Release of grisly Hussein photos assailed

"Vaunting over men slain is a monstrous thing. These men have perished because the gods willed it so and because their own deeds were evil. They had no regard for any man, good or bad"
-Odysseus, The Odyssey (Homer)

Weekend of fun

We had a great weekend. On Friday night Barb and I decided to go to Hongdae. Hongdae is the night club area of Seoul. Most of the clubs in Hongdae charge around 10,000 to 20,000 Won cover charge. Not super high, but a lot for starving post-students. The fourth Friday of every month is "Club Night" in Hongdae, however. That means you pay 15,000 Won (it used to be 10,000, but them's the breaks) for a wrist band that gets you in at any club all night.

Barb and I headed out a little after midnight. You see, there is no last call in Korea, so you can easily head out after midnight. Not as easily as we thought, however. The subway stops running at around 1:00am but Barb and I made it on before that. We assumed that because we made it to the subway we would make it to Hongdae. You should not assume things in Korea. At 1:00am, somewhere in the middle of nowhere (OK, the middle of one of the largest cities on earth), the subway just stopped. It stopped at a station, mind you, but it wasn't the end of the line and it wasn't our stop. It just stopped where it was at 1:00am. It pisses me off that transit isn't 24-hours in Calgary, but come on, Seoul? So we were off to find our own way to Hongdae.



We bumped into another Canadian on our way out of the Subway Station (also headed to Hongdae) and we decided to try and catch a cab together. We waited on the corner for like twenty minutes. We couldn't get a cab to pick us up. At first we thought it was because we were waeguks (foreigners), but the Koreans near us had no luck either. Then a Kia van pulled up and rolled down it's passenger window. A lady in her early thirties asked us where we were going. We told her and she said they'd give us a ride. So we climbed into the van and headed off. It turns out the woman was actually Chinese. Her husband, a Korean man who was driving, saw us and thought we might need some help. It wasn't until we were almost there that I realized I had just got into a stranger's van in the middle of a foreign city. Not exactly something your parents would be proud of. But hey, Koreans are super nice (and so are the Chinese apparently) and we arrived at Hongdae speedily and unharmed.

We started off the night by going to Tinpan, a pub in Hongdae that serves 1,900 Won bottles of Carlsberg. We go there regularly, and Jason, our companion, was meeting some friends there. We tipped a couple back and headed out to the clubs at about 2:30am - the Seoul night still being young. We bounced around between clubs, only taking a break for some air and much-needed street food. I ended up leaving Matmata, my last club, at 7:00am in the morning. You see places with no last-call can really mess you up. I mean, leaving the bar at 7:00am does all sorts of fun things to your biological clock. So I climbed on to the subway, after grabbing a gatorade with some newly acquired Korean and Quebecois friends, and headed home to bed.

On Saturday Barb and I went to the Youngpoon bookstore. Yes, I typed that correctly, it is the actual name of the bookstore. They had an excellent selection of English books, enough to make you drool. It can be hard to find such necessities in Korea, and I've been running out of things to read (remind me to blog about books later). After spending a few hours in the bookstore Barb and I headed to the adjacent Korea World Trade Center and the foodcourt. It was here that we made a wondrous discovery. They had beer in the foodcourt. I do not lie. Not just beer, but pitchers of beer. Well what is a Canadian to do when faced with such a situation? Nothing but down the ale I tell you.



After downing the cheap foodcourt beer, Barb and I explored the area around the Trade centre, Jongno-3-ga, for a while. It was quite bustling. We popped into an "Irish pub" for a drink and relaxed for a while. After this we caught a cab to the good old mainstay of Itaewon, the "foreigner neighbourhood" of Korea, for some more drinks. We visited our favorite pub, Bricx. Bricx is our favourite because they have mugs of draft for only 2000 Won. That's almost as cheap as staying home. We had a few drinks at Bricx and made friends with the bartender, Julio Enrique. Now when you meet a guy named Julio Enrique bartending in a bar in the middle of Seoul, you expect him to be of a fairly exotic origin. Julio, however, is apparently from Edmonton...

Bricx closed at 3 a.m. and we headed outside for some delicious Korean street food. It was pouring rain by this point and we had to run quite fast. We were going to go to Lime Light, a night club, but they were still charging cover, and we didn't feel like paying at 3 a.m. So we ate our food and headed home to try and get some sleep.

Man when it rains here, it rains

Alberta

Wow, never saw this one coming:


You're Alberta. You're always up for a good time
and are the life of the party. There is an aura
of excitement about you and you try to have fun
wherever and whenever you can. You're quite
popular and understandbly so.


What Canadian Province Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Seoul's got us, but we got Seoul

Sorry it's been so long since I've blogged. Let's see what I've been up to:

On June 27 at about 18:30 Barb and I left Gumi with all our belongings and headed off for Seoul. It was good timing as Rob showed up at Ryan's house the previous evening. He was gracious enough to let us stay in his room for the final day. Rob arrived on the day that he had always intended to, but in true Korean fashion his boss thought he was coming earlier. Earlier in the day Barb and I had to go to our friends' house (Tracey from South Africa and Corey from Banff). Corey was babysitting our mountain bikes for us. We then rode our bikes back to Ryan's in the pouring rain - fun! The moving guy showed up at Ryan's around 17:30. He was supposed to come at 10:00 in the morning. Then John called us to tell us it would be at 16:00 (John's like that). Then he showed up at 18:00. We did, however, manage to get a ride to Seoul with the moving guy, saving us bus fare. We got all our belongings into the truck. We came to Korea with one suitcase each, plus our bikes. I don't know where we accumulated enough stuff to fill a pickup truck, but we did. Partially due to the fact that we had nothing in our apartment and had to buy it all - stupid b**** Jane. The ride to Seoul was uneventful - Barb and I crammed into the cab of a pickup with a Korean driver who knew no English.

We arrived in Seoul around 21:30. We went to the school first. We waited there for about 15 minutes. I'm not sure what we were waiting for, as the driver couldn't tell us. We eventually got back in the vehicle and drove about 5 minutes away from the school. We drove through a downtownish neighbourhood and up a hill. We stopped in front of a row of store-front buildings. When we got out of the vehicle we saw Mr. Kim, the Director of our new school standing there. The buildings around us looked a little slumy so we were quite worried. He pointed to a stairway tucked behind the storefronts which would apparently lead to our new home.

As we climbed the stairway we were in for a pleasant surprise. The stairway was a nice (faux) granite and was lined with a lot of potted plants. When we hit the third floor of the walk-up we saw a balcony-type place lined with a lot of plants. The site of plant life was a welcome change from the cold industrial atmosphere of everything in Gumi. When we walked into our apartment we were pleasantly surprised again. Our apartment is huge. As we walked in there was a little porch area. Following this there was a door to the left leading into the master bedroom, which was quite large with a queen sized bed. There was another door which lead to a single bedroom. After that the apartment opened up into the kitchen, which was the center of the apartment. A little crowded, with the washing machine in it, but still larger than Gumi. Then there was another hallway with a door on the left which lead to another single bedroom. The hallway lead to our living room, which - although strangely tucked away at the end of the apartment, was also fairly large, with some lovely orange vinyl furniture. So our apartment was huge. 3 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen for the two of us. The refrigerator was very big, which is great for food-focused people like us. Here's the best part though - we have an oven! There are hardly any ovens in Korea, with most of them being dinky things. Ours is a full-sized western-style oven. Sweet ass!

So after checking out the apartment we helped the Director and the moving man lug all our stuff in. We said good-bye to the Director (who barely speaks English) and started the settling in process. Our apartment is very 70s-ish. It's big, but not new, but we'll make it a home.

Have to run, but I'll write more later.