3 and a half months!!

Alright, I've gotten lazy with the blog... not gonna lie. But I better start writing because I'll regret not being able to remember the stories behind some of the events that have occurred during the past month. By no means do I want this post to turn into another novel.. but we'll see where it ends up...

Lotte World:
"Lotte World is a major recreation complex in Seoul, South Korea. It consists of the world's largest indoor theme park that set a Guinness World Record open all year around, an outdoor amusement park called "Magic Island", an artificial island inside a lake linked by monorail, shopping malls, a luxury hotel, a Korean folk museum, sports facilities, and movie theaters all in one place. Opened on July 12, 1989, Lotte World receives over 8 million visitors each year." - Wikipedia

This place was awesome! I've never been to such a huge theme park in my life. Aside from the 1 hour and 20 minute wait for a ride, it was a great place! We didn't show up until the late afternoon, but it was perfect because you receive a discount on admission if you go later in the day. We only paid 14,000W for admission which includes unlimited rides. There were a few 'extreme' rides which I enjoyed a lot. I would definitely go back to Lotte World, but never again on a weekend. Too busy.


Pirate's Restaurant:
After Lotte World we went to Gangnam, a district south of the Han River in Seoul. This place is very popular among the foreigners. It has an endless amount of bars, pubs, clubs, and restaurants. This is also one of the most expensive areas in Seoul. The nightlife in Gangnam is tons of fun! This night we decided to have dinner at a restaurant called Pirate's. I can truly say it was some of the best food I've had in Seoul. They specialized in shellfish. The place did not seem to fit in with the rest of the bars/restaurants in the area. They had very low tables and plastic stools. Did not appear to be an upscale Gangnam dining establishment at all. The staff there was awesome, they were very loud and fun people, making the dining experience a lot more lively. The shellfish was delicious. They brought out clams, oysters, gooey duck, and other shellfish and just placed it on the grill. They were topped off with some fresh vegetables and different sauces. The owner of the place liked us a lot and kept on bringing more and more food out. He even started playing some hip hop and turned on the neon lights hahahaa!

Seoul World Cup Stadium:
"The Seoul World Cup Stadium, also known as Sangam Stadium, is located in Seongsan, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea and has been home of K-League club FC Seoul since 2004. The stadium opened in 2001. It has a capacity of 68,476. It was built for the 2002 FIFA World Cup." - Wikipedia
May 5th was Children's Day in Korea! Nothing better than having a midweek break from work. To celebrate, my buddy and I went to watch a soccer game. The ticket for general admission was only 8,000W. FC Seoul played against Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, the the most successful K-League club in terms of Championship victories (7). This day, the stadium had a record attendance of just over 66,400 fans. The FC Seoul fans are crazy!! They stand up and shout and chant for almost the entire game. Seems like they have endless energy. FC Seoul played a great game, 4-0. I really enjoyed watching an action packed game with wild fans while kicking back and having a few beers.... and unknowingly, this is how I celebrated Cinco de Mayo!


Dos Tacos:
After a long day at the stadium, we decided to go find some dinner. We headed to Gangnam (50 minutes away by subway) in search of the famous Dos Tacos. As of this day, I had not yet found decent Mexican food. But I had heard from many people that Dos Tacos had the best Mexican food! I was pretty excited about this. I had really been missing the taste of frijolitos, carne asada, cilantro, aguacate and all those delicious flavors of Latin cuisine. After walking around for a while, we finally found the place. It was kind of hidden, so you can easily miss it if you're not paying attention. When we arrived, the place was packed! I think about 70% of the people there were foreigners. The decor definitely said 'taqueria' to me. We waited about 20 minutes for a table. The menu had lots of delicious stuff including nachos WITH SOUR CREAM, enchiladas, burritos, tacos, and chimichangas. They even had horchata, but at $4 a glass. I will definitely be going back to Dos Tacos!


Daejeon:
One of my goals while in Korea is to explore as much of the country as possible. In efforts to do so, Jomes and I decided to head over to Daejeon. Daejeon is in central South Korea. It is the 5th largest city in Korea. We showed up with no itinerary and no real idea of what to expect. We ended up finding some of the attractions that are listed in Wikipedia. To our surprise, we came upon another amusement park. We walked right in without paying attention to whether or not there was an admission fee. There were not a lot of rides, but it was something to do! A group of high school kids found us and we instantly became famous. Like always, they asked the same questions; What's your name? How old are you? Where are you from? What are you doing in Korea? Can you speak Korean? Etc. After walking around the amusement park, we got on a bus to downtown. Of course we ended up catching the bus on the wrong side of the road so it took a lot longer. Once we saw a lot of buildings with tons of neon lights, we decided to get off the bus. We figured this was probably downtown. After grabbing some dinner, we decided to go find a bar. The easiest way to know you're in the bar area is to look for the million flyers on the ground. It's the best indicator that you're in the heart of the nightlife area. We ended up making a 친구 [chingu--> friend] here and there. There were quite a bit of foreigners at the first bar we went to. After that bar I really don't remember much. I know we were at some restaurant eating with a couple friends we had just made. I also recall a couple who were finishing their meal at the table next to ours. As the guy was getting up to leave, the girl decided to stay and she joined our table. After that all I remember is drinking the night away. Before I knew it, it was 7am or so. No need for a hotel room when you're up all night. I went directly to the bus terminal, got a ticket to Seoul and passed out for 2.5 hours. That right there was my first trip to Daejeon!

COEX Aquarium:
If there is one thing I like about Bits Language School, it's the fact that they take us on quite a bit of field trips. We went to the COEX Aquarium which is located Samseong-dong. The place is huge and pretty fun... especially cus it was free! What I hate about the field trips is that they always seem to be rushed. We didn't get to thoroughly explore all the different displays because they're always trying to get us back to school in time fore lunch. No clue why the lunch lady doesn't just make 40 sandwiches and send us off with some food to eat during the field trip. Then after thinking about it... We've never had sandwiches for lunch. It's always rice, soup, kimchi, and some 'main course.' Anyway, back to the aquarium, it's pretty dope and need to return so I can go through it slowly... but as I was walking in I saw the adult price was 17,000W. I dono how I feel about that.

Busan:
After so long, I finally got the opportunity to head over to Busan. I took advantage of the long Buddha's Birthday weekend to check out this great city. Busan is South Korea's second largest city with a population of nearly 4 million people! It's the country's largest port city, and the 5th largest port city in the world. It is home to the world's largest department store, Shinsegae Centum City... bigger than the Macy's in NYC. The Lotte World Tower is currently under construction [should finish by 2013] and will become the world's 3rd tallest building. Being Buddha's Birthday weekend, I had a feeling that getting to Busan would be a bit tricky. I was right. The KTX [super fast bullet train] was sold out. It can get you from Seoul to Busan in under 3 hours, whereas the bus will take anywhere from 4 and a half to 5 hours depending on traffic. Since Jomes was going as well, I decided to head over to Daejeon where we'd meet up and grab another bus from there to Busan. The normal trip to Deajeon takes 2.5 hours. The damn traffic was horrible. I felt like I could walk faster than what the bus was moving. It took me 5 hours and 15 min to get to Deajeon, just to hop on another bus for an additional 3 hours. After arriving in Busan, we caught the subway to Haeundae. "Haeundae is now an affluent, beach front community that attracts tens of thousands of Korean tourists and foreigners to what many consider to be Korea's best beach. It has been subject to considerable commercial development." - Wikipedia.

We walked directly to the beach to check it out. Since it was pretty late and dark, we couldn't really see much, but I could tell it was legit. There were tons of people out on the streets. We saw a lot of foreigners, more than likely English teachers as well. The downtown part of Haeundae had tons of hotels, bars, and restaurants. Seemed like your typical beach hangout. We decided find a hotel before hitting the town. We probably walked around for an hour and a half circling the town trying to find some vacancy. I used the little broken Korean I know to ask at every hotel if they had a room and how much. Most hotels had no rooms available and the ones that did have rooms were quite pricey, $150-$200. Hella out of our budget. We found some crappy looking hotel and the ajuma [older Korean lady] said $90 for the night. We took our chances and kept looking. When we had no choice, but to return to the same hotel about an hour later, she had raised the price to $100. The room was pretty disgusting. We were pretty pissed we had just paid that much for a trashy room. Motel6 in America is not only cheaper, but also has higher standards. This place even had a condom vending machine and a coin operated hair dryer hahaha. We decided to go hit the town and find some food. Since we spent so much on the room we wanted to get some cheap food. We got some Korean BBQ, soju, and beer. It started getting late and we were both pretty tired so we decided to try and find our way back to our hotel. On the way, we spotted a bar called Miami. For some reason, I forgot bout being tired and I felt like this was a sign. We decided to go in and check it out. The place was pretty legit. And just our luck, we made some friends. I don't recall their names at all, but it was a recently married couple who wanted us to chill with them. They had ordered bottle service, which is pretty damn pricey. They had a bottle of Skyy Vodka, which tasted pretty good after just drinking soju for the last 3 months. We played some darts, felt like the more intoxicated I got, the better I got at the game... leading to a victory! We made plans to meet up with our new friends the following day for lunch.

When we got up on Saturday morning, we headed back to the downtown area again. Sure enough, it was pouring down rain. Our whole idea to go chill by the beach was gone. We went and checked out the beach and saw many people standing around with their umbrellas. This was very disappointing. Our new Busan friends texted us saying that they would not be able to meet up for lunch, apparently they had a bit too much to drink the night before. We decided to head over to Jagalchi.

"The Jagalchi Market is Korea's largest seafood market. After the Korean War the market solidified itself as a fish market. Most of the people who sell fish are women, so the women who sell here are called 'Jagalchi Ajumma,' 'ajumma' meaning middle-aged or married women. This market represents Busan and is famous throughout the country. If you visit you can eat fresh raw fish right at the market. Even these days you can see women selling mackerel, sea squirts (ascidians) and whale meat on wooden boxes along the road. Every year in October the Jagalchi Cultural Tourism Festival is held, and it is easy to visit because of the convenient transportation provided by the subway. The Jagalchi Market is where you can see the lifestyle of the indigenous Busan natives." - Korean Ministry of Tourism.

We walked around the market for quite a while. They had some interesting seafood there that I had never seen before. The place was full of people. There was both and inside and an outside part of the market. With so much rain, everyone was walking around with an umbrella. The walking paths between all the seafood were very tight and it was no surprise to get poked by the million umbrellas. After a while, I started to get annoyed. People did not even say "sorry," they just kept on poking me with the damn umbrellas. Just about every seafood stand had its own restaurant. After much contemplating, we found a place we wanted to eat at. We had flounder and some other type of fish. We also had some haejangguk, an ox blood soup with vegetables made to cure hangovers. Not gonna lie, it was pretty tasty!

After lunch, we checked out the marina and then decided to head back to Heundae. The rain continued and I finally gave in and bought an umbrella. We went in search of a new hotel. We were actually lucky and found a hella nice place for only $50. This made me pretty angry! The place was clean, bigger, niiice, and had a good view. After a nice nap we decided to head out to town and grab some dinner. After dinner and a couple drinks we went in search of a bar. We stopped at place called Fuzzy Navel. The music was good and it was blaring. The place was pretty full. Lots of foreigners and locals. The prices were not as good. As we walked back to our hotel, we decided to stop at Miami for a beer. We were really tired and not really in the party mood. After being at the bar for a while, our friend walked in. We chilled with him and then headed out to a norebang [karaoke room]. Another late night. In the morning I caught the bus back to Seoul. It was a long trip, but slept through most of it. If I did a second year in Korea, I would definitely want to live in Busan.


Seoul Grand Park:
Went on yet another field trip with my students. This time we headed over to Seoul Grand Park. This place is HUGE! It houses hills and hiking trails, Seoul Grand Zoo, Children's Zoo, a rose garden, Seoul Land amusement park, and the Seoul Museum of Modern Art. I was responsible for 5 students during the field trip. I had to yell so much to try and keep my kids together. I wished I had a leash for every single one my kids to keep them in my sight. It was a weekday and the place was full of people. As soon as we got there we went to the Rose Garden. It was a really hot day and the kids were getting tired of walking around. After wasting our time in the garden we walked over to the zoo. I was really excited... maybe more excited than the kids haha. We only saw about 4 different animals before the Korean teachers decided it was time to go back to the school. I was annoyed because I really wanted to see all the animals. I guess I'll have to go back on my own to check out the zoo.

LG Twins/FC Seoul:
I went with my buddy Alex to see my first baseball game in Korea. It was another hot day and it was perfect for chilling at the stadium watching baseball and drinking a couple of cold beers. The Jamsil Baseball Stadium was built back in the early 80s, but it's very nice and well maintained. We watched the LG Twins vs the SK Wyverns. The following day, we went back to the Seoul World Cup Stadium to watch a soccer game. This time we watched FC Seoul vs Jeju United. I have found this a very cheap and fun way to spend a weekend. The tickets only cost about $8 [cheap seats, of course] and the beers are about $3. But the best part of the stadiums is that you can bring as much outside food and beer as you want! I wish we were able to do this in Seattle. And I'm always surprised at how great the fans are in Korea. They know all the dances, cheers, and chants! There's lots of great energy, which makes the game a lot more exciting.