Sunday, October 09, 2005

Another Weekend in Seoul

I love Fridays! It's my longest day teaching but then the weekends are here and I get to wander around Seoul and without fail come back Sunday night with many crazy stories and new experiences. This weekend I took my backpack with me and stayed with two different friends in Ewha and Sinchon on Friday and Saturday. It's easier that way, I don't have to waste time on the subway and I can get out earlier and do more.
Friday night I met a friend in Shinchon and we went to the creatively named, 'The Bar'. The owner is a very friendly woman named Song Min who draws portraits of customers and has customers draw portraits of her and hangs them all over the walls. I loved it! I just bought oil pastels the other day and this bar helped inspire me to use them. I'll have to go back and do another drawing soon. I surprisingly made it to sleep by 1:00am and was grateful for it Saturday morning when I woke up well rested and feeling great. In the morning the weather was perfect and Micah and I drank tea on the roof with a good view of Seoul. The landlord has a garden on the roof and had a bunch of red chili's and hazelnuts spread out.
After tea I walked to Ewha and looked around the shops and met a shopkeeper from India. We started talking about Indian food and I got a craving so I started to head towards New Delhi, an Indian buffet in Itaewon. I met up with Amanda once I got there and after lunch we started looking for our Halloween costumes. No luck, but at least we still have a couple weeks. It was about 3:00pm and we walked by a bar with an outdoor patio and decided to enjoy the beautiful fall weather outside over a cold, watery glass of Cass. Valerie met up with us and we ended up staying for a couple hours. We made our way to Sinchon and before we went into the bar ate some fried pieces of vegetables from a food vendor on the street. The lady who sold it to us kept saying something to me (which I later found out was "pig") because I wasn't sharing with Amanda. She came around and grabbed my food, tore it in half and gave half to Amanda. How nice. We ended up staying at Nori Bar in Shinchon until the sun came up and then going to Valerie's boyfriends house where we slept in way too late. This morning I was really wishing I had gone home early like Friday...
Today I went to the Hwa Gye Sah temple again in time for the Dharma talk. Afterwards I met a girl from Canada who is an actress here and works for a Russian owned Korean comedy show. Her boyfriend is researching using hypnosis as an aid for Koreans to learn English. Many Koreans that are learning English don't ever practice in real situations for fear of not being understood or making mistakes and he is trying to help his students overcome this problem. She said he looking for guinea pigs for it and I volunteered, I think at the very least it will be interesting.
After the temple I was going to go to Val's for Canadian Thanksgiving dinner but wasn't feeling up to it after such little sleep so headed back to Beomgye. On the way I stopped at a park and layed down to read for awhile (I finally found the first Harry Potter book yesterday and thought it was time to see what the hype is all about). I had barely got comfortable when a drunk old man came up to me, knelt down and started blabbing some crap in Korean. I kept saying "Miguk, hanguk anio!", which is something like-I'm American and I don't freakin know what the hell you're saying! He didn't care and kept talking and finally grabbed my hands and pulled me up off the ground. I guess I was sitting underneath his tree or something...who know?
Now I'm back home in Anyang sitting at a PC Bang surrounded by teenagers playing computer games. It sounds like I'm in the middle of a war with all the shooting and yelling going on. Now, tomorrow begins my 7th week as a teacher.