In the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, people can get what is called 'perimeter itus': They tend to ignore everyone and everything that live outside the city limits.
The same thing can happen in Korea to the people who live in Seoul and the surrounding area known as Gyeonggi-do.
I used to be like that.
I lived in the Seoul area for 3 years. In all that time I barely left the area to explore.
For the first time ever last weekend I went to Gwangju to take part in a scavenger hunt. It was a very fun and exhausting day.
My bus left Anyang station at 930 am on Saturday. Despite five traffic lanes and a blue lined bus lane, traffic was backed up and it felt like grid lock. It was supposed to only take three hours and forty minutes to get there but because of the traffic it took nearly five.
The scavenger hunt began at three and I was left scrounging to find a taxi which would take me to the YMCA shin-ay, a popular meeting point for foreigners in the area. The HQ for the event was a short distance away at a foreigner run bar called Mike and Dave's Speakeasy.
The team I was paired up with started running from the get go. They were ultra-competitive and nothing was going to stop them from trying to win.
The scavenger hunt was set up as an event through the Teach ESL Korea Facebook page. The group likes to organize these type of events every so often as a way to help foreign teachers connect with each other.
Amanda Sicard and a few of her friends worked very hard to put it together. The most fun part for them was thinking up all of the clever ideas for the activities the teams would have to complete in order to get points to win a prize.
They also went out into the community to get local businesses to sponsor the event. Some of them even donated prizes to the cause with Teach ESL Korea's Dan Henrickson throwing in a hundred thousand won to the winners.
After an hour I was really starting to feel it. I had only been in the country for a few days and was still getting over my jet lag. I missed breakfast and because of the delay in transit I didn't have time to eat lunch.
They kept running like they were competing in the Olympics and this had been their lifelong dream to win this particular scavenger hunt.
I run twelve miles a week and wasn't going to let these four young whipper snappers run me into the ground. I still have my pride.
Through the second hour I was able to keep up as they completed several of the tasks which included:
Finding someone wearing Harry Potter glasses.
A Korean couple wearing the same outfit.
Taking a shot at a bar called Tequillaz.
Finding a T-shirt with bad Konglish on it, etc, etc.
With four players on each team, three of them had to be in the picture while the other one took it.
With about a half an hour left in the event, I finally hit the wall and could go no further. It was on a long steep staircase that went up this hill. I tried to climb up to the top, but finally my legs gave out.
I sat down, shook my head and started to feel a little bit humble. My team had got the better of me and I was starting to feel my age.
As the team I was supposed to be following around finished the final few tasks I sat in a Burger King eating a Whopper jr set - largie.
All I could think about was how I wanted to go back to sleep. (I wasn't able to get any sleep the night before or on the bus during the ride down.)
I still had to stick around to see how the team had done and if all of my suffering, trying to keep up with them had been worth the while.
Second place. Not as good as first, but still pretty darn decent considering how many teams there were in the competition. ( There were sixteen or seventeen teams - I'm not sure exactly how many)
Good thing I hadn't been following around the first place team as they probably would have killed me.
Later that night, as I lay in bed alone in my room at this Korean 'Love Motel", all of the muscles in my legs and arms started to cramp up. I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to walk the next day.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and I was strong enough to walk around to take in some of the sights Gwangju had to offer. It really is a beautiful city.
Too bad I waited so long to find out.
Neil Reimer
The same thing can happen in Korea to the people who live in Seoul and the surrounding area known as Gyeonggi-do.
I used to be like that.
I lived in the Seoul area for 3 years. In all that time I barely left the area to explore.
For the first time ever last weekend I went to Gwangju to take part in a scavenger hunt. It was a very fun and exhausting day.
My bus left Anyang station at 930 am on Saturday. Despite five traffic lanes and a blue lined bus lane, traffic was backed up and it felt like grid lock. It was supposed to only take three hours and forty minutes to get there but because of the traffic it took nearly five.
The scavenger hunt began at three and I was left scrounging to find a taxi which would take me to the YMCA shin-ay, a popular meeting point for foreigners in the area. The HQ for the event was a short distance away at a foreigner run bar called Mike and Dave's Speakeasy.
The team I was paired up with started running from the get go. They were ultra-competitive and nothing was going to stop them from trying to win.
The scavenger hunt was set up as an event through the Teach ESL Korea Facebook page. The group likes to organize these type of events every so often as a way to help foreign teachers connect with each other.
Amanda Sicard and a few of her friends worked very hard to put it together. The most fun part for them was thinking up all of the clever ideas for the activities the teams would have to complete in order to get points to win a prize.
They also went out into the community to get local businesses to sponsor the event. Some of them even donated prizes to the cause with Teach ESL Korea's Dan Henrickson throwing in a hundred thousand won to the winners.
After an hour I was really starting to feel it. I had only been in the country for a few days and was still getting over my jet lag. I missed breakfast and because of the delay in transit I didn't have time to eat lunch.
They kept running like they were competing in the Olympics and this had been their lifelong dream to win this particular scavenger hunt.
I run twelve miles a week and wasn't going to let these four young whipper snappers run me into the ground. I still have my pride.
Through the second hour I was able to keep up as they completed several of the tasks which included:
Finding someone wearing Harry Potter glasses.
A Korean couple wearing the same outfit.
Taking a shot at a bar called Tequillaz.
Finding a T-shirt with bad Konglish on it, etc, etc.
With four players on each team, three of them had to be in the picture while the other one took it.
With about a half an hour left in the event, I finally hit the wall and could go no further. It was on a long steep staircase that went up this hill. I tried to climb up to the top, but finally my legs gave out.
I sat down, shook my head and started to feel a little bit humble. My team had got the better of me and I was starting to feel my age.
As the team I was supposed to be following around finished the final few tasks I sat in a Burger King eating a Whopper jr set - largie.
All I could think about was how I wanted to go back to sleep. (I wasn't able to get any sleep the night before or on the bus during the ride down.)
I still had to stick around to see how the team had done and if all of my suffering, trying to keep up with them had been worth the while.
Second place. Not as good as first, but still pretty darn decent considering how many teams there were in the competition. ( There were sixteen or seventeen teams - I'm not sure exactly how many)
Good thing I hadn't been following around the first place team as they probably would have killed me.
Later that night, as I lay in bed alone in my room at this Korean 'Love Motel", all of the muscles in my legs and arms started to cramp up. I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to walk the next day.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and I was strong enough to walk around to take in some of the sights Gwangju had to offer. It really is a beautiful city.
Too bad I waited so long to find out.
Neil Reimer
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