4th of July

This past Saturday was the 4th of July. Really, not a big surprise for anyone back in the States, but here in Korea, the 4th of July was just another Saturday. That was until a group of people, all Americans, except for one adopted Canadian and a few Koreans, decided to head down to Mailpo beach and celebrate in an essentially Californian way. We rang in the 4th of July as best we could given our limited options.

The planning for this essentially started from the day that I arrived in Korea. I realized quickly that going to Seoul and celebrating there would not truly be the 4th of July. Fireworks had to be involved in some way shape or form. Another option would be to find my way down to a military base and enjoy the fireworks show put on by the United State Army. Yet, this option would severely limit the amount of people we could bring with us. I, therefore, started to think locally. It wasn't until my first overnight beach trip that I realized that it is legal here in Korea to shoot off simple fireworks at the beach. We are talking you're very basic things. Roman Candles, sparklers, dazzlers, and other assorted small fireworks. There is nothing too big or dangerous allowed, no m-80's or cherry bombs. With this realization I finally had the idea for how to celebrate perhaps the greatest act of treason of all time.

In, my mind the plan took shape, and as all the pieces fell into place the only thing that could rain on our patriotic parade was, well rain. As had happened with the past three or four attempts at a beach excursion, mother nature attempted to ruin our well laid plans. Luckily, this time the weather reports were wrong and the day was epic. We arrived at Malipo beach at 2 in the afternoon. Loaded down with supplies we quickly found a beach motel to use as a base of operations for the night. After offloading the copious amounts of food, alcohol, and entertainment (which honestly was just a football) we headed down to the beach to spend some time in the sun. The beaches here on the West Coast are notoriously shallow affairs with no waves at all. The difference between high tide and low tide is over 200 yards (seriously). No I'm actually being serious here. It's ridiculous. What during mid tide was 12-15 feet deep water was reduced to knee deep water at the lowest tide.

After a nice swim in which I swam a farther distance then I have in well, the past five years combined, we relaxed on the beach for a little while before I headed up to the motel to start cooking. The meal for the day was a 4th of July special for us here in Korea. The first course revolved around Jose's epic homemade Salsa, which I have to steal the recipe for because it's seriously ranking up there with mom's salsa, and might be better in some facets. The main course was an excellent cross sample of typical BBQ foods you would find at a BBQ. It started with a 12 pack of smoked Johnsville Brauts (thank you costco) cooked in a bottle of beer. Beer brauts, I'm not sure those have even been had off of a military installation here in Korea. The second round was red and yellow bell peppers grilled with olive oil, onions and garlic on the grill. This was followed by fish cooked till it was falling apart with a little bit of olive oil and blackened grill seasonings on top. The third movement was a package of grilled Andouille sausage. My mouth is watering right now thinking about the food we had on Saturday. The last thing we had for our meal were potatoes wrapped in foil and thrown into the coals of the charcoal at the start of my BBQing. The potatoes were not alone in the foil, they contained several slices of garlic, a dash of Cajun seasoning, and of some olive oil.

After thoroughly stuffing ourselves at the motel David and I walked contentedly into town to purchase fireworks. In Korea there are no open container laws, so while stopping at a convenience store to use the ATM David purchased both of us an ice cold bottle of beer. As we stopped at a store that had a nice selection of fireworks I heard the most dreaded words a buzzed foreign teacher holding a bottle of beer can ever hear, "Will teacher!!!!" That's right, I'd been spotted. Not only by one of my students, but quite possibly the one student I have in complete need of Ritalin. I swear you can see this boy shaking as he talks because his mind is moving a mile a minute. Needless to say, word will have spread all around school by tomorrow that I was at Malipo drinking and buying fireworks. Great. After purchasing a nice supply of things that go bang in the sky David and I headed back down to the beach to join our compatriots.

As the sun set I decided to go for another swim. After about twenty minutes of swimming, and dumping TC off of his floating tube we walked the 200 yards back to where everything was. We then began to set up for our little fireworks celebration. We set up for one large grand finale, well basically that was the entire show. We had 20 packs of Roman Candles and several other things that lit up the night sky on the beach. It was a glorious few minutes where all of us were allowed to celebrate those thing we hold so dearly to. We looked up in small wonderment and celebrated our love for America on foreign soil. Our show may or may not have looked something like this, I'll leave it up to you the readers to vote.

After the glorious pyrotechnics on the beach, we meandered up to our motel for a little rest, some relaxation, and some marshmallows. We did not have a bonfire to roast them over, but we did the next best thing. We cooked them over the BBQ. I had brought an extra thing of charcoal just for this occasion. After roasting our marshmallows on wooden chopsticks, yes you heard correctly, we decided to wander into town. There we won 6 more things of roman candles via carny games. My best is the dart game. It is here where David and co went on a few of the carnival style rides that I chose not to partake in. They were perfectly safe, but looked like they hadn't been oiled since 1965. With the town taken care of we found our way back to our motel to shut in for the night well, not to go directly to bed but soon enough. After two late night strolls along the beach when the tide was up which included my sinking knee deep in sand at one point we fell asleep and awoke on the morning of the 5th.

Our patriotic duty accomplished we cleaned our motel room and headed back to Seosan.