................Taking Flight...............: Night on the Town

In the morning I skyped with Mom and Grandpa. It's been awhile since we've connected and talked for more than a few minutes. I was so glad to see them. It is so hard to be away from them.

After we talked I decided I'd head out before I was to meet Dong Gun. I first went to a bookstore and browsed there for a few things. I wandered outside a little, but it was so cold! I had a brisk walk along Cheonggyecheon (my favorite stream) before crossing City Hall and looking for a Starbucks to sit in and warm up. I sat in the Starbucks and enjoyed people watching until it was time to meet Dong Gun. He said he wanted to have dinner right away, so I changed the location of our meeting spot and walked from City Hall to Insadong.

We met in the subway station and I took him to a traditional Korean restaurant that Katie had shown me. After dinner we took a stroll around Insadong and looked for a makgoli jip, but didn't find anything. We wandered back towards Jongno area and Dong Gun said we were on our own Camino del Santo Domingo. Finally we found a place for makgoli and also got kimchi cheon (pancake, for lack of better word) as a side. It was fun talking over makgoli and he showed me a video clip of when he was on TV in Peru! He's had a very interesting life and traveled quite a bit.

Next we went to noraebang, a singing room. Koreans love karaoke and they're all pretty good singers. I was a bit hesitant at first to go just 2 people (normally big groups go) but I remembered that Jeong Kwan and I had fun when we went in Gimhae just the two of us so I said we could try. For 1 hour and 5,000W we sang a bunch of songs, but it was hard because he didn't know many American pop songs and I definitely can't sing any Korean ones. We did try one Korean song I knew, but it was by a young female artist so he joked that he was going to change into a girl to sing the song.

After singing, we decided to walk around a little bit more and search for something else to eat. It was not too late at night and I was surprised how empty the downtown area was. It was also one of the only times I've been downtown that late at night so it was really nice. I mean, I've been there in the evenings, but it felt a little bit different since it was quieter. We wandered towards City Hall and were headed towards Namdaemun, but I realized there wouldn't be much in that area. I suggested turning towards Myeongdong so we headed that way and found a cafe. We had tea and talked a little bit more before going to the subway station to find the subways had all stopped running. We got taxis to take us in our separate directions.