Yesterday (Saturday),
Tonya and I went into Seoul, to Myeong-dong, to do some shopping. They
have a few western stores there, and we wanted to go because we felt like we
were more guaranteed that things would fit. The Korean stores we go to
have extremely small clothes since Korean women are extremely small.
Three times now I have walked into boutiques and had sales girls come
directly up to me and, pointing directly at me, say "not your size."
Gee, thanks.
So we went to
Myeong-dong, and they had Zara and Forever 21 there. It was my first time
in a Zara and I was a tad disappointed. It was extremely expensive, and
really nothing special. Forever 21 was great though. I go two tops,
one of which is really nice and will be good for work, and the other of which
is quite possibly the funniest t-shirt I have ever seen. It is a picture
of two dinosaurs that look extremely happy. One of them has one very dull
tooth and the other has no teeth. They are eating cupcakes.
Meanwhile, children in party hats are running away from the cupcake table
screaming. Ha.
After that, we went to Itaewan,
where most of the foreigners in Seoul live, to meet Kim for dinner. One
of the first things I said when we got off the subway was "Holy white
people, Tonya!" They were everywhere. It was weird. Plus,
people on the street were speaking to me in English, and we ate Mexican food.
It was only Kim's second time eating Mexican food, and it wasn't very
good. So we're taking him, and some of the other English group people, to
Songtan for Mexican food next weekend. The restaurant there was much
better. Most of them have never had Mexican food at all. The one
thing that this short trip to Itaewan taught me, though, is that I am extremely
glad that I did not go to Seoul. If I had gone there and ended up living
in Itaewan, I wouldn't be having anything like the experience that I am having
now. It would have been much more like the states and much less like
Korea, and I feel like that would have been more than a little bit stupid.
So now I'm very glad that I came to Suwon instead, even if Seoul's nightlife
is amazing. It's not like we can't take a trip up there for a night.
Today, Kristen, Cally,
and I went to Paldalmun, which is the south gate of the Suwon Fortress.
Suwon used to be a heavily fortified city in contention for the capital
of South Korea. The walls of the ancient fortress still go around the
center of the city, though Suwon has since expanded beyond its borders.
After we went to the gate we walked up a really steep hill and saw a giant
gold Buddah that was towering over the surrounding houses. We walked up
to it and it was a big Buddhist temple. There were large gates, and small
buildings with beautiful lanterns inside and amazing painted murals all over
the undersides of the roof on the outside. We went inside and they took
lots of pictures. After that we wandered until we found a huge staircase,
which we guessed went up to the top of the hill where the fortress was.
This is one of the only spots where the fortress is up high above the
city rather than right in the middle of it. We got some great views of
the whole of Suwon laid out before us, and we were right. It was the
fortress. So we hiked for about an hour or so before heading home.
A few hours after I got
home I left again to go to the movies with Tonya, Erica, and Rachel, the latter
of whom are from English group. The movie we had meant to see, which was
an Indian film, turned out to be in not-English, so Tonya and I wouldn't have
been able to understand any of it, as the subtitles would be in Korean.
So we went to a Canadian movie instead, which I had never heard of but
which had Joshua Jackson in it. The guy from the Mighty Ducks. You
know, the one that isn't Emilio Estevez. It actually wasn't bad. We got coffee after, as people usually do to
round off the end of a night here.
One thing that was
frustrating about going to the fortress today was that I still don’t have a
camera. When I came I brought a camera
my parents bought me several years ago, but when I got here I found out that it
doesn’t work anymore, for some unknown reason.
I had been waiting until I had enough money to order a new one, so I’ll
have my teaching partner, Young, help me.
She has a really good camera, so I think I’ll get the same one she
has. She said she’ll help me order it
online. It’s getting a bit annoying to
not be able to take my own pictures.
UPDATE: Young helped me
order the camera on Monday, and I went to the bank to transfer the money from
my account to the company’s account on Tuesday morning. My camera was in my hands Tuesday
afternoon. The mail works fast here.
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