Somehow i made it home when the subway closed...

Tonight I had my choir performance. It went well and I had a drink with some friends after... Being responsible we decide we better go catch the subway since it is approaching 11:30 and the subway ends earlyish never quite sure on the exact time... Turns out on Saturdays it ends exactly at midnight... leaving me stranded in Yaksu...

I picked a random Korean and said "English?" I was super lucky today as he spoke English well and he was drunk. Korean's are often afraid to speak English when they are sober because they don't want to embarrass themselves... THANK YOU SOJU!!! SO he didn't know the subway was closed early either... many Koreans seemed to not know this... How was I supposed to know it ends early on Saturday??? Usually we are out so late we have to cab home...

So I talked to this Korean boy and we established that neither one of us had money but fortunately this random person from the subway lives in my neighborhood!!! We go to an ATM but it won't let me take money out.. he said something like either my bank is closed... or they are doing something or another... either way i could not take out money!

So we get out to the street... looking for cab... not that we could even pay him but we have to get home it's -10 outside!!! This van pulls up and a man gets out asking where we are going. He offers to drive us and rallies up other people as well.. So I am a bit freaked out... I mean this was NOT a cab... this was a random van!! and I am with a random Korean whom I have to put all my trust into! The Korean boy went a took a picture of the mans van and license plate just to be safe. So me and 5 random Koreans drive off in this van to Kyodae (Seoul National University of Education.. which is where i live)

Korean boy had explain to the van driver that we had no money. The van driver was not angry and simply got the Korean boy's phone number and said he could pay him later! We arrived safely and I gave the Korean boy my number so I could give him my share of the money at a later date.

It was quite the adventure and at the time I was like.... shiiiit!! what am I going to do!!! If I really had've taken a moment and thought about it, I would have realized I had my Canadian debit card and I could have taken out money on that possibly if I found the right bank machine.... I also could have taken money out on my credit card but I don't even want to think about what the charges and interest would have been. Either way I solved the problem and survived another day in Korea...

Mom and Dad don't be worried! I can figure things out in sticky situations.

Note to self... if I spend the emergency money I leave in my wallet make sure I replace it!!!

C'est Lalloween

So halloween was awesome! Some girlfriends and I decided to dress up as the ghostbusters. So for the two weeks before we were scouring Korea for stuff for our costumes. It was really hard to find coveralls here! I mean things exist in Korea but if you don't know the Korean word for it or just who to ask it is near impossible to find!! Sometimes google is useful and I have found a few locations of things by using it but naver would be way better to use.... it is like the Korean google... unfortunately it is all in Korean!

Anyway we got all of our stuff together and met up at Leslie's to make the costume. This girl has such a gorgeous, new loft apartment!! Makes me jealous although my place has gotten much cozier... I still need to put up pictures of my rearranged and decorated apartment... man I am lazy hahaha!

Okay so back to halloween... so we met up on October 30th and we worked on our costumes till like 2 am or something and we weren't even finished! We had the bright idea of actually making the patches. We did not just print them off the computer... we cut out the red, black and white parts all separately and then with the one needle Leslie and Jenelle slaved away hand stitching them... we made our backpacks out of cereal boxes and attached tubing to our guns... and made gun holders! It was a lot of effort and time. oh and like everything had to be spray painted black... we had to find somewhere to spray paint because we could not do it in an apartment... we probably looked ridiculous hunting down the street trying to find a back alley to paint in... we had cans of spray paint in hand... we probably looked like criminals. We found a spot, spray painted and got stared at by Koreans... what are those crazy foreigners up to???

The best part of the night was riding the subway! No one else on the entire subways and stations we went through were dressed up... the Koreans smiled at us and laughed... asked us why we were dressed up. It was a lot of fun!

We went to Itaewon to the Wolfhound pub because they had some competitions going on. Well we walked in and everyone was impressed with or costumes. People bought us drinks because they thought our costumes were really good. The people who owned the bar were like don't leave don't leave!!! So we stayed and we won best group costume!!! 50 000 won baby!! which essentially covered the cost of the entrance cover and no where near the cost of the costumes but it was worth it and soo much fun!

This is my halloween album for my non facebookers!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2297784&id=81005275&l=5658d0401d

A wonderful weekend in Busan!

So a couple of weekends ago.. I think Oct 23rd-25th I took a train to the other side of Korea to visit the southern port Busan! Here is a map of the train ride so you can see where Busan is.

So the reason we decided to go to Busan was to see David Guetta who is a really amazing DJ but the person who told me that... ahem Jess... was mistaken and it was actually some Irish nobody who lives in Seoul. Either way I ended up in Busan.

The hostel we stayed in was awesome! It was 15 ooo won a night (so like less than $15). The guy was Mr Lee and he took good care of us!

These are some of my friends in the hostel. We got many mosquito bites! It was nice to be in Busan because it was warmer than Seoul... but there were still so many mosquitos!

So the first night we decided to get some Sum-Gip Sul (BBQ'ed pork) and check out some bars. They totally lied to us at the restaurant because we also order Galbi which is marinated beef... but everything they brought was pork... the sign SAID they had beef!

This is the remnants of our dinner. You essentially take the pork, throw it on a leaf of lettuce or some sort of green leafed things provided, maybe throw on some garlic or onion and some of this green onion, red sauced salad and wrap everything up and eat it. Its okay every now and then... but you start to miss vegetables!!

The first bar we went to I played foosball with the boys. The table was awesome and totally falling apart!

I was on team lime and we dominated and totally won!

Afterwards we went to some other bar and I had a blast dancing with some Korean girls. They are sooooo funny. They like wiggle their hips a tiny bit but I wouldn't really call what they do dancing they more just stand on the spot and wiggle a bit. I really enjoy getting them to dance as crazy and as much as I do... I feel like I essentially throw myself to the music but I love doing it and the Koreans seem to have fun trying to join with me! There was this one Korean guy in a bunch of our pictures but none of us remember him so we definitely did not spend much time with him. I figure I took my camera out and took like 20 pictures in a span of 5 minutes and this Korean guy happened to be in a bunch of them.

Here Jess and I are with him on the dance floor! So we found our way back to the hostel by cab since we didn't know where we were... We literally took a 4 minute cab ride!!!! The cabbie must have thought we were really dumb but thats normal because Koreans seem to think foreigners are pretty stupid and we tend to feel that they are really annoying.

So the next day we went to go see a temple at this mountain. On the way there we saw one of the old ladies (ajuma) peeling and cutting the vegetables she sells on the street. These ladies are everywhere and I don't know where they get the vegetables from but they peel the garlic and carrots and trim the green onions for you. Well anyways my point is she was peeling or trimming some onions the whole time sucking back on this cigarette when all of a sudden about a half inch of ash falls into her green onions!! She totally ignored it and kept trimming away... Note to self do not buy vegetables from old ladies on the street!!!

and here she is!!!

So we get to the mountain and look at the temple and the area around it. It was all pretty awesome. Here is us posing in a mini temple.

There were really cool trees all over the mountain.

So Jess, Janelle and and Wes all wore flip flops even though they all brought shoes with them! and then as we were climbing down the mountain jess' flip flop broke!!! So we put hair elastics around her foot securing the flip flop to it! I am pretty sure that is not the best way to climb down a mountain. This mountain was not a nice foot path either but a steep bouldery climb!!

After leaving the mountain we picked up some McDonalds and headed to the beach since Busan is famous for its beaches. From the beach you could see the Ocean, this cool San Francisco style bridge is there and mountains!!! It was beautiful.

Afterwards we went for dinner and saw this add on the way.

So after this we went to the bar but it was empty so we got beers and drank on the sidewalk... we cheered at every Korean that passed by us and they seemed to really enjoy it.. We set off fireworks and freaked out the cabbies and burned some arm hair and singed some suits but mostly people just laughed and smiled at us.

Finally we went to the club and ordered some drinks and almost threw up when we realized how expensive they were! Drinks are really cheap here so it was shocking to be charged that much! So we danced and then after ate and ate some more and went back to the hostel. The plan was to watch the sunrise at the beach but only myself and one other guy were awake so we went down at about 4:30 am. It was soooo cold! I tried to make it but I could stay no longer. I missed the sunrise by maybe 20 minutes. It was very disappointing. The next morning we packed up and caught the two and a half hour train ride back to Seoul.

This is the hostel owners dog Chow Chow

All in all another good weekend in Korea.

Black Out Korea

So I had mentioned awhile ago how Koreans drink way too much all of the time. This website can attest to the drunken Koreans sprawled all over the streets any day or time of the week.

blackoutkorea.com