Seoul survivor

It's 7:30pm on Sunday, and I'm blogging. I had every intention of blogging much earlier in the day, but I've been very productive, so it's okay.

Seoul pictures

Where did I want to start? So Friday I stayed up quite late doing homework and studying, then got up early on Saturday to take the train to Seoul. I went with Meghan (cool girl who went to New College in Florida), Tim, and my roommate Amy. We successfully got a taxi to the airport and got on the train, which was exciting. While on the train we discovered that though the seats were all facing the same way, we were able to turn two of them around so we could face each other. While trying to do it, a stranger came up to help, which was exciting. Then... we had no leg room. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Our train left at 8:45, and we got to Seoul around 10:30am. We were meeting a friend of Meghan's, someone who was in the Peace Corps in Bangladesh with her, named John. He was going to give us a tour of Insa-Dong, one of Seoul's very traditional cultural districts, but we just spent most of the time wandering, because he didn't know exactly where he was going. (Which was okay.)

Seoul was... not what I expected. It was a lot like all the other big cities I've been to, especially Dublin and New York. It's a cleaner city, certainly, but very packed. To quote Wikipedia: "Almost one fourth of South Korea's entire population lives in the Seoul National Capital Area, and nearly one half in the Greater Seoul Area, making it the country's political, cultural, and economic centre, as well as a centre for international business." I think it was mostly disappointing because we didn't end up going to any really cool places--we went to one of the old palaces and museums, but it was closed by the time we got there. Plus, it was sticky, humid, and muggy. We finally made it to Insa-Dong, which was actually just a long street of less-touristy art shops, some of which were interesting, and I got some postcards. After that, John had to go to work, so we took the subway to Itaewon.

Itaewon is the area surrounding the biggest population of American military, and it's apparently referred to as the "American ghetto" because of the high number of American military and civilians, and foreigners, who visit and live there. Check out my pictures to see some of my favorite places. It definitely felt like the seediest place we visited, and when we came out of the subway and saw Outback Steakhouse and Subway, it was like being in New York. To me, it was really interesting from a cultural standpoint. We went there to find a semi-famous bookstore called "What the Book?" that sells English books. That was the best part of the trip for me, because I got a Korean-English dictionary and got to read parts of several books. The prices aren't particularly right though, still too expensive, and I didn't want to spend much money, but it was nice to be in air conditioning, sit down, and read. After that, we did a little street shopping and got back on the Subway.

We went to the palace (see one or two pictures), but it was closed, along with the museum, so we instead went in search of a Dunkin Donuts and another bookstore. By then it was time to get back on the train, and I had a very nice, relaxing trip back to Chuncheon. When we got there we had to make a quick run to E-Mart, the superstore place, to buy ice cream for this morning's activity.

This morning I did a joint weekend fun activity with Amy and Tim, and we had our students run around Kangwon's campus looking for items as part of a scavenger hunt. My girls were pretty cute and nice, and they seemed to really appreciate the ice cream. The end of this set of pictures is some of the pictures they had to take as part of the scavenger hunt, so you can see what well-to-do Korean children look like!

After that I showered and studied for a bit, then went to a DVD Bang with Tim and Dana. Apparently movie rental isn't very common here, although there are places. More common is to go to a place called a DVD Bang, which offers private movie rental rooms. The more people who go, the cheaper, but the room is relatively small and has only one couch, so it's only really a three person place. It ends up being about 4 dollars a piece, which is cheaper than a theater. You can't rewind or anything--they start playing it a few minutes after you go in, but it's an interesting idea. We watched a Korean movie called The King and the Clown, which made me cry. Apparently DVD Bangs are where teenagers go to make out and have sex, but needless to say, I did neither. The couches were leather, anyway.

That was an experience. Now, I was going to make a much longer blog entry, but I need to start my laundry and do some homework and studying. I teach again tomorrow, and that's my last lesson, so I'll have a lot of free time for studying this week, which will be awesome.

Here's an article about Itaewon and trafficking of people: from Time Magazine.