As mentioned in the last post, I took a trip to Seoul this weekend. I was going to get into civilization for a bit. It's nice living out here in the country, but I don't exactly wanna spend all my time here. I visited my friend Justin Snow who I had met several years ago through my high school buddy Kristen Wagstrom. He has been instrumental in my adjustment to Korean society, by helping me understand the little things about this place. He originally came over for a job at a hagwan, but that went under, so now he works for GEPIK wich is a branch of what I am working for.
Anyway I will start from the beginning, but this weekend is going to be too much to fit all in one post, so bear with my snails pace. I basically got kicked out of work an hour early, and it is the first time I have ever seen anyone shutting stuff down at that school. They all wished me a happy Chuseok and were impressed that I was trying to visit Gyeongbukgung palace. I quickly packed my stuff, and headed towards the bus terminal, which reminds me that I have some serious laundry to get done. I hopped on a bus at the same terminal that sent me to Cheongju, so let's just say I was more than a little aprehensive about trusting where I was going. I was reading the front of every bus to make sure I didn't miss mine. In the span of about twenty minutes three or four busses pulled up, loaded up, and left. Finally one pulls up that says 당소을 "Dong Seoul" or East Seoul. Yes, I will wait for you to finish thinking up witty jokes about me taking a bus to Dong Seoul. You done? Alright, back to it. So I got on the right bus not knowing how long I would be on it, but this time I was armed with my new toy. This Samsung Galaxy 2 that I got is really quite awesome. I was able to facebook and reddit during the entire trip. Plus, I have a little navigation feature on it that tells me where I am, so no more awkward PC bang conversations in broken Korean. Justin also had a galaxy, but an older one, so we shared a bunch of apps for subway schedules and whatnot that should come in handy within the next couple of months. The empty space next to me was the last one taken, so yeah, little bit of waygook love comin my way. The bus ride was uneventful, as most bus rides are.
I showed up at the Dong Seoul terminal and instantly knew I was out of my league. The terminal itself is the size of a shopping mall. That is because pretty much every terminal is jam packed with places to shop and eat. I eventually found Justin and we got a bite to eat and what we ate was this. So freakin delicious it's not even funny. You cook it on a grill right in front of you with some onions and garlic, then you throw it on a piece of lettuce with a little bean and pepper paste, add some vegetables and then pop that entire bad boy in your mouth. After we ate we headed to the subway and had to connect a couple times till we got on the final leg of the journey. The subways are pretty effin awesome. Everything is clean and relatively neat. I had to buy a little card to swipe at every gate and bus, but it was about 21000 won for the entire weekend. I have to admit, I stared at foreigners. I stared at a lot of foreigners. I hadn't seen another caucasian outside of my apartment crew for about two weeks. In Seoul I heard people speaking English regularly. It is kind of strange to hear twenty different conversation going on and be only able to understand one of them. I dont know how safe the American subways are with their platforms not guarded by anything, but these had giant glass doors that would only open when the train had pulled up and opened its doors. Just seemed like the whole system was well thought out. Also, it looked like the amount of people that came through there daily would have to be in the millions. No joke, millions per day. That's a lot of use.
We got to the stop and walked into the open. There was more stores at this one stop than there were in about half of the town that I live in. Right in that complex we stopped by this bar. If you sit through a couple of pictures of food you can see a pic of the owner. He's a pretty young lookin guy with really short hair and glasses. Originally from Canadia, yeah thats right, Canadia, he came over here for a few years before marrying a lovely Korean girl. They then opened a bar for foreigners with the help of her brother and I think cousin. Anyway, they are all super nice, and they speak english, and foreigners infest that place like we were cockroaches. The beer was good and plentiful, and there were whiskey shots. Oh the whiskey shots. They had Makers, and Jameson, and all the good ones. We played darts, and talked to other foreigners, and even a local Korean guy who was freaking awesome. This guy was named Anthony, and was probably damn near seventy. He told us so many stories. He fought for the American military in Vietnam, and talked about how he went to the last couple of days of Woodstock. We closed the place down with him that night just shootin the breeze, and Jason gave us a free round for our good business. There was some drunk Canadian there that night that kept jumping around and shouting and wanting to be all up in everyones business. If it were America I would assume he was on Coke or Meth and stay away from him all night, but this guy was really just that annoying without the help of any uppers. Over here they have some pretty harsh penalties for drugs, so there is pretty much no way he could have been on anything like that. I think everyone pretty much understands that Korean prison is not something that would be fun and on top of that in a society like this drug prices would have an excuse to go through the roof, so it's not really a surprise that I have not heard of any sort of drug culture over here. We did however find a bar that lets you smoke a hookah. It was the other foreigner bar called Pub 210 and the bar was tended by this smokin' hot Korean girl named Ani. We talked her up a bit, which was cool because she had a british accent. Everyone who I talk to over here is like "Where are you from?" and me knowing that no one will know where Gamgok is say "Eumseong" to which they always reply "Where?" "Do you know where Chungju or Cheongju is?" "Where?" "Nevermind, I live on the border of the middle province and Gyongi province." "Oh... wow." Totally had that conversation about four or five times this weekend. Justin lives in a crazy nice neighborhood on the outskirts of Seoul that looks like it was all built in the last couple of years. Coffee shops everywhere and a nice little moat for the water to travel through when it rains. There is a soccer field right behind his place just like there is mine. He also lives pretty close to a big bus stop, so thats convenient. It seems like there aren't that many houses here. I think a vast majority of the people in this country live in apartment style highrises.
I do have to say, after walking around Seoul for so long, I think it is safe to say that I have the biggest beard in this entire country. If I don't, I am definitely in the top ten. There just isn't a whole lot of facial hair going on here, and mine is pretty epic. I will talk about Itaewon (the foreigner district) tomorrow, and probably Seoul and Chuseok the next day. I've got some pretty awesome pictures, but don't like the idea of loading them onto this PC bang computer, so I'll have to wait till I figure out my school computer, or till I have internet on my own. I leave you with your K-pop fix for the night. Enjoy.
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