The City That Never Sleeps

I don't think my weekend in Seoul could have been anymore fun! It's by far the craziest, coolest place I've ever been. I'm in love! Seoul is so huge and there are so many people it's unreal. Seoul is home to over half of South Korea's population. There are literally people everywhere you go. I'll try my best to write a decent blog post about this, but right now my mind is so full of things I want to say that it may come out as a jumbled mess!

We left Jochiwon Saturday morning about 9am and arrived in Seoul a little before 11. From there, they gave each TaLK Scholar 10W (about $10) for lunch and set us free. After filming a mini flashmob dance in front of entirely too many people, Hoa and I had to find a place to exchange money. After that we treated ourselves to some of the best fried rice I've ever had. Such a great change from the white sticky rice we have every day in the caf. I was in heaven. We walked around for a little bit after lunch before heading back to the meeting area to get back on the busses and head to the beginning of our TaLK scavenger hunt. We had a map of our destinations and started at a really cool palace. We had to make 8 stops along the way and take 5 pictures of our group in front of the landmark. It was a really cool way to see a lot of different places, but we rushed through because when we were finished we knew that we were free for the rest of the night! 

Fried rice..so good! 

Hoa and I in Seoul!

Awesome palace. 

Scavenger hunt group

Josh and Natasha downtown!

FINALLY! We were free until 9pm on Sunday night. It's basically the first time we've been free and had enough time to do anything since we arrived. Last weekend we were allowed to go places, but we had lecture all day on Saturday so we stayed in Jochiwon. It was so awesome knowing that we didn't have curfew like we do at the dorms. We went to Seoul with no real plans, except the obvious...mexican food. Mission accomplished! With a bit of a struggle, we found a Mexican food place called Dos Tacos. We finally satisfied our craving for Mexican food. It was the best! While Brittney was up refilling her water, a Korean guy walked by and saw her TaLK nametag and asked if she was a scholar. She obviously said yes, and he told us that he lives in Gunsan (the same place we will be living) and that he's been friends with the TaLK scholars that come to Gunsan for the last 3 years. What a small world! He was a Korean who had only traveled to America a few times, but his friend was  in the military and was from Michigan. So crazy! 

The worlds tiniest yummiest quesadillas! 

Strawberry marg, my favorite!

I've missed nachos so much! 

After dinner we accidentally ran into two TaLK scholars and hung out with them for the rest of the night. Luckily, Andrew is Korean and speaks it fluently, so that was a huge help. We found our hostel that we would be staying at, put our stuff in our rooms and left for a night out on the town. 

I love these people!

There are huge TV screens everywhere. Ex 1.

When I say there are people everywhere, it's such an understatement. It is so much more busy than New York. It's mind blowing. There were people EVERYWHERE! We went to a little restaurant bar and had some kimchi pancakes and a couple of drinks, then headed off to norebong. I've talked about this in previous blogs, but for those of you who don't know, it's a just a karaoke room for you and your friends. Literally the best invention on the planet. Give me a mic and an almost limitless amount of songs and I'm one happy girl. I sang so much last night that my voice started going away. It was such a blast. Not to mention, I have some of the best friends in the world. Such fun people! 

It still hasn't really hit me that I'm really here, but one of the craziest things I've noticed so far is that if you see/hear someone who speaks English or isn't Asian, you automatically say hi. It's so strange, but it just happens. It's like you're instant best friends just because you speak the same language. It's so awesome! So there we are, walking down the croweded streets of Seoul wondering what our next move would be and this group of people from the states run up and ask us if we want to go to a club with them. We didn't really want to go to a club, so that's how we ended up at the hooka bar. I've never been to one before but I tried it. It was okay, but I'll also be okay if I never do it again. haha It was cool to hear why everyone was in Korea and see where everyone was from. The majority of foreigners you meet here are English teachers so it was really cool to be able to say, "So are we!!!" 

We eventually left our new friends and tried to decide what to do next. Another really crazy thing is that Seoul never closes. I know that we say that NYC is the city that never sleeps but we're wrong. It's definitely Seoul. I don't know how these people survive on such little sleep! When we left hooka it was about 3:50am and there was still lines of people waiting to get into clubs, bumper to bumper traffic and restaurants that were completely full. I don't understand! We were exhausted because of the long day we had, but we were ready for more. It's Korean culture to do "rounds". This just means that you go somewhere for a little bit and have a few drinks, leave, and go to another place maybe for norebong this time. Times that by about 5 or 6 more rounds and that's how Koreans do it. And when I say Koreans, I don't mean mid-twenties Koreans. It's all ages. They tell me that my faculty at the school I'm going to will do this very often. Cultural differences are so amazing to me. After a couple of minutes and walking around aimlessly, we decided we should just go back to the hostel. We were tired and had a really long day. We finally made it back to our hostel and fell asleep! 

Today was fun and involved even more walking. My legs and butt are going to be so toned when I get back. Watch out America! There are more stairs and hills here than anything I've ever seen before. We did a lot of window shopping since our bags were pretty full and our wallets were pretty empty, but we can't wait to get settled into our homes and make a shopping trip weekend to Seoul soon! The shopping is so amazing there, I can't wait!!! 

Amazing shoes on every corner in Seoul. Dangerous! 

Such awesome buildings!

View of the Han River on the way into Seoul.

Thanks for reading, and if you haven't noticed yet, this is my new blog. The other one would do crazy things when I added pictures so I just switched over to blogspot. Have a good Sunday, America. This girl needs some rest! 

-Kyla