First Weekend in Korea, Cont.

When I got to Itaewon, I was met by a girl named Nora - who I actually met through twitter.  Before I left for Korea, I went on a twitter search engine and typed in "teach english korea" - and Nora popped up. So she and I started talking prior to my arrival in Korea, and this past weekend was the first time we met in person.

We went to a bar called the Grecko.  It's an American bar right down to the fact they serve burgers and fries.  There we watched the USA vs. Slovenia World Cup soccer game.  About every 15 minutes, 2 US Army military police and two korean military police would walk through the bar.  In the US, as you know, it's illegal to be drunk in public - in Korea, it is okay to be drunk in public - in fact why go to a bar, when you can sit outside of 7-11 in lawn chairs drinking beer you bought in the store.  But anyways, the Army walks through because the US government still enforces the "no drunk in public" rules for the soldiers, even off duty.  If you're in the army, and you're being rowdy in the bar, the military police will cart you out. 

The next day, we went to Nora's Korean co-teachers house for dinner.  This way quite an experience, the dinner lasted for HOURS and HOURS and HOURS.  We had dessert first - shaved ice with ice cream, caramel and fruit sauces, fruit, red beans - yes, red beans, gummies - about 5 different varieties of them.  Believe it or not, red beans in dessert was not too bad because everything else is sweet.

For the main course we had sahboo-sahboo.  Basically, we sat on the floor around a table.  In the center of the table they put a burner and on the burner a big pot.  In the pot they had an anchovy broth going.  And for each "course" a different thing was added to the pot.  Beef, then greens, then seafood - one piece of seafood looked like an acorn.  You put the whole thing in your mouth - and it would pop, you'd chew on it some more and spit out the "top of the acorn".

That night, Nora and I spent the night at a house that Nora is cat sitting for.  It was SOO nice to see a cat, I really miss my cat Dexter.  This guy is named Hoover!

I love the poof on his tail!

The next morning we did an American breakfast. Their attempt at "sausage" was interesting to say the least.

We went to the Korean War museum.

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After that I took the Subway home - exhausted from a super long weekend!

An interesting thing I find about the subway is that it is about 20 cars long.  And you are free to move from car to car by just pushing the black button - looks like a rectangle - on the center left side of the divider door.

Sad that Monday means back to work,
-Carly