Seoul is a city that refuses to sleep. Not far from our aparatment in Ilsan is a shopping strip/district called La Festa. This strip, like every block in the Seoul Metropolitan area, has every inch of its exterior covered in neon lights. From dusk until dawn, Seoul successfully lights up its city as if the sun never went down. The stimulus overload can drive even the simplest form of ADD into sheer madness. One of the things that makes Korea so fascinating is its night life.
The other foreign teachers at our school have been very welcoming, taking us out to dinner about four times this past week. One thing we have learned about dinner thus far is that people do not consume dinner at typical hours in which we are use to. It is very common to see people such as an older couple or business men having dinner at a Galbi (Korean barbeque) restaurant at 1 or 2 am...on a Monday.
I just had to take this picture of a neon tiger prowling alongside a skyscraper in downtown Seoul. I would find this less humorous if I knew the significance behind the neon tiger because it was surrounded by Christmas decorations and other Christmas lights. Perhaps Father Christmas has a giant tiger helping him deliver presents in SoKo? I could not help, however, but marvel at this sweet lighting display alongside a massive tower. They went into great detail even to have a tree and clouds above the tiger.
On Saturday a couple of foreign teachers took Kelly and me out to see a little bit of Seoul. First, our day started out by waking up and doing some much needed laundry. While we were waiting for our friends to call us, I was flipping through the terrible, terrible Korean drama tv shows until I stumbled upon a slightly better movie. It was Matrix Revolutions. I realize there are better things to do with my time, but since it was in English, it was the only thing I could divert my attention to. Anyway, after Neo saved Morpheous and the keymaker from an exploding semi-truck, Kelly and I went with our friends to Itaewon. Itaewon is a shopping district that is mostly populated by foreigners. Mostly everyone there speaks English and there are many markets that supply those with the most dire homesickness with basic needs such as Prego spaghetti sauce or Campell's soup. There are also a lot of fantastic restaurants and pubs that serve more than quimche(I will get to that later) or galbi.
After Itaewon we went to this market in the backstreets of Seoul (note the two pictures above). The above left picture is a great representation of Seoul. Packed. This market, like many markets that sell cheap, off- brand products was packed. I felt like I was part of a colony of army ants furiously scurrying around taking out everything in my path trying to feed the queen ant (in my case, my need to buy crappy souvenirs that will sit on a book case or inevitably wind up broken by the hands of my children). One thing I found interesting was that Korea is just as cold as Minnesota, if not colder at some points in the winter. It was about 12 degrees that night and there were still that many people out shopping.
(I found this completely necessary to post a picture of a woman chopping the head off a frozen fish with a cleaver fashioned 400 years ago...not really.)
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