First day in Korea

Well I started my last post thinking I wouldn't have that much to say. Most started coming back so I needed to break the two days apart to protect the length.

I have my own room with that really beautiful bed. The room also has a brown-orange-ish chair and a bookcase. Using my height of 6"5 as a standard, I would estimate the room is 8 feet long, 6"5 wide and 8 feet tall. Her boyfriend, Brian, is also here for another week before he leaves to Thailand. He was feeling sick so I didn't meet him the night I arrived.

When I woke up, I could tell neither of them were awake, so I was uncomfortable moving around for fear of making a bad impression on Brian. I read in my bed for a half-hour or so, mostly trying to see if I could instill some useful Korean memorable phrases to memory. I think we will need some time to see if that succeeded.

Ada adopted (see also, picked up off the street) this small dog that was probably abused with the hopes of providing a restorative environment will make her more likely to find a permanent home. She needed to take the dog for a walk and invited me to come with her to a "mountain" (it was a hill). We spent maybe an hour talking about Korea and South Africa (Ada is South African), dogs, language and so forth. This hill had "tennis" courts, which didn't have any nets or clear lines. We saw six middle-aged men walk outside of the courts with tennis rackets and bags -- I was really confused how they could play with no lines and no nets...

There were also these random placements of exercise equipment (like chin-up bars, monkey bars and so forth) all along the paths on this hill. Some Koreans like to wear surgical masks everywhere they go (Ada wasn't sure why either) and that is very different for me -- reminds me of those SARS pictures. This old woman was walking around near the top and when she saw me, she slowly backed away bowing. We ran into her again and she told Ada that we were both beautiful. I didn't follow the conversation at all, but Ada told me that happens to many Westerners.

When we arrived back at her place, she offered to make me breakfast of oatmeal. At the time, because I was hungry, it was the best thing in the world.

Brian was interested in buying some Teva's (he really just wanted the cheap knock-offs) so they planned to visit a market during the day. They naturally invited me to come with them. Because the small bowl of oatmeal wasn't enough, we decided to stop and grab some food. Being vegetarian, I was the most limited in the group, so I hoped we could find something edible. We went to this small Kimbop (literally, seaweed and rice. Spelling is phonetic...addendum: Kimbop, not Kimbo) restaurant. I had to pick out the ham, but everything was great. I had some Kimchi in this red sauce, little slices of something that looked like an omelet, seaweed, rice...there was some other stuff, but I can't remember exactly what it was.

After lunch, we needed to get to the subway to ride to the market that Brian was looking for. We took the green line to Dongdaemun Stadium. This was like Saturday Market but with thousands of vendors. I was blown away by how many shops sell shoes because each one has roughly the same selection and same prices and yet there were hundreds of shoe shops. I took a picture of this alleyway (maybe 150 yards long) that ONLY had shoe vendors and there was no open space between the shops.

We spent most the day at this market. Some shops had the most random assortment of items: phones, tv's, necklaces, glasses, silverware, clothes, videos...and so on. There were some items worth their own special attention. One shop sold pills that claimed to be deer blood, a couple shops sold sex toys and pornography, a few had glass frames (hundreds of them). There were more odds and ends, but most of it was lost in the horrid smell of cooking silkworms for food. On that note, we also bought some delicious cookies. Well, they were mostly good, there was one that had this strong seaweed-fishy powder that overpowered the sweet taste.

I still need to get a phone. Dongdaemun has some phones that I liked (one had a TV feature) but I wanted to check online first before I purchased one. Once I have that, I feel comfortable exploring on my own. This week, I am going to try to get together with a list of people that I've been looking forward to meeting. As of now, I don't have a microphone or cell phone, so haven't gotten in touch with the people I've wanted to. Hopefully tomorrow or the day after I will have my phone! I am so excited!

After arriving back at Ada's place, I started writing these two journal posts. I got distracted along the way, but have mostly been writing since I got back around 6 (it is nearly 9 now). I also bought some orange juice and noodles from the local grocery store. It is closing in on some holiday (not sure which, precisely. I think Chinese New Year?) but there are tons of gifts being sold. Most of the gifts were food. For about $33, I could buy you like 12 cans of Korean Spam in gift-wrapping. I think it is cool to sell items that people will use, but man, it was hard not to laugh at the image of unwrapping that for Christmas.