I remember sitting in a small restaurant having dinner with a woman I met in Cambodia, when a guy I met in Chengdu knocked on the window. This sort of an occurance is not out of the ordinary for me. I had recently met several people from my home city of Madison Wisconsin at a Korean ultimate tournament, including one woman who I'd actually hung out with about a year before I left.

The setting for the tournament was a beach in Busan, one of Korea's premier oceanic destinations. Unlike the tournament in Tianjin where 85% or so of the people were Chinese, Busan Bids was predominantly American with a few other westerners peppered in. Despite my team coming in dead last I think the rosters were the most balanced out of any tournament or league of this format that I've ever been a part of.

Nearly the entire time that I was in Korea I was shown tremendous generosity and hospitality by the ultimate frisbee community. Several people let me stay at their house even when there wasn't room for me. I probably could have gotten a ride from Seoul to Busan with an ultimate player but I was interested hitchhiking so I took the worst subway system that I've ridden in Asia to the best spot I've ever tried to hitch a ride. In somewhere around seven minutes a trucker on his way to Busan pulled over to pick me up. He didn't speak much English but we were able to communicate and I had him drop me off at a town just north of Busan called Gyeongju.

Gyeongju is one of those old towns with lots of cultural sights to visit. Unfortunately it was misting the whole time I was there so I had to go around by bus instead of bike. Fortunately there's some really nice people from the ultimate community who live there and took me out for a delicious dinner and gave me a ride to the tournament—no cardboard sign necessary.

Did I make the most of my time in Korea? I dunno, maybe. I didn't go everywhere but I did a lot. I'm still trying to process and take in the Korean culture. There's so many weird contradictions and things are very different than the rest of Asia. One thing's for sure and that's that I won't mind being in a country where they don't sell soju.