Friends Friday

I woke up in my amazing bed--I had got about 6 hours of straight sleep so that was a nice change. It was cloudy and kind of drizzly outside. I figured the task for the day was to find an umbrella. By the time I was out, the rain had stopped. I went to an area called Myeongdong, which is right behind my hotel, and I got a noodle and dumpling soup. It was a little early, but the restaurant gets very busy so I figured i should go as soon as I could. By the time I finished eating, the line was out the door! I walked around Myeongdong (famous for shopping) a little and then wanted to go to my favorite place, Cheonggyecheon. I sat there a little and then decided I would go to a museum I had seen in the fall but hadn't opened yet. It is the Contemporary History Museum of Seoul and right now it is featuring an exhibit about the Korean War. The main parts of the museum cover history a little bit before Japanese occupation until present day. The first floors (which are all the turmoil years) are sobering and made me quite sad. I wasn't able to finish one floor because it was getting to me too much. I headed back to the hotel to rest a little before my friend Ginger came to visit. She teaching in a city in central Korea named Daejon and is going home for a month vacation to the US.

Ginger arrived and we spent a few hours just sitting in my room chatting and catching up. We decided we should go get dinner, so we asked the concierge for a particular type of BBQ, in hopes of being directed to a chain we both know from Inje. However, she suggested a very expensive one not too far from the hotel. We decided since I had a map on my phone we would go search for the one we knew (much cheaper). Unfortunately, it lead us on quite the chase, ending in...a different restaurant. We still had BBQ and it was good, but not the one we were looking for. We ordered Samgypsal which is like thick cut bacon that you grill. After dinner, we returned to the hotel and all of a sudden Ginger hears her name. It was Ginger's tutor, Mina, while she was at Inje! She was meeting Ginger's friend Tommy (who we were also meeting) and was waiting for him. He was running late, so I invited her upstairs with Ginger and we had some water and chatted. The conference group had an event at a pub type place in an area called Itaewon so we decided we'd go that way too. I ran into my friend Colin, who I met at Inje (he's here for the conference as well and then will be studying at a university this fall). The place proposed by the group was full, so we decided to go off the 4 of us (Tommy, Ginger, Mina and me) and find somewhere. We sat and chatted. Mina talked about her boyfriend and was showing off a picture of him on her phone and I realized I knew him!!! He was one of the more active Korean students in our group of friends at Inje! What a small world! Later Colin joined us with a female friend, Nikki, that he had met recently. Mina had to leave to make the subway back to her home, so Ginger, Tommy and I left to walk her to the subway. We thought we could grab a cab so we started walking a little...but after quite awhile decided we'd take a subway cause we had walked to the next station, only to find out the subway had just stopped running, but there was a car going in the opposite direction (just where we came from) so we took it back and grabbed a cab. The first cab we got, the driver told us it would be 20,000W (almost $20!!) We said NO, STOP! And we all got out. The next cab had his meter running so it was a reasonable 5,000W ride. I had Ginger and Tommy come up so we could continue talking and it was really nice to connect. Also, I found out Tommy will be starting at Ross in a few weeks so I told him I'd see if I could put him into contact with Phil. :)

At Cheonggyecheon!

Samgypsal Dinner with my friend Ginger