Can you see my "Seoul"?

Anticipation arising, I am sitting in the "lobby" area of the guesthouse, waiting for Josh's arrival. A close friend, Josh and I first met my freshman year of college at UTSA. It was one fateful morning that he and I were sitting outside class, waiting for Psychology to begin. Josh made the first words, and the rest, as they say, is history...

So, I haven't seen Josh for more than 3 months. Before I left for China, he was globe-trotting around Europe. Once he got back, I left for China.

However, for the past month (like myself), Josh has been teaching English. Instead of China, Josh chose Korea and has been teaching in Pusan.

He should be arriving any moment now, having taken the KTX from Pusan to Seoul. I understand that this train ride is about 3 hours, which I will be doing Sunday evening.

Supposedly, you can take what is called a "beetle" (basically, a large ship) across the Japan Sea from South Korea to Japan (and vice versa); this is what Andrew did to get here. I've already told Lily that she and I will be doing this at one point in the future :)

In any case, I have had up and down moments so far in Seoul.

Today was a lot of fun, Andrew and I went out to the Nam Dae Mun market, where you can find clothes galore. The funnest, and also most frustrating, part of the market is bargaining with the street shop owners. As some of you know, many Asian countries, unlike the U.S., promote bargaining in their shops. I say "promote," because they first start out with an outrageous price, only to take advantage of the foreigner who has no experience with bargaining. After all, this is unheard of in America and most of Europe (I believe).

Andrew and I put our bargaining skills to the test. We were successful at bringing 18,000 won t-shirts down to 12,000; if you are wondering, 1000 won is about US $1. Andrew bought 35,000 won shades for 20,000. We did a bunch of bargaining for other items that turned out to be failures. I wanted to bring the price down of one necklace, but the guy was stubborn and intent on parting with the necklace for no less than 86,000 won. I find walking away and then coming back a strategy in bargaining. Usually, the desperate sellers will drop the prices quickly if they see a "sale" quickly being lost.

I also tried some Korean food, having ate only Western food up to this point. Normally, I would insist on trying native food, but I feel justified this time because I have been without donuts and hamburgers for quite a while!

Andrew and I ate "Panjeon" with some Kim Chi and other assorted foods. We also ate what some might call a pancake. It was very yummy, with some type of honey inside.

Last night wasn't quite so good. I hadn't drank myself silly in quite a while, so I thought it would be fun to go out and do some drinking. I tried a Korean drink called "soju." It's a nice hard drink, goes down well. Well, maybe a little too well...

I ended up drinking a bit too much, stumbling around the Itaweon district. After Andrew saw things were getting out of hand, he had a taxi take us back to the hostel. Really, not a good idea to continue drinking once you've hit your peak.

Well, Josh has just arrived! I gave him a couple of big hugs and now we're ready to head out!

Love,
Mike