a wedding in Masan

Charles and Anne tied the knot this weekend in Masan, just north of the island of Geoje, on the mainland, west of Busan, in a beautiful ceremony on the fifth floor of a wedding plaza which overlooks the spacious, sparkling harbor. To clarify, Charles is the head teacher at my hagwon, and a close personal friend and mentor. He invited Adam, Elaine, Jeff, and myself up to his wedding to his girlfriend Anne, whom I have also had the pleasure of meeting, and who is a very lovely young woman. They've been engaged for a while; I'm just glad the wedding occurred before my contract expired, and I was able to attend. We'd planned in advance to get the bus to Masan on Saturday (the wedding was at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning), shop around for some gifts and see whatever sights there were, and then clean up in the morning and don our spiffy duds. Here's what happened. We rode the bus up (a very equable ride compared to the last one, and for only ₩9,000; they kept the A/C on the whole time, at least), and managed to find a cheap motel with a little creative wandering. It was the Nox Motel, and the price was similar to our usual base of operations in Busan: ₩35,000 per night. The only difference was, this place was nice compared with what we were used to. It was still, technically, a love motel. There were tissues by the bed, condoms in the top drawer of the nightstand and porn on the TV, but the sleaze ended there. The bathroom was up to scale with anything seen in Motel 6 or Super 8, back in the States, if not better; the bed and room were both clean, bright, spacious, and tastefully outfitted. There wasn't much to speak of in the mini-bar, but hey. So we checked in and immediately sallied forth into downtown Masan to go wedding-present shopping. It was a bit embarrassing: we got into a cab and said we wanted to go to E-Mart. After approximately sixty seconds, we went around a corner and arrived. The cab driver must've been laughing his head off inside as we handed him the fare. Must've been the easiest 2,200 won he'd ever earned. We had more than a little trouble navigating once we were inside the store, even. It was a five-story building, but get this: the main level was just a convenience store. You know, the quick stuff: cleaning supplies, snacks, batteries, all the things that people want to get in and get out with quick. That makes sense to have that on the first floor. But the parking lots were above this level, and the main store (food section, home supply) was below it. Look me in the eye and tell me that's a logical way to run a railroad. I dare you. After our tour of the parking lots, we finally wound up where we needed to be (subterranean) and got straight to shopping. E-Mart is like Homeplus, but generally has more departments, more selection, and is larger in size overall. We didn't meet with much success. As far as useful, tastefully appointed wedding gifts go, E-Mart was skint. The best chance we had was the hoidy-toidy home furnishings section on the second floor, but there wasn't much choice. Adam and Elaine picked up a nice set of chopsticks and soup spoons in a velvet-covered case, and they were set. I got meat on a stick. We then headed to Lotte Mart, with higher hopes. After some similar difficulty locating the main store, which we suffered for a second time despite the eye-opening E-Mart experience, we emerged onto the main shopping floors and had a look-see. Lotte Mart was much bigger than even E-Mart. There was much more selection: sporting goods, electronics, liquor, a grocery store that looked like any major Western supermarket chain we'd ever been in (to the point of inducing nostalgia)...but no hoidy-toidy home furnishings section. We had a look around the proletarian home furnishings section and located some promising potential: a cutlery rack/holder/board (or whatever you call it; one of them wooden things with slots for holding your knives). There were also some wine glasses. We resolved to take note of these discoveries and go nosing around town for anything that might turn up. In the meantime, we looked to our own needs. As you're probably aware, I am (or was) in dire need of a camera since I lost my previous one (a Fujifilm S8000, purchased for three-hundred and twenty-eight thousand won, or about $220, at Homeplus a few months before) on Jirisan. That problem was solved when I spotted a Canon on sale for ₩169,000. It had a whopping ten megapixels instead of the previous eight, and most of the (important) features of its predecessor. It was also light and infinitely more portable. I was fortunate that it came with a similar package that the Fujifilm did: case, two-gigabyte memory card, recharger, instruction booklets and CDs...all included in the list price. The case, most attractively, is tight and closes securely with Velcro, meaning that I stand a better chance of not "losing" this one... We were getting hungry by this time. We waltzed out of Lotte Mart (pausing to retrieve Adam's backpack from a locker; E-Mart allows you to carry personal bags and packs onto its premises but Lotte Mart is more stringent, and demands that you rent a locker for a hundred won) and into the hazy late afternoon. It was inevitable that we should happen upon a McDonald's. I finally got a chance to try the Shanghai Spicy Chicken Burger, and was not as let down as I thought I'd be. I don't know whether that had anything to do with the quality of the preparation, or whether McDonald's was actually giving a crap about the food it served now, or what. (I will say that I believe Korea is really on the ball as far as fast food goes. Domino's Pizza tastes much better over here than in the U.S., I firmly believe. It makes sense that McDonald's would as well.) Suitably fortified, and having discussed our options thoroughly over greasy fries, Jeff and I elected to return to Lotte Mart and snag the aforementioned gifts we'd noted earlier. That done, we returned to the Nox, dumped our treasures off, and met up with Charles and Anne, who'd arrived in the city before us and completed their wedding preparations. They were anxious to meet up and say hello. They were also tired, run-down, depressed, and physically sick. Their respective employers had worked them to death for the preceding two weeks in light of their impending vacation (bosses are merciless like that over here), and they were so exhausted that their immune systems had packed up and boogied, leaving them diseased and wretched. Poor Anne got to the motel and collapsed (in the room she and Charles rented; they were without accommodation, so we politely informed them about the competitive rates at our place). Charles stuck around with us and drank a little beer. Then we all went out for samgyeopsal in the thriving "new" downtown area, replete with bright causeways, well-lit shops, and respectable-looking food vendors. Charles and Anne ate, then left (at our urging), citing exhaustion and the need for a full night's sleep before tomorrow's festivities. A, E, J, and I hung around for a bit, checking out the sights, and the market. Masan was Charles's hometown; he told us that, 30 years ago, the market we were walking through that evening would have been wall-to-wall with people. You'd have had to shoulder your way through the crowd nonstop from one end of the place to the other. Now it was nearly a ghost town. Those same gigantic superstores we'd passed through earlier that day, E-Mart and Lotte Mart, had snatched away the custom from these small-time merchants in the open air bazaar and relegated them to a sort of shadowy, tourist-trap existence. It was really quite pathetic ("pathetic" here having the meaning of "emotionally provocative," not "pitiful"; well, okay, it was a bit pitiful too). Then we all sat down and had a quiet drink. Or tried to. The first place we went, Billy Western Bar, was way overpriced, despite having enough atmosphere to put Cheers to shame. We went across the street to Beer Mart, and that was better. Shaped and colored like an adobe hacienda on the inside, with faux stucco walls, domed ceilings and exposed rafters, the place had charm. More than that, its imbibing protocol was unique, too: instead of ordering glasses of beer, you went up to the counter, picked out the bottles you wanted (everything from Tiger to Hoegaarden), paid up, took 'em back your table, cracked 'em and drank 'em. It was a rather intimate experience, to be sitting at a comfy table in a comfy seat with a view out the window at the narrow crooked street, sipping comfy cheap beer. We stuck around there for a couple of hours, went and grabbed some mandu (dumplings, remember?) at a stall on the way back, then went back to the hotel to Adam and Elaine's room and sat around and talked. Adam was testing out his new iPod-compatible ghetto blaster (whatever it's called; iSound or something); so we had Kanye West, Curtis Mayfield, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Groove Armada to keep us company as we talked and laughed. We hit the sack at midnight, mindful of an early start the next morning. The next morning proceeded without a hitch. We woke, prepared and were at the wedding plaza, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (as Adam would've said) at a quarter to eleven or so. I should stop here and explain exactly what a wedding plaza is. Apparently there's no such thing as a "single" wedding in Korea. All of 'em are doubles, or group weddings. They are perhaps not simultaneous, but you can bet there'll be another party moving into the wedding hall after you move out of it, within minutes or seconds. Heck, there was another bride fully dolled out in her gown wandering around besides Anne, that's for dang sure, as well as another set of relatives hanging around the darkened wedding hall across the lobby from ours. Upon spotting Charles, who was cutting a dash in a rather fetching white tuxedo and gloves (and obviously sweating in the sticky heat of springtime Masan and a building that wasn't exactly climate-controlled), we made our way over. We shook hands, congratulated him, and then he promptly thrust the camcorder into my hands. Oh, didn't I tell you? I'd agreed to be the cameraman. I was fairly sweating myself by this time. Agreeing to do the camera work at somebody's wedding is one thing a month or two in advance over beers in that somebody's apartment, but once you actually step into the chapel and take the camera from their hands, the full import of your choice hits you. If I screw this up, I thought to myself, I'll have ruined one of their most precious memories, the start of their life together...or something like that. Nonetheless, I accepted the camcorder and went to work. I got some footage of Charles with his mother, and Anne's rather staid and dignified parents. I also got a lot of footage of Anne, who was sitting in her gorgeous wedding gown in a small room off the main lobby, on display, as it were. Seriously, that's how it was. It was just this closet-sized room, tastefully wallpapered and decorated, in which the bride sat in review and people came up to greet and congratulate her, while the groom ran around attending to all the last-minute crises, an attendant following him around and dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. That's Korean custom, apparently. I shot some film of her and her friends, and just got some obscure statements from her about how she was feeling and so on, like I was some kind of half-baked amateur reporter or something. That having been done, the real nerve-wracking stuff began: the ceremony proper. Instead of entering on foot, both bride and groom rode into the hall on a sort of raised trolley-like affair, in appearance almost like a bower, wreathed with flowers and a gate supposedly made to resemble old-fashioned wrought iron (in the European style). It had a smoke machine on it, which was going full blast as bombastic music played on the speakers. Charles and Anne stood straight and solemn as this contraption bore them into the room, traversing one entire wall (tastefully and skilfully painted with some Renaissance-style landscape), bowing occasionally. They then exited (with the help of formally dressed yet feverish attendants who unlatched the faux wrought-iron gates and gathered up Anne's train frantically) and arranged themselves at the end of the aisle. Charles walked down first, bowed first to his mother, then Anne's mother (both of whom were wearing hanbok, traditional Korean formal clothing, and seated on either side of aisle at the very front), then the chaplain, and then waited. Anne and her father then proceeded down the aisle, to the accompaniment of music and applause (similar to Charles's progress), and did a similar amount of bowing. Anne's father joined his wife and Anne joined Charles, and the ceremony proceeded. It was short and sweet. The whole "I now pronounce you man and wife" bit was, needless to say, indiscernible, even despite my five months of Korean lessons. After that, there was applause, Charles and Anne cut the cake, drank wine, and regally exited the hall. ...during all of which I was running around desperately trying to capture it. It was no picnic dashing from one end of the room to the other to maximize my chances at getting the best shots of Charles and Anne as they rode in the trolley, walked up (and down) the aisle, and cut the cake. Matters were complicated (by default) by the official wedding photographer, who was likewise walking about and getting shots; he kept getting in the way of mine. Given the aforementioned gravity of the situation, I also had some difficulty holding my hands steady. I think I did pretty well, though, except for a bit of camera shake and perhaps accidentally deleting the part with the trolley and the first procession down the aisle when I tried to zoom in and instead switched photography modes. (Whoops!) Drenched with sweat, I handed the camera back to Charles and gratefully went with Adam, Elaine and Jeff to snag some eats. The food was delicious, and who ever had ordered the catering had spared no expense. There was tender boiled octopus; real, actual ham; and gimbap and kimchi in plenty, of course, as well as several other delicious dishes I couldn't even identify, both Korean and Chinese in origin. I held myself down to one plate of food. We'd resolved to hit up Meat Home (since renamed Meat Rak), one of our regular haunts, a meat buffet restaurant in Gohyeon, that evening for the last time before my departure from Korea. In the meantime, instead of getting to rest from their incessant labors, Charles and Anne had (per Korean tradition) changed into hanbok of their own and were now meeting and greeting the guests at the dining tables. Charles spared us a few moments to say hello (to our relief, both Charles and Anne looked better, and said as much). When we'd finished eating, we congratulated them once more and left. Within two hours they'd be on the plane to Bali. Maybe there they'll finally get their rest. I hope so. We hit McDonald's once more on the way to the bus stop, of course. (Elaine's not too keen on Meat Home and needed something for herself.) But we did board the bus and survived the ride back (which was even more equable than the ride up, unbelievably; perhaps I've been too hasty in my judgment of buses here). We changed out of our things at our respective apartments. Jeff came over to my place briefly so he could show me the ropes of Hostel World, a nice website devoted to the location and reservation of cheap hostels worldwide; and I gave him a super-compressed 20-minute crash course in Korean. His brain was porridge by the end of it, but I think we made some definite progress. Then Adam, Jeff and I hit up Meat Home and took our best shot at making a Bacon Bomb. (I'm too tired to explain to you what that is; look it up on YouTube.) We were marginally successful, despite a deplorable lack of proper equipment. After two hours of feasting, we parted, eminently satisfied with the weekend's proceedings. It hit me, as Jeff and I walked to Meat Home in the cool, moist evening air, the soft reddish glow of the sun rebounding from the low-hanging cottony clouds, that the curtain was truly closing on my Korean sojourn. I felt regret, be certain of that. But I also felt that I was doing the right thing by getting while the getting was good. I couldn't shake the feeling that re-upping my contract (which I'd seriously considered at one point, and still lightly entertained) would be a mistake. Things would begin to pall for me soon enough. I might as well go before I get tired of it. Still, I got the unshakable feeling that I'd be homesick for this place after I left. That would be a complete turnaround, but I suspect its truth regardless. I'm going to miss going out to Meat Home and having a protein hangover in the morning, or getting invited to weddings in Masan, or having elementary-school kids greeting me at the door of Reading Town with ear-to-ear grins and punches in the gut. It's been magical, to say the least. Still is.