I've been living in Seoul now for a complete month and am loving it. This place is rad. There are more words that could be used, but I'm going to stick with rad. I'm not sure there is a place that I have set foot in that could be used to compare it to. It's like a mixture of New York, San Fran, Tokyo & Los Angeles rolled into one and that still does not give the complete picture.
To recap the past month would just be too much at this point so I'm going to save that for a later time. I will instead start with this weekend. Today Katie, a coworker who will be more discussed at another point because well, she's just awesome, and I went into Itaewon in search of America. Itaewon is the most westernized portion of Seoul, and maybe all of South Korea due to a US military base located within the city. Upon arriving we ate at a burger establishment that was no In N Out, but still amazing. From there we made a stop at Coldstone for some ice cream. After being completely full, a rare occasion in this country for me, we found the mythical grocery store we'd heard of. It had MEXICAN food ingredients. Now I know for all of you at home this discovery is nothing, but you are not living in Korea. This is like finding gold. It was at this moment that we decided we are cooking a mexican dinner for Thanksgiving purposes. A girl overheard us mention Thanksgiving and attempted to invite us to her church for their traditional dinner and when we kindly turned her down stating neither of us actually love the traditional dinner feast she was not a fan of us. After making the rounds in this very tiny, but obviously gold mine of a store we headed next door to the book store that was our original purpose. The bookstore trip did not end without incident as few of the places I wonder into do. And being with Katie, my California blonde alien twin as we feel, does not help keep the lurkers away. As soon as we walked in we were confronted by a Korean guy who wanted to be my friend. Those were his words. I have never seen this man before and already he wants this honor. Turns out really, he wanted to use me for my English skills. Long story short, he wants to be a lawyer and needs to speak perfect English and that's where I would come in. I suggested he watch movies and go to coffee shops, at which point he didn't get the hint and invited me to do both. Katie had somehow managed to walk away leaving me alone with this painful conversation, but at some point I guess decided she'd save me. The Korean guy quickly moved onto the nearest blonde girl and at that point literally couldn't take his hands off her hair. It was the most awkward thing. I'm not sure what it is, but Koreans do not understand blonde hair. People, and a few of my kids, look at me like I'm not from Earth. It is the most bizarre thing. And apparently this other girl felt the same way and the next thing we hear is a girl telling this Korean "not everyone is meant to be friends". Katie and I almost died laughing. So it's at this point that we quickly paid for our books and left. Feeling that we'd accomplished finding America we picked up a bottle of Yellow Tail Moscato wine at the closest 7 11, hopped on the subway back to the apartment where a viewing of Love Actually was held to celebrate the start of the holiday season.
