Starting off this journey

Our Outback Adventure

Part I The Long Way 'Round

          Recently I was lucky enough to go on a trip with my handsome husband and a close friend of his to a mysteriously located Outback Steak House. Because, being in another country, you should always look for the same restaurants you could have gone to back in your home country. I say this in a facetious sort of way, but we were very excited to know that one of our favourite eateries was located in the far east. We made it top priority to hazard this trip on the following weekend.

          Leaving was the usual driving scenery through Anjeong-ri; People using a whole lane of the street just for parking their cars, others pulling out in front of you at the last possible second, and large amounts of dust flying everywhere from all of the construction.

 

Since these pictures where taken, our little slice of town has gotten quite more beautiful and peaceful from the changes, but at that time was quite mess to get through. Looking at photos makes me feel happy that it's better.

          After passing through town and onto the military base we arrived at the barracks to pick up our fellow adventurer. My husband phoned him up, and he hopped in.  We made a short detour to the rink-a-dink car wash, where  four quarters equals clean, but being as thats uninteresting, I left it out of the photos. Our Friend and I got into a long conversation about the importance of choosing a program in college, and my husband had a fun time making his beloved Integra sparkly-clean for our exciting trip into an unknown city.

          We took off from there, doing our best to follow the instructions our handy-dandy GPS was offering. One amazing thing Korea and it's GPS service has yet to fail to do, is make you feel as if you've gone completely the wrong way on your travels. It usually does this by throwing you into rural bends and backroads. It also likes to pepper in the idea that you may have arrived, by suddenly throwing you into an industrious looking city. It will do this several times in a row, because Korea is an animate object with human feelings, and it likes to prey on the soft hearted.

This was our first moment of uncertainty.

Oh Rapture! A large overpass! Surely that means we'll be getting on the freeway?

But of course not! You will instead travel through more farm towns, where all the crows will follow your car. One assumes it is horrible foreshadowing of what this trip is going to become. 

          After making our way past this little bit of sleepy homes, things started to look more promising. Tall apartment buildings where at the horizon ,and more of the signs where of advertisements, or in english. These are always promises of a soon to be bustling city. They are also commonly a foreshadowing, like the crows, that the soon to be traffic will be quite hazardous.

The eccentric fence signs on the corner of a street. Used to confuse all traveling 미국 Mi-gooks (Americans)

          Prior to coming to the ROK, I thought that tall skyscrapers were always comprised of businesses, stores, or some grandiose style building. Here, the taller buildings are usually the cheapest style apartments. I can't imagine what living that high up off the ground would be like. It seems exciting, tiring, and terrifying all at once.

           Once we got past a couple more bends and twists, we started to get into the thick of things. Looking out at the traffic and the shopping centers was very promising. I let myself think, " Maybe we won't die after all?", and began to finally enjoy our excursion. After all, I could identify some of the brands, and could even translate some of the easier korean signs.  Even the street signs where in english, and I figured that if we were somehow marooned here; it would be considerably easier to phone for help than it was 10 minutes prior out in the boonies. I even dared to smile! We survived it into the city, now we just had to find the restaurant. 

To be continued in post II....