So, despite my best efforts, I've fallen behind in writing once again, but here's my recap of the weekend's events. On Friday, we decided to go to Omaejib for barbecue pork, and we met up around 8pm there, so that some of the folks that teach at Hagwons until 8 or so would be able to show up. The picture above was taken on my walk to dinner.
After dinner, we took a short trip down the street to Nox, where we drank beer and soju for a while, until deciding to head to a noraebong, a karaoke room. With most of us being pretty wasted at this point, we got straight into the music, including a few Michael Jackson homages. Some other highlights were a performance of Eminem's "Stan" with me and Graham alternating between Eminem and Dido every verse/chorus, and Tim singing a Korean song and doing it well (in terms of lyrical accuracy, not singing ability).
On my walk home, I tried to stop into the 24 hour mart near my apartment, but it was closed, so I went home and to sleep without drinking any water. This would come to haunt me the next morning when I woke up at noon with the idea to meet Aldrin at the Maseok bus stop at 1 to go to Insadong, the traditional Korean cultural area of Seoul, and then meet the others later. One of the first things I did upon waking was run out and buy two big bottles of water, just so I wouldn't be caught again without any drinking water. After showering and eating a bowl of cereal I was feeling reasonably ok, so I made my way to the bus stop where I met up with Aldrin and we jumped on a bus to Donong.
The bus ride wasn't great, considering it was an old, crappy regular city bus unlike the nice 1115 bus which is like a greyhound, and it wasn't really air-conditioned, and I was hungover. At Donong, we made the transfer to the train that would take us the rest of the way to Seoul, to meet up with one of Aldrin's friends. Towards the end of this ride, at the stop before the one we wanted, the train seemed to go silent and we noticed there were no other people on it besides us. In this empty silence, everything seemed to take way longer than normal, the doors sat open waiting for nonexistent people to get on, and then when the doors shut it felt like we sat there for an unusual amount of time trapped in a closed subway train. Eventually the train moved again, and we got to the stop we wanted with no problem, but for a minute there we had both been a little concerned. By this time I was pretty much fully recovered from the previous night, but with a major craving for pizza.
We went up to Aldrin's friend's apartment, in a building that looked like some underground storage facility in the hallways, but the apartments were really nice on the inside. Aldrin is a pretty serious photographer, and he's doing a series of photos of foreign teachers in Korea in their apartments, so he was going to photograph his friend later but for now just dropped off his equipment, then we headed to Insadong to wander around for a while, and have Pizza Hut for lunch.
Insadong is very interesting, it's the traditional Korean cultural area
of Seoul, but a lot of the stuff available for sale on the street there
is just cheap trinkets and stuff. Inside shops it's slightly less cheap
stuff, but the really cool part for us was going into the many art
galleries around there. Aldrin wanted to see if he could possibly do an
exhibition of his photography, so we tried to hit every art gallery we
could find that might show his stuff. After wandering around for a few
hours looking at art galleries, browsing stuff on the street, and
buying a wooden sword for W5,000, we headed to Namaste Restaurant for
Indian food. Following dinner, I was tasked with finding my way back to
Maseok by myself, since Aldrin was going to stay overnight with his
friend.
Also by this time, we had discovered that pretty much everyone else was
feeling so bad from Friday night that they didn't want to meet up in
Seoul, so those plans were scrapped. I thought maybe we'd just go out
for a couple drinks once I got back to Maseok, but it was starting to
get late when I finally got home, and I was ready to go to sleep after
walking around all day.
On Sunday, when everyone had recovered a little bit, we decided to head
into Seoul to watch baseball. The game we went to was between the LG
Twins and the Doosan Bears, both Seoul teams who share the Jamsil
stadium as home stadium. By virtue of this, we were a little worried it
would be sold out seeing as we were getting there around 4:15 and the
game started at 5, but we actually got in with plenty of seats to
spare. The stadium did eventually fill up. It took a couple of innings,
but it was cool to see the whole stadium full of people, unlike the
previous game I went to. We drank our way through the game and had
Burger King for dinner (I had had Dominoes for lunch, too), which
brought my meal total for the weekend to 5, none of which involved
Korean food. At this game, we were treated to a cheer to the tune of
"Dancing Queen," apparently the player who they do that cheer for was
injured and didn't play at the other game, so that was interesting.
After baseball, we all went home and to sleep, after the busiest weekend I've had in Korea so far.
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