#3- "Don't touch with me! My Uncle is in the army."
#2- "Who the fuck are Black Wire?" (No need to be rude about it, Google says they're a band from the UK)
#1- "I can't be fired! Slaves have to be sold!"
At home, moving day always sucks- especially when you have to move everything upstairs. But lately, I've been seeing more and more of these moving trucks around town. They have an extendable conveyor belt on the back! The movers just move everything in through the apartment's windows. I wonder if they'll have this technology available in Ontario by September?
I'm quite sure that I can count the number of April 16ths that I've spent sunning myself by a river on one hand. If you didn't know any better you'd have thought that summer came to Seoul this weekend. On Saturday we spent the sunny afternoon relaxing by the Han River. I had some paperwork to prepare for University, so I brought my new netbook (thank you, PSA, for the gift certificates!) to the river to do some typing in the warmth.
We knew we were in the right place because there was a stuffed goat and a 6 foot tall balloon in the front window. We took a seat on chairs that had been upholstered with someone's old teddy bears, and under a TV that was playing a looped video of a woman popping a balloon. So hip!
We wasted no time in going straight to the toilet for a look-see. We hadn't even ordered drinks yet. If you need to go to the bathroom, even your queuing experience is fabulous at Gasum Lounge- look at this amazing floral chair waiting outside the washroom.
The bathroom is quite a surprise, given that the door is made of unfinished wood and the doorknob itself is just a screw. Check it out in the picture above- every surface is mirrored, and hundreds of colorful beads hang down from every inch of ceiling. It looks like Mardi Gras exploded in there. It was fantastic.
When we woke up Sunday morning to weather just as nice as we'd enjoyed the day before, we went straight back to Hangang park! This time, we rented bikes and cycled from the Hannam Bridge to just past Dongjak and back. All together, we'd cycled 10KM and, even though we were being passed by adjoshis left, right and center, we were proud of ourselves for doing something slightly fit for once!
It was a really nice ride. Seoul should be really proud of Hangang Park- the cycling routes are fantastic, and the cityscape looks beautiful along the water. Everywhere, families were picnicking, playing basketball or soccer, and just generally enjoying the day. It's cherry blossom season, so the trees were looking really nice along the trail, as well. We're really lucky to live so close to this area.
I really like Haddon House, because it's the only foreign food market that I've ever been to in Korea that appears to care about it's customers' shopping experience. It's clean. It's organized. It looks like a real supermarket. They have turkey, root beer and stracciatella Lindors. What more could you want?
I have a new favorite restaurant!!!!!! This place was amazing. Everything we had was delicious. We ordered pork and leek mandu in soy sauce, lemon chicken and...
...beef noodle soup! We used to eat this soup several times a week... it's probably Taiwan's most famous dish. It would always be cheap too, like $2-3 a bowl and I was always very poor in Taiwan so it was a lifesaver to me there. If you want to check out the restaurant, the address is here, but it's best found by taking the first left after Gangnam Butterfingers. It's in like the second building on your left, up the stairs.
On Sunday, we went to Dunkin Donuts to study for our Korean class and we saw a disturbing new product for sale. This was much worse than the Mini Toilet. They were selling BROCCOLI donuts! No. Just... no, no, no, nooooooo.
We arrived around 10pm and were very happy to see that the area around Daejeon's express bus terminal was surrounded by nice and fancy love motels. There were over a dozen acceptable options, but we went with the I Motel. They were going for an old fashioned/cabin sort of feel for the rooms, which was different, and we liked our room a lot. For $55 CAN there was a whirlpool (of course), 2 computers, a big TV, a sofa and lots of nice little touches like the random mural painted over the bed.
We were also provided with some room service options. Of course, there was food to order but there were also GIRLY options. I could have had any of the following ladies come to my room: Strawberry, Flower, Model, Love, Bang Bang, Tomato, Young, Sense, Sue, OK, or Talent.
I was interested in Sue, but instead we just decided to drink beer and watch Steve Murphy and the CTV News.
The next day, we walked to the nearby Home Plus and got some lunch in the food court. One thing that's great about traveling out of Seoul is how cheap eating out can be sometimes. Check out all the food we were served for $10/CAN. Mel got a cheese oven spaghetti with soup, salad, pork cutlet and radish kimchi and I got ddoekbaegi bulgogi with naengmyeon, rice, kimchi jiggae, kimchi, lettuce wraps and more radish kimchi. Unbelievable quantity and still totally delicious.
We weren't sure where exactly in the city we were, so we checked a map and found that we were a here.
We got a taxi to take us from the area around the bus terminal to the main shopping area called Jungang-no for 5,000 Won. The shopping area was pretty great, and I scored some excellent Engrishy shirts at (where else?) a store called Tomato.
We caught a bus (number 311 or 313) from Jungang-no to Ppuri Park. It's about a 30 minute ride, with a long, bouncy green bridge marking the entrance.
The park was built to celebrate Korea's family names. If you were to pick up a Canadian phone book you could probably find 100 different family names on any given page, but Korea only has about 250 different surnames registered in the whole country. As a race, Koreans have a very pure bloodline, for example: 21% of Koreans are named Kim and 14% are Lees!
At Ppuri Park, there are 136 statues, each representing a different surname. Some surnames are represented multiple times, because the name is traced back to the clan's hometown as well. The above statue is for the Hamchang Kim's.
This one is for the Jeongju Lee's.
If you were Korean, I think it would be pretty fun to trace your family's history at a park like this. A lot of people were dressed up for their visit, even the little kids were wearing their Sunday best. Alas, there were no Keddy monuments, so we took the occasion to lay in the sun near a pagoda and some fir trees for a while. What a nice afternoon.
There was a monument of the different Zodiac sign characters.
There was also some picnic space in the trees (Koreans prefer the shade to sun). Note the lack of picnic tables. Instead, there are flat surfaces for picnicking so that the family can eat almost like they're sitting on the floor.
Randomly, there was a collection of nearly every street sign known to man next to a field near the entrance. I guess part of the park is being turned into a traffic safety awareness center for children- naturally, since that concept goes hand in hand with tracing your genealogy. It was interesting to note that no matter where you are in the world, the traffic signs are nearly all the same.
What the what?!
When it's not crawling with cockroaches (we've officially been roach-free for a full week now) or crawling with loud tramps (thanks for the recent silence, apartment 404) there are some things I actually like about our apartment. Right now, we're enjoying this explosion of cheery white blossoms on the tree outside our bedroom window. I'd trade bugs for flowers any day.
Boy on the sign: "Something about an urgency on the express highway"
The Mini Toilet is suggested for use almost anywhere: in the car, on a boat, in a tent or even in right in your wheelchair. No word on how the used product should be discarded. This is one of those products that is, while no doubt useful, probably a tricky one to use discreetly. And if someone I know receives a package of these in the mail sometime soon... you'll have to let me know how they worked hahahaha!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- I just clicked "accept"!
And I hope I win the lottery between now and September. That could make being an unemployed student slightly more comfortable...
Because we were in the mood to do something uplifting on Sunday, we visited the Seoul National Cemetary in Dongjak. Dongjak Station has a hallway that is strangely decorated with the slogan "Lucky Dongjak" juxtaposed next to pictures of tombstones and war time images of soldiers dying in combat and bombs exploding. "Lucky", indeed.
The Cemetery is located directly outside of the train station (Exit 8), and when we turned the corner and saw the giant gate and monument seen above, we knew that we'd found someplace interesting.
We passed through this gate, where two motionless soldiers stand guard in phone booth-like structures, to take a look at the giant monument behind the gate. Actually, this monument in the rear of the photo turned out to be the entrance to the cemetery.
There were some stairs around the base of the giant monument so we followed them down and saw this impressive statue.
There were colorful murals on the ceiling.
The cemetery is reserved for Korean veterans, and inside the monument there were many hallways listing the names of the dead. There were flowers, bibles and candles left all around the room.
We found another set of stairs that exited to the cemetery itself. The cemetery is enormous, and reminded me a lot of Arlington Cemetery in Washington. All of the graves are identical and are perfectly geometrically aligned. Either a red or yellow flower is left at each grave.
It could take hours and hours to walk around the whole place. It is an absolutely massive cemetery. I usually find cemeteries pretty creepy, and would generally not spend the afternoon sightseeing in one, but this one was really pretty and peaceful.
Some of Korea's ex-presidents are buried here. This is the grave of Yi Seungman, who was buried with his foreign born wife, Francesca. Foreign spouses are a touchy subject among a lot of Koreans nowadays, so we were really surprised to find out that a president had been married to a non-Korean. I feel like that wouldn't happen today, but maybe that just the pessimist in me.
Outside the cemetery is a nice park where people were picnicking and kids were running around.
There were some cutesy statues representing the army, navy and air force. Our favorite statue by far was this fellow and his tank's suggestively placed gun.
A river ran through it.
On Saturday night we'd gone to a housewarming party in Noksapyeong. Everytime we go to that area we get super hungry walking past all the restaurants but we'd never had time to just stop and eat at one. Well, Dongjak was only 5 subway stops away from Noksapyeong, and with the strip of restaurants fresh in our minds from the previous night, we decided to go there for supper. We went to Fat Panda, which is opposite exit 2 of the station. They serve Western-style Chinese food cafeteria-style, sort of like Manchu Wok back home. It wasn't amazing, but it was good enough for the price (8,900 Won for 3 dishes + noodles and rice) and it's a type of food we rarely get to eat in Korea.
On Friday night, we went to see MGMT (with special guests Snack Soft- WTF?) at AX-Korea in Seoul. This is a band that Mel and I both really love so we knew all the songs by heart and had a great time. The one-two punch of "Kids" followed by "Destrokk" has to be one of my favorite concert experiences ever.
