Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) has come and gone. I did not eat a ton of food, though my school did make me eat 5 rice cakes stuffed with seseme seeds. To celebrate this eating holiday, I got five days off of work--two days of weekend, and then two days to recover from the food coma. And in true style M came up for four days. Both of us had the Thanksgiving blessing of colds, so the holiday was spent mostly staring at the walls of my apartment, noses in tissues, and moaning in frustrated pain. We did manage to venture out though, taking a trip to Gangnam to view the sleek buildings and the naked statues in front of the bank buildings. In our coma-like states I think we stood staring at the strewn about flyers advertising call girls for far too long. Apparently it is customary to take a picture of the flyer with your phone as you continue walking past, then you can call later. But we tourists stood looking at the piles of them for quite some time. Some how we made it back to my apartment.
The next day we were even more miserable, so we took the elevator up to the 19th floor and climbed the stairs to the roof of my apartment building. The view and the breeze cheered us up considerably and we were able to brave the Chuseok crowds at the grocery store. Some how we got home.
Monday we forced ourselves out of the area and went to Danggogae, where the beginning of a national park is. We planned on meeting a few people for a hike. By the end of the subway ride, we were exhausted but pumped. No one was there. We walked around the town searching for a way to get up the mountain, but decided that we would just wallow in our defeat at the Dunkin Donuts. On our way we noticed two bums leaning up against the subway building, turns out they were our crowd--just extremely hung over. Then two more hang over suffers stagger out of the rail station. We had all made it. We did find the trail head, but got distracted by a giant swing and decided to play on that for a while. By that time we were all exhausted and instead went into a coffee shop and played scrabble for nearly two hours. All I can say is that the Korean children trying to learn English are screwed.
M went home on Tuesday, amidst the crowds pour into and out of Seoul. It was like New York at rush hour, only no one seems to know how to stick to one side of the side walk. It's like a wall of Koreans vs another wall of Koreans. And we all have to push to gain an inch, instead of just side stepping. Needless to say, I needed a nice bloody show to watch after that ordeal.
Today I felt much better and proved it by meeting a couple of people for lunch, a river cruise, and dinner. Lunch was a fancy, fancy place and a mixture of French and Japanese food. Topped off with a "milk pudding" that was to die for! It was almost a custard texture, with mango "fizz" (as we called it because it fizzed in your mouth), kiwi, vanilla bean, pear, and KIX cereal on top. I could have done without the KIX, but the rest was good. Afterwards we got onto our private boat to take the river tour--we all broke out into chorus--gotta love SNL (This could be why the boat driver tried to kill us).
Well the boat driver had us strap on our life jackets and then sent us to the front of the boat, where we all got happy and giddie. Then the boat driver jerked the boat to the left then to the right and all of us went swaying and screaming towards one end or the other. A few of us nearly went over board--myself included. But thankfully my elbow dragging on the floor of the boat saved my life. So for the next few minutes of the ride we clung to the main mast while the boat driver giggled evilly. But it was good, we got some nice candid shots of us and on the videos there are actual screams instead of fake ones. The driver did calm down and let us relax a bit and take some pictures of the city, bef
ore starting up the whole business again. This time I was way up front and gripping a handrail. I thought I was clever and had it wedged between my legs. When the boat rocked forward, however, all I got was a nice bruising and then managed to slide around the other side of the rail-- not helpful. Thankfully, everyone was watching some one else trying to crawl back into the boat and didn't notice me half flopping out of the boat in quite an ungraceful manner. But we all survived and didn't get too wet. So we went and celebrated with more food. Now I am sitting in the apartment exhausted from the excitement and the food. And craving more "milk pudding."
In other news, a friend shared this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/downloads-are-slowest-in-idaho-study-finds.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
apparently they could not find anything else to write about.
As for pictures, the stupid internet is too slow to allow them to post on here. Sorry :S
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