls?
NS: No, of course not.
Me: Do you like the Jeju accent?
NS: Yeah, it’s niiice.
Me: The different accent is interesting, that’s what I mean by ‘flavour’
NS: OOOHHHHH! I see.

 The moral of our exchange was for him to not be so concerned about his accent since it didn’t really get in the way of being understood.

After he left I went inside and returned to my reading.  I spent the rest of the trip walking around and reading as the urge struck.  By 7:30 I was in Jeju, it was too dark to find a campground, but I found a huge jjimjilbang which I’ll put to use later tonight.  Tomorrow isn’t going to be very good weather-wise, in fact eight of the next ten days are all forecasting thundershowers, hopefully the weatherman is wrong.