Lost in Korea: 07/31/2005

Thursday, August 04, 2005

the zoo and afterwards

Today me and the other two foreign teachers from my school went to Seoul Grand Park...and it was loads of fun despite the constant downpour of rain all morning and afternoon. I can't say I was very impressed by the zoo itself; it was kinda run down and it looked like they didn't take very good care of the animals there (at least not like they do at the zoo in St. Louis). But aside from that and the rain I had a great time. When we were on our way out of the park we decided to take this sky lift thing back to the parking lot, which was really relaxing and provided an awesome arial view of the surroundings. After that I suggested we go to Kyobo Bookstore at Gwangwhamun Station in the city, so we took the subway and headed downtown. We bummed around there for a while just browsing and reading and then we left there in search of food. We ended up having an awesome dinner at this Japanese place near Gwangwhamun which was fairly cheap in comparison to the Japanese places they have in St. Louis. But I think it was about the best Japanese food I have ever had...oh it was so good... ::drool::

Ahem...so anyway...yeah. After that we walked around some more just window shopping and browsing all the various stores in that area. Then we decided to go to Red Mango which is this cute little fruity frozen yogurt chain they have here in Korea. As with all the food here, it too was delicious. By that time it was pretty late so I suggested we hop on a bus and take a nice scenic route home. Quite a fun day overall.

I was able to wake up before 11am today so I'm hoping I can force myself to get to bed at a decent hour tonight. Well we'll see I guess. Also, below I've posted some pics from these past couple of days. Enjoy.

Very soon I'm going to post an entry that features pics I've taken of all the really bad Konglish one can see everywhere here in Korea. Should be interesting. Heh heh heh....

an intersection near my school

a typical open-air market near Dongdaemun

a protest I came across while downtown yesterday

another farmers' market near Dongnimmun Station

a creek at the zoo today...looks like chocolate milk doesn't it?

some pathetic-looking turtle characters at the zoo

the bird cage

a beautiful view of the mountains nearby

a sinister-looking alligator hiding out in the plants

some weird monkey/sloth-type animal

a decent-looking tiger

the sky lift we took out of the park

a view of the park's Rose Garden below

our first course at the Japanese restaurant...pickled vegetables, garlic and peanuts (& a beer that Erin ordered)

Erin's California roll, served with udon

Amanda's order of sushi, also served with udon and shredded cabbage

my order of tonkatsu, served with udon, steamed rice, shredded cabbage, quail eggs, soy-marinated black beans and spiced squid---yum!

our desserts at Red Mango---double yum!

a pic of me sitting up by the windows in our apartment

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

on vacation

So...this weekend was interesting to say the least. Plus it seems my internal clock has now been thrown all out of whack. Thanks for that goes to a guy I met while on my visa run last weekend. He had invited me out with some of his friends for yogurt soju on Friday night, and even though I was rather apprehensive about it I agreed to go. So at about 10:45 I met up with all of them at Samsung Plaza in Bundang (which is hella far from where I am living now). Knowing that they probably wouldn't be finished with the evening before the subway stopped running at midnight, I figured I'd take a bus or a cab home, so I wasn't too worried about it.

Most of the evening was fun...that is up until the point when the guys in our group decided to pick a fight with another group of foreign guys and this one crazed Korean girl. And no sooner than they had started yelling at each other did tables and chairs start flying in every direction. The last thing I heard before I promptly stepped out of the bar was "I'm gonna kill you!" shouted by none other than the guy who had invited me to hang out with him (he was yelling at one of the other guys, not at me!). Needless to say that's the last time I intend on seeing him. I just don't feel compelled to hang out with people who are reminiscent of college frat boys, and I don't want to be in that kind of company.

So by the time I left that bar it was already almost 4am so instead of spending money on a cab I decided to wait it out and take the subway home when it started running again at 6:30am. Of course the flaw in my plan was that I had no idea what to do with myself until then. At least I wasn't very tired. Thankfully another guy who had been sitting next to me at the bar had also decided to leave when the fighting broke out cause I guess that really wasn't his thing either. He offered for me to hang out at his place until I could take the subway back home. Having no other options I happily accepted.

Jason (the guy) lives in an Officetel very similar to the one I lived in while in Bundang. It was very posh with a separate loft and everything! He showed me around and then we proceeded to listen to music and watch Conan O'Brien until it was time for me to go. Before I left though he took me up to the roof to see the view. The sun was coming up at that point so it was actually very cool! After that we went back down to his apartment, I gathered my things and left. We also exchanged numbers and said we should hang out again sometime since both of us are fairly new to Seoul and don't know many people yet. He's a nice enough guy I guess, so who knows, it might be fun.

Anyway, since that night when I stayed up til dawn my sleeping schedule has been all messed up. I've practically become a vampire, sleeping all day and then stalking around at night. I'm slowly trying to adjust myself back to normal, so hopefully by Wednesday I'll be keeping regular hours again. How annoying...

So yeah, I didn't really do very much the rest of the weekend in the way of touristy stuff (cause I wasn't awake for it), but I did managed to hike up Mt. Namsan twice (once on Saturday night and once tonight) and yesterday I hiked up Mt. Inwangsan. It took forever to get up that one, but it was well worth it cause the view from up there is spectacular. Tomorrow I might try hiking up there again if I get up early enough. Needless to say, I'm really starting to enjoy hiking...

So this week I am on vacation but don't really have much planned...just the normal sight-seeing stuff. I'm just glad to finally have a chance to breathe and relax. How nice.

Here's some of the stuff I did get a chance to see this weekend...