The Weekend: Part 2

Josh:

Just so everyone knows: I finally got a phone! Not only that, but on Thursday we will have the internet at the house. I'm finally growing up! (Note: Audrey will get her phone on Friday when she gets her ARC [Alien Registration Card - which, by the way, literally is green]. It seems if you are a foreigner you can't get family plans. That's alright though considering my phone is free and it only costs $15 a month [give or take a few bucks due to extra minutes]. I bet you want a phone in Korea now don't you?)

I forgot to mention on Friday after the wine bar we also went to a "serve yourself" beer place. They have a bunch of refrigerators with beer in it and prices in front of each drink. When you leave, one of the workers counts your bottles and you pay according to that. I thought it was pretty neat. I mention this bar because when we were talking we saw a guy hitting on a Korean girl really awkwardly. It becomes even funnier when you put in the comment Mike said: "Anyone here seen Tropic Thunder? ("Yes") Okay, doesn't he look like Simple Jack?" We all looked and had to hold in our fits of laughter and giggles because he looked exactly like Ben Stiller's character "Simple Jack" (For those of you who haven't seen the movie, Google the name and just see what we saw. In the movie Ben Stiller plays an actor whose most famous role was a mentally handicapped character name Simple Jack. Now you can see why this guy's appearance was so fantastic). Not only were we laughing at this guy hitting on this girl but he also had the most desirous look on his face. You can tell he didn't just want to be friends and probably could have burned a hole in her with his look. If you can imagine Simple Jack giving gaga eyes to some Korean girl at a bar coupled with the fact that you are surrounded by people who were semi-drunk and like to giggle, you can get an idea of the joy we experienced that night. This is also important for later when I post videos of the weekend because we saw a pigeon who was missing feathers and we reference him as the "Simple Jack" of pigeons. Needless to say, we have lots of fun when we go out together.

And now back to the weekend.

After our little journey of jumping between subway lines, we finally reached Yeouido. We stepped out into the light and were surrounded by giant buildings. Of course, we didn't really research where the festival was going on other than the general area so we really had no idea where to go. We bought some little street doughnuts (super good) and wandered around a little bit until we saw balloons in the distance. That direction then made the most sense so we headed towards the commotion and saw a fairly sizable crowd. Luckily, thanks to San Francisco (once again), I have become used to crowds bigger than what we saw so I didn't really have a problem. We crossed the street and walked onto a giant open blacktop (with people rollerblading, skate boarding, etc). We saw there was a park to our right so we headed in that direction hoping to see some more trees. Meg and Mike decided to get some "refreshments" at a store (Note: It is legal to drink on the streets in Korea so you can walk around drunk and holding a bottle of beer all you want) while Audrey and I rested (our feet were killing us). As we started to explore the park Mike saw something in the trash that caught his eye. He pulled it out (with us laughing at him) and it turned out to be a mat. He excitedly said he was going to keep it, threw it over his shoulder, nicknamed it "Matt" and we continued on with a new treasure.

After exploring the park a little we ran into a lake with some giant Koi and a beautiful duck (nicknamed "The Maserati of Ducks"). We stopped for a minute, took videos and pictures, moved onto a giant statue (don't know of who) and a nice little building which Audrey and Meg climbed into.

As we wound our way through the park we noticed several people having photo sessions (One had a newly wed couple while another had a guy dancing with a low cut shirt. You know, the normal stuff). I guess that's the time to take pictures in the park. After we got out of the park we noticed a street vendor selling something that I had heard about before I even got to Korea. I don't remember their name but I believe they are silkworm pupae. Despite several warnings from Meg and Audrey, I couldn't help myself and Mike was up to the challenge. We tried it (Mike wanted to up the stakes by trying two in one bite so we skewered two right off the bat). Yes, I ate bugs here in Korea. No, they aren't really that good. They don't taste terrible but they do sort of pop in your mouth when you bite them (a little strange). Enjoy!







Meg had already tried them apparently and she hated them. When you first eat them, it isn't too bad. It's a very mild taste but later on the bitter goo just stays there in your mouth. We decided to just keep it at two and bought more street doughnuts to get the taste out of our mouths.

So as we left the park there was a small grassy area where people were having picnics, flying kites and just relaxing. We liked the idea of finally sitting down so we found a spot and (thanks to the mat that Mike found) we took a seat. Mike and Meg ran into a store and got a bottle of Soju and a 1.5 liter of beer. We all just sat, talked and drank. I think we all had a blast just talking and hanging out with each other. Audrey and I seem to really connect with these people so I am very grateful we were able to meet them. After a few hours (maybe just an hour, I'm not sure) we decided to just find a Mexican restaurant in Seoul and head home. We never really officially saw the festival (luckily for us it turns out they canceled the main celebration due to the ship sinking [more on that later]) but we figured we had seen enough blossoms to satisfy us and we had walked far enough. So we got up (at this point Josh was riding the Soju train first class, baby), stumbled a little and headed back to the subway. When we got to the blacktop, a skateboard mutant (called an S-board) caught our eye and we decided to give it a shot. Mike rented from the lady and we gave it our best shot with no prior instruction nor any idea what to do. I had seen some friends of mine use it a long time ago so all I knew was that your needed to rotate your hips back and forth (aka thrust in my inebriated mind). We both kept flying off the board (I smacked my head on the ground [according to Audrey, I don't remember hitting my head but I remember falling flat on my back multiple times - I guess that's not a good sign?] while Mike only ate it once but he hit his head hard [we were all a little worried]). After about 10-20 minutes Mike was skating like a pro. He somehow managed to get the hang of it that quickly. All of us were blown away. I eventually got it after about 40 minutes but I never mastered it as well as Mike did. We met a few other people (we had one Korean guy try it out; he would help try to keep us balanced and would roller blade in circles around us) and a young kid who had his own S-Board and could ride it masterfully. He let us try his board out and gave us pointers. After we talked with him and rode a little longer we eventually decided to leave and continue on our hunt for Mexican food. Here is a video of us when we first got the board (As I mentioned before, I was riding the Soju train. I'm pretty proud of myself for eventually getting it when I was that gone):



So after many cuts and bruises we continued on. We headed back to the subway and tried to figure out where to go from there. Luckily Mike had been to the Mexican place before so we had general directions on where to go. After a quick subway ride and trying multiple exits we finally found the Holy Grail of food. We walked in and ordered (we were all starving by this time). There was another random foreigner there and we invited him to join our table. He turned out to be a really cool guy and we talked and learned about his traveling history. When the food finally arrived my mind was blown. I took the first bite and I felt like there was a party in my mouth and everyone was invited. I scarfed down the first burrito and immediately ordered a second one. After the first place being so disappointing, I was so ecstatic that I finally got to have good Mexican food. I really could go on and on about how tasty this place was. I'll finish by saying that if Zeus ever wanted a burrito, this is where he would go (Zeus happened to be the first guy that came into my head for some reason. Odd?). We stayed there for about an hour just talking (and laughing at the group of cackling middle aged white women that came in). We decided to hit one last bar and got to talk a little longer with our new friend. After another hour or so we finally decided it was about time to head home. We backtracked, got onto the subway and started the long journey home. After getting some advice about what route to take we parted ways with Mike (he was heading to a friend's house to watch a sports game). One stop later the train stopped moving and everyone got off. We were all really confused because we were still about seven stops away from home. We waited at the platform for a little bit until a worker signaled to us that there would be no more trains. We were stranded in a random city far away from our homes. Worried about what we would do, we headed inside the station and started talking about whether or not we should get a hotel room. Luckily a taxi driver came up to us and started speaking Korean and we heard the word, "Pyeongtaek". We said that was where we wanted to go and he took us to a young Korean girl and they started talking. Apparently she wanted to go to Pyeongtaek also so we were going to share a taxi to make the ride back cheaper. Unfortunately there was an older lady there who also needed to go to Pyeongtaek. That made the group six and the taxi could only hold five. According to what Meg could slightly understand, the old lady said she didn't want to ride with foreigners and just wanted to ride with the young girl. After about ten minutes of them arguing in Korean the young girl left and the taxi driver confirmed we wanted to go to Pyeongtaek. We said yes and ended up riding with the racist older lady. The ride was fairly long and there was more than one occasion where I thought we were going to die. Obviously we made it home safely though. When we got out the taxi driver charged us the whole fare for some reason. We protested a little but not speaking the language and being dead tired made us just concede and we ended up paying for the grouchy old lady's taxi ride. We paid, got out and they drove off. We were a little angry that we had to deal with that but there really isn't much we could do about it. After a very long day we said goodbye to Meg, grabbed a taxi of our own and headed home.

Needless to say, it was a very eventful day. We walked around Korea for about fourteen hours. Even though we were all tired (and Audrey unfortunately hurt her knee), I think we all had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to going on more trips with this little group we created.

I'll try to post more later today but I hope you enjoyed this very long post.