what a weekend

What a crazy, awesome and insane weekend! I swear I did so much in just the last couple of days, it blows my mind to even think about it all. So yeah...


Friday I met up with Chelsea (a fellow blogger living in Bundang) and some other friends of hers to go to WA Bar in Suji. WA bar is a place where all the local foreigners go to hang out and relax, etc. We stayed there for a while and drank lots of soju (very bad stuff by the way!) and shared a huge pitcher of beer. After that (when we were all feeling pretty good) we decided to head to a local norae-bang (a private karaoke room) to drink and sing away the rest of the night. The norae-bang was cool and I had a blast singing along to several boy band songs and some tunes from the 80's. Since we didn't leave there until about 2am I just crashed at Chelsea's place and took the subway home in the morning (the subway stops running at midnight).


Saturday day I spent recuperating from the copious amounts of soju I had drank the night before (bad bad stuff!!!) and didn't actually roll out of bed until about 3 in the afternoon. After I cleaned up and got ready I headed out to meet Kennon, a fellow ESL teacher from my school. We met up with a friend of his in Olympic Park and went to a party hosted by some other ESL teachers who live in that area. I ended up on the roof lounging around and talking with most of them and generally enjoying the nice rain-free evening. At about 11:30 Kennon, Steve (Kennon's friend), Steve's girlfriend and I headed out to Itaewon to go see some bands that were playing at Jay Bar. We sat around and listened to the great music as I cautiously sipped my bottle of Cass beer (I was still feeling somewhat queezy from the night before). At 2:30 we took a bus and a couple cabs back to Bundang and I fell asleep on the way cause I was so tired!


This morning I woke up at about 7:30 and got ready to head out for a day on the town. First I went to Gyeongbokgung palace in northern Seoul and walked around there for about an hour. After that I took the subway to Namdaemun Market...a very interesting place. Imagine Soulard times about 100 and you have Namdaemun Market. It's a huge area filled with vendors selling their wares to the passers-by. I picked up a cute frilly black skirt while I was there, it only cost about $9.50! You can get some really greats deals there so it's an excellent place to go shopping. However, since it was raining today a lot of the shops were closed so I'm going to have to go back again some other time.


From there I took the subway to Dongdaemun Market which is a lot like Namdaemun except that it even bigger and has a lot more variety. You can find pretty much anything you could ever possibly want...and no wonder because the place is really that huge! I didn't stay there very long though cause my feet were already killing me at that point and there were still a few other places I wanted to see before the day was over.


So...next I went to Techno Mart, which is another huge shoping area that specializes in electronic goods and the like. I actually found a department store on the bottom level and decided to shop for a bit. There were bargains galore there and I ended up buying about 8 different items of clothing, all for about $60. It was insanely cheap and everything is so cute!!! They also have a food court there which houses about 40 stalls selling various Korean foodstuffs, though the really odd thing is that they have plastic replicas of all the food on display so it's not really a problem trying to figure out what you want to eat. I once again had kimbap and kimchi and it was of course delicious.


After Techno Mart I took the subway to Coex Mall. Again, imagine the Galleria but about 50 times bigger. The place was hopping and filled to the brim with excited shoppers from top to bottom. I found yet another Asics store there but I think the one I saw in Moran was still slightly cheaper. I had already spent enough money for the day so I didn't stay at COEX very long...and at about 7pm I headed home.


On the subway home I met two other foreigners and struck up a conversation with them. They actually live in the same area as me and teach at another school not far from mine. They told me they had just gotten married about 4 months ago and had actually met each other while they were both teaching English here in Korea! One of them is from New Zealand and the other is from Canada. Go fig... They gave me their email address and phone number and told me to contact them if I ever wanted to hang out and do something, so I think I might get together with them sometime to go see some other sites around Seoul...maybe a temple or something?


And now here I am yet again at the local PC bang...still no internet in my apartment, though Kennon said he would see about getting it hooked up for me this week...I'm keeping my fingers crossed! From here I'm going to take the subway to Yatap to get a few things I need from the Kims Club supermarket there. And then after that I'm going to bed!!!


Definitely an awesome weekend though... I'm looking forward to many more just like this!
:)