Reporting from Seoul, S.Korea!

Dear Friends and Readers,

Please forgive me for having neglected my blog for so long. I started writing pretty frequently in my personal blog, so I kinda gave up writing detailed entries here (In case you haven't noticed from the many video posts). But now I am back!

And I'm in Korea!

I arrived yesterday afternoon in Seoul and have been spending all my time with the beloved Min! It's been really great.

Here is the play-by-play, more for my sake than for your's.

I woke up at 4am on Saturday morning, to take a van to the airport at 6am for my 8:50am flight. The new Terminal at the Beijing airport is really impressive. It's quite pretty and clean-looking. It took an hour to go through check-in and security. I'm a dummy; I got my hand sanitizer and my hand lotion confiscated. I hate how paranoid airports make me feel. I also have this weird phobia that people won't believe that my passport actually belongs to me (since I don't really look like my photo anymore).

Smooth 2 hour flight. Passed out and scarfed sandwiches. Arrived in Seoul at 12pm, and took a bus to a hotel. Quickly realized that I did not understand what anyone around me was saying. Passed out on the bus too. Was able to make my way to the hostel without any problems.

Dropped my stuff off and tried to get in contact with Min. Again I was a dummy and didn't write down his cell phone number so I had to go on the internet to find it, and then find a phone to call him. Ended up making 2 trips back and forth from the hostel to the pay phone a block away because I couldn't figure out how to use the pay phone and I wasn't sure if I had the right number.

Finally reached him and found him at the subway stop. HEART skipped a beat when I saw Min in a corduroy brown blazer and brown leather dress shoes. Ate a delicious lunch of shrimp omelet rice at OmutoTomato. Went back to the hostel to drop Min's stuff off and pass out for another hour.

When we finally decide to pick our asses up off the bed, we walked around the college town area near my hostel and scoped out different restaurants. This place is super trendy (the area near Hongik University), well trendy, hipster, artsy, punk all mixed up. There were lots of bars, lots of street vendors, lots of college kids with great looking hair and even better looking accessories. We saw this rock band perform in the park.

For dinner we had noodles cooked in a giant pot. Then we roamed the streets looking for Krispy Kreme (my idea). After stuffing our faces, we decided to eat more, so we ate deep fried squid and drank beer at a street stall. Then we met up with Min's cousin Andrew and went to this bar called Ta (in Chinese characters, it's Da). Saw some cool kids perform, and some not so cool expats dance shamelessly. Then Min and I migrated to Con Bar and I had a little "Iced Tea" action. Made it home at 3am. Sounds like a great first night in Seoul.

DAY 2

Slept in till 10:30am. Woohoo! Picked up some sweet potato raisin bread from Paris Baguette for breakfast. Took the subway over to City Hall. Saw tons of Chinese people waving giant Chinese flags across the street at a concert for the Olympic Torch Relay. Felt oddly comforted. Then Min and I went inside City Hall, took some great pics, and frolicked.

Next, we headed to the National Palace. Walked, a lot, and went into the Folk Museum. Saw parts of a funeral procession. Also got to see the changing of the guards outside the palace. I got really scared by the giant drum. BANG BANG BANG (does a drum go bang?) Afterwards we went to Dongdaemun Market, where we ate this deliciously yummy Korean stew and a soft-serve cone that was at least 8 inches high (no joke. Pics to come).

Soon though, I had to say good-bye to Min since he needed to go back to Ochang to teach tomorrow. So I stayed around the market area and bought myself eyeliner, a cell phone dangly in the shape of a mini-Soju bottle and bottle opener, and charcoal soap (yes, I am equally intrigued). Afterwards, I took the subway (by myself!) back to the Hongik area.

I was in search of food, even though I wasn't hungry since Min and I ate "lunch" at 4pm. I ate an ice cream hot dog (a hot dog bun filled with ice cream, berry sauce, and sprinkles/nuts). It was an accident. I thought I was ordering a regular hot dog. Then to balance the sweet with the salty, I ate some street food, rice cakes and bean curd on a stick. DELICIOUS!

Tomorrow I explore Seoul, solo. I am finally getting over my nervousness about speaking English to people. I mean, I have no choice really, but for some reason I almost feel disrespectful speaking to people in English. As if, I should be making some effort to learn and speak their language. I've been asking Min how to say some stuff in Korean, but I think he gets annoyed with me for getting the pronunciation absolutely wrong. I think he also gets annoyed that anytime he tells me something about Korea, I immediately answer, "Well in China, it's like this...." I feel bad making him my Korean native informant, but I want to know more about the place I'm in, and it seems more efficient to just ask him instead of reading about it online or somewhere.

More updates soon. And in a day, I'm going to visit Min's host family and watch him teach!!!