Exploring Seoul

This weekend we had a long weekend. I didn't really need the break yet, but it was a good way to ease into working again. I originally considered going down to Busan in the south of Korea but in the end I decided to stay around here and explore Seoul a bit. So I went into different areas on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

On Saturday I went into Itaewon with some teachers from another school who I met at a party last weekend. Itaewon was interesting; it's the foreigner district in Seoul and it's near a big US military base. At first when we got off the subway I was like look other foreigners, but then I realized that there were foreigners all over the place. I didn't particularly like Itaewon, it was pretty dirty, but I can see that it would be a good place to go in a couple of months if I'm feeling like I need a bit of home. There are a fair number of Western restaurants there - and there's a starbucks, mmm. Plus there's this foreigners market where you can buy stuff from home. There were 2 cool things though. First was this bookstore called What the Book which had a good selection of used and new English books. The other thing was we went to this bar called Bungalow, which is like this tropical themed bar, and there are all these little rooms with sand for you to put your feet in. That was fun.

After Itaewon we went to Bundang, where some of the other teachers live. Bundang was pretty cool. It's similar to Dongtan in that it's all new but it''s a few years older, so it's a lot more lively.

Sunday I went to Yongsan, which is where the big electronic markets are. And up until a couple weeks ago it was apparently the place to get cheap dvds, but apparently recently they cracked down big time on that, so there really weren't that many. I did get a cheap cellphone though, yay! It's really a bit pathetic how lost I've been with no cellphone for a week and a half. Every time I leave the house I feel as though I'm forgetting something, especially since my house has a code lock so I don't have keys either.

Finally Monday I went to Gangnam to another great bookstore, this one is called Kyobo books and they have English and Korean books (and other languages too - I definitely saw French books). The good thing though about Kyobo is that they have all sorts of books for learning Korean. My co-worker recommended a book to me so I'm starting to learn Korean. It's just so incredibly frustrating to not be able to talk to anyone. After Gangnam we went to check out this canal which is near City Hall, but I can't remember the name of it. It was pretty cool because it was Children's Day they had all of these animals and whatnot in the water. You can see the pictures in my slideshow.