Winter Vacation adventures! Palaces, Subway Station Offices, Costco, Indoor Rollercoasters, and Hummus!

Greetings!

First of all, photo credit goes to Blythe Wilson, who took pictures of our outings last week. They are of: us at a Korean palace, us crammed her co-teacher's car en route to Gagnam, and a traditional tea house in Insadong. Curious? Read on =)

So, I am back at work after a wonderful yet busy week of vacation. For this vacation, I decided to stay in Korea instead of traveling somewhere else. I ended up only visiting Seoul, but there are so many parts of that city that are so different, it feels like going to different cities. I spent the majority of my break with Blythe and Michelle, who were both on vacation this week too. So here's what I did.

Monday: went out for Indian food with Blythe, Michelle, and our friend Colin from GEPIK orientation. The food was a little too spicy for me (no surprise there), but I enjoyed the company and making fun of the Bollywood movie that was playing in the restaurant. It was on mute so we decided to make up the script and guess what they were saying, "Whose Line Is It Anyway" style. Seeing all of the beautiful saris and scenery really made me want to go to India. After the Indian food, we decided to check out what movies were playing at the CGV (movie theatre franchise, like a Regal Cinemas or Loews in Rochester). The only English move that was playing was Love & Other Drugs, that movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. The movie itself was OK, but I did enjoy the frequent shots of Jake Gyllenhaal's naked butt. Teehehehe. After the movie we went to a nearby bar for drinks. We were there for an hour or so, then headed out to get our beauty rest for our big plans on Tuesday!


Tuesday: Blythe's co-teacher Mrs. Jeon and her friend Jen took Michelle, Blythe, Valery (he played hookie for day to come along) and me to Gagnam to eat Mexican food at a restaurant called Dos Tacos. I ordered dos quesadillas, and it was SO good. I had missed real sour cream, because the "sour cream" they serve in Korea is sweet. So when they had real sour cream that was actually sour, I was a happy camper. After Dos Tacos we drove to Insadong, which is considered the more "traditional" part of Seoul. There, we went to see the palace of a famous Korean dynasty (I'm blogging from work and the pamphlet with all of the details are at home...I'll find out and edit soon!). At the palace, we saw the King and Queen's living areas, the place where the king would meet with diplomats, and the prince's quarters. It was very interesting and fun to go with Koreans who could tell us even more than the information that was provided. After seeing the palace, we walked to a street to shop and look around. There were lots of souvenir-y things there and I ended up buying a beautiful bag and cute coin purse. By this time we were all quite cold, and Michelle was craving some traditional Korean tea, so we found a tucked-away traditional tea house. It was beautiful but very small inside-- we joked that it looked like what the inside of a hobbit's house would look like! I ordered cinnamon tea with a dried persimmon inside. After tea we drove a little bit in search of a Japanese restaurant but all the ones we found were quite pricy, so we settled for galbi instead. Galbi is food that famous in Suwon...its marinated meat that you cook at the table,similar to samgyupsal. As we were walking to the restaurant, we noticed a lot of policeman and guards around. When I asked why, turns out we were right near the Korean president's residence! I couldn't see it but apparantely it was right up the road from where we were. Cool stuff! It was a busy busy day, but so much fun!

When we returned to Suwon, Blythe and Michelle came over and hung out at my apartment, then we headed to Yongtong (neighborhood nearby) for a book club meeting. Blythe had found on Facebook a book club for foreigners "High-minded literary types" that meets once a week at a bar in Yongtong, so we decided to go check it out. It was the first meeting of the new year and there were only 3 others there, but we decided on a book to read. The book is called "The Dice Man". It sounds really interesting so I'm excited to read it and have intelligent conversations with new friends!

Wednesday: Michelle, Blythe and I headed back to Gagnam to go to Costco. Yes, that's right. There is a Costco in Korea. For those of you who don't know what Costco is (like I didn't) it's a Sam's Club establishment. So basically its a huge warehouse that sells everything in bulk. We had quite an adventure getting there, since we didn't know exactly where it was. We had seen it from the car the day before en route to Dos Tacos but this time we were traveling by subway. When we arrived at the Suwon subway station, we went to the information desk and asked them how to get to the Costco in Gagnam. The guy behind the counter didn't really understand and recruited the help of another station worker who looked like a guard or something. After trying his very best to help us and not getting anywhere, he picked up our worn subway map we were all pouring over and said "follow me." We followed him through the station, through the doors marked "staff only", and into the station office! You should have seen the face of all people in the office (all men) when 3 white girls walked in! The officer who escorted us there said something to another at the computer, and suddenly all like 10 of the workers were hunched over the computer, searching online for subway stations nearest to Costco. I gotta say, one great thing about Korea is that if you need help, you will get it. People really go out of their way to help you. He could have just as easily brushed us off and said "sorry, can't help you" and walk away. But he didn't!

Once we found out what stop we had to get off at, the help didn't end there. The guard who brought us there proceeded to escort us all the way the the platform and waited with us until the subway came. It was so sweet! He chatted with us in his broken English and reminded us constantly "third stop! one, two, three, get off train!" When the subway arrived we said goodbye and were on our way. The rest was a breeze because we already knew what exit to leave the station from and what bus to take from there to get to Costco. Finally, we arrived at Costco. Ahhhhhh! (soprano opera voice.) Blythe has a Costco membership from California that worked there too, so we were all set and ready to shop!

The great thing about Korean Costco is that it sells lots of Western products. I felt like a kid in a candy shop, grabbing great products from home that I had been missing- cheese, Kashi cereal, bagels, whole wheat bread, buttermilk pancake mix, etc. After exploring Costco for about and hour, we checked out and grabbed a meal. In my excitement of buying everything, I had kind of disregarded the voices in my head reminding me that I had to carry everything home through the subway, so I was left with an extremely heavy bag that was pretty cumbersome to carry home. Blythe and Michelle helped by grabbing one handle and helping me carry it, and we eventually got home around 8:30pm. Blythe and I met later that night around 11 to go salsa dancing at this club/dance studio that's supposed to have salsa every night, but it was closed :(. Instead we went to a bar for a drink and then hit the sack. We had had an exhausting day, so it was nice to go home and crash!

Thursday: I went to Seoul to teach my private in the afternoon since I had cancelled the previous Saturday, then had a low-key night. It was nice to have a day off!

Friday: AWESOME. For Ajou University Language School's "cultural experience day", Val and his classmates got to spend the day at Lotte World, the largest indoor recreation park (aka amusement park) in the world, located in Seoul. BALLIN! Unfortunately, Michelle had to go back to work on Friday and Blythe wasn't feeling well, so they couldn't come along. Luckily, I had invited my friend Melodie (the same friend I met up with for New Year's) to come along. She met me there at noon and we met up with Val and his classmates. After greetings and introductions, we took on the bumper cars. I couldn't remember the last time I did bumper cars, but it was lots of fun! While we waited for our "magic passes" for the French Revolution, the big rollercoaster, to be valid (if we returned to the rollercoaster line, which had a 40 minute wait, with our "magic passes" between 3:30 and 4, we would get to go past the whole line and ride the coaster), we rode some more rides and got food. We (Melodie, Val, and 4 of his classmates-from Uzbekistan, China, Japan, and Jordan) waited in a ridiculously long line for the "hot air balloons" that went on a track on the ceiling around the entire building. By the time we got off it was 3:55 so we BOOKED IT to the rollercoaster so we didn't miss our magic pass slot. It was so cool to walk right past the huge line and get on the next car. The coaster was INSANE! The cool thing is that because the rollercoaster winds through the entire, 6- floor complex, you never see the whole thing all at once so you don't really know what it looks like. We were definitely in for a surprise with the twists and turns and tunnels of complete darkness. I think my favorite part was the sudden downward fall in a pitch-black tunnel that as soon as we got out the tunnel turned into a spiral thing where you're sideways. It was quite a ride and I screamed my head off. It was awesome. After the rollercoaster, we stumbled our way to ice rink on the bottom floor, where I was able to live out my fantasy of having an ice-skating date where you hold hands and fall down together. Except, I was the only one who fell. Val actually really enjoys ice skating so he was really excited. A lot of his classmates were there too so we all skated together for a while. A great ending to a fun day!

Saturday: Yes, this entry is not over yet. If you've gotten this far, mazel tov! Saturday afternoon I met (suprise!) Blythe and Michelle for Chinese food at a restaurant near Blythe's apartment, which is in North Suwon. As we sat waiting for our food, a hoard of children came into the restaurant with their teachers and took over the restaurant. It wasn't long until I realized that they were Sannam Middle School students! They must have been students from one of the other camps that were going on during the vacation because some of the teachers were there too. I have no idea why they came all the way to North Suwon (about a 25 minutes away by bus), but I was shocked to see them all! None of them saw me, suprisingly, but I recognized one of my students from Winter Camp, caught his eye, and waved. He looked surprised and confused, hahaa.

Sunday: The four of us braved the snow and went to Itaewon, the foreigner district of Seoul. There, we ate West African food (Val was happy!) and visited the foreign food market where I bought hummus (I was happy!). Then we helped Blythe find shoes. Most places don't sell anything over size 8 here since Koreans' feet are so small, but Itaewon is famous for having bigger sizes of things. Once she found some cute boots, we went to What The Book?, an English book store, to get our book for Book Club. Unfortunately they didn't have it in stock but I decided to order it. After browing around What the Book?, we found another Mexican food place and had REALLY good Mexican food. Again. Haha. What can I say, Blythe's from Cali. She eats a lot of Mexican food. But I don't mind at all. This place even had margaritas! We returned very tired and wet since the snow had really come down hard and they didn't clear the sidewalks or roads at ALL. I dug into the hummus as a late-night snack then we went to bed, very satisfied from a great week!


The students still are on vacation, so I'm just seat warming at work these days. As much as I'd rather be at home in my PJ's, at least I'm getting paid to blog, FB/Gchat with my friends, and watch episodes of How I Met Your Mother online. Life is good, ha. I also had to get a new phone this week since my other one accidently went through the wash. Oops. I got my new phone yesterday (Monday), so yeah. I did that ENTRE week sans cell phone. and it was HARD. I seriously don't know how we lived without cell phones before.

That's enough to digest for now, I think. Believe it or not, I have more to blog about we'll wait for another time for that!

Thanks for reading:)

Love,
Mel