Okay, so I've made it to my first weekend in Korea...

Saturday, Beth and I hit Insadong, a really neat street full of handicrafts stores and street vendors. Here are a list of things that caught my eye:
*Tea. I didn't find any tea stores I really liked (I wanted a cool shop with loose-leaf tea in jars, but apparently they don't really do that in Korea), but we went into one where they gave us a free sample of a naturally sweet tea that Beth liked enough to buy. Y'all know me, though - no sweetness in my tea, please. However, I do like green tea more than I thought I did...
*Candy. Koreans don't really use sweetners and even their candy isn't very sweet. However, it's very good. Vendors were selling it everywhere, so I had to try it. I bought a bag of it where the nougat (which is considered the "official" candy...I think it's wheat gluten or somesuch) was rolled in peanuts. It was good, although the nougat gets rather hard and the whole thing is very chewy. It hit the spot when I was hungry though!
*Homemade Cards. These are truly beautiful. Made of paper, many of them have paper designs pasted to the outside. I don't really know how to describe them other than to say some of them are just fabulous works of art. They're all blank, not Hallmark-y at all (which is good, considering the majority of Koreans' grasp of English - "Konglish" as the teachers at the school call it) amd each one is perfectly unique.
*Masks. They're really ugly but I also think they're totally cool. They're hand-made out of wood (individually) and then painted. There are traditionally two to a set - male and female - but the women are pretty scary looking. For the most part, they're all laughing.
*Scrolls. You've all seen these - the long tapestries with painted paper in the middle. I really liked the nature scenes, all waterfalls and flowers and trees. They're amazingly inexpensive as well. If I go back, I may be tempted into buying one, although I'm a little worried about how they'll travel. Plus, I already have my souvenir, bringing me to...
*Jade. Gorgeous stones, although with the little stores, you've got to be wary of the authenticity. That's why I bought my necklace at a larger, almost department-like store, in a side alley of Insadong. It's bright green and stays cool against your skin (which Beth tells me is how you know real jade from imitation).






And, oh yes, *Korean Starbucks.







(Before Insadong, Beth surprised me by getting off one Subway stop before the market and we saw my first Korean palace. We only saw the outside and courtyard, but the detailing on the roof was remarkable and the peacefulness of the courtyard (directly facing a major road in the middle of Seoul) was amazing. The Sol Nal games were scattered around the outside courtyard, so Beth and I watched some people throwing the arrows and kicking the hackey-sack like object, then we jumped on this see-saw looking device which tests your balance although doesn't have any significance we knew about...I also saw the mountains which surround Seoul for the first time. It's amazing how close they are to the city - they're like West Virginia's mountains in size, but I guess I'd never really noticed that Charleston has suburbs...)

After the market, we came home and took a nap before heading back out. Ken had made plans for Beth and I to meet him and a friend and go out to Outback Steakhouse (yes, in the week I'd been in Korea, I'd been to Costco AND Outback...). So we met Ken and Matthew by base and walked to an okay dinner. Matthew was quiet and reserved, so Ken's plan to make me feel a little more included kind of backfired - I talked to Beth and him just as much as I would have if Matthew hadn't been there.
Then we went to Polly's, a bar in Itaewon, to shoot pool and drink a bit of "Korea's finest." Finest, my ass. Beth got a thing of something called a "SoJu Kettle" - think Jungle Juice, my college-aged friends. It's Kool-Aide and SoJu (Korean Everclear, apparently) and it made my tongue go numb. Fabulous. :-P After a bit of pool and a few drinks, we all headed back to base, where Beth and I got our IDs back and Matthew went back to his bunk. Ken came back with Beth and I - it's a good thing Beth's friend offered use of her room, or else "get a room!" would have illicited a response that I'm guessing would have had me sitting on the steps for a bit. ;-)

Sunday, we attempted to hit Itaewon, but it was basically shut-down for the holiday. The two stores we wanted to hit (an earring store and a used book store) were shut down, so we grabbed lunch at a pita place and headed home with Ken in tow. I don't even remember what we ended up doing, but I think it was just another evening in Beth's apartment, reading, watching videos, (this may have been the night I was subjected to Anchorman...yes...), and making dinner. It was a great, low-key night. And now I understand at least every other work out of Ken's mouth...

Monday counts as the weekend as well, seeing as how it was a long weekend for the schools due to the Lunar New Year. Beth and I hit COEX, a gigantic mall that has two attached hotels, a conference center that was hosting a travelling wax museum, and an aquarium (just to give you a vague feeling for the size of the place). We ate lunch - $6.50 got me sushi, soup, onions, and water! - and then wandered around looking for a place to get our nails done, since Beth's usual salon was closed for the holiday (it was the only place closed in the mall, I swear!). After getting our manicures (mine polished bright red and her's a very subtle silver), we wandered around, waiting for her friend to come by with the paperwork for picking up her IPod. We spent an hour or so in the bookstore - one of the only ones around that sells English language books. After a while, her friend called to say he wasn't coming, so I bought the book I'd been carrying around (called "The Koreans" - I'm facsinated by their history and want to learn more), we stopped by the Apple store (where she found she could pick up her IPod without the paperwork), and we went home.

And that was my first weekend in Seoul, Korea.

Which, truthfully, smells like pure gasoline.
Lace