I've got Seoul, but I'm not a Seouldier

It's easy to play word games with the name of Korea's capital city and I always get this Killers' song (with a few letter changes) in my head when we visit Seoul. This weekend was our third trip to Seoul and it looks like we will never run out of things to do there (Also very important is that Jenn will never run out of places to shop - the malls and markets and street vendors all converge into one never-ending shopping extravaganza. I guess there needs to be a lot of stuff available to sell to this 30 million population.)

We had a late start on Saturday, because we had a late night on Friday. That tends to happen when you go to a pub with 2 Irish people. We went out for a few drinks with Stephanie and Malachy even though we were wiped out from work; we perked up a bit once we were away from school and got a few beers in us. And those few beers didn't stop until 2:30 a.m. It helped that our first few rounds were paid for by an overly-friendly and overly-drunk Korean man. This man (name unknown) was the landlord of Stephanie and Malachy's building and as soon as he recognized them he invited himself to our table for the next hour and a half. He knew very broken English and he was more than willing to practice it on us (we had the same conversation about how he was going to visit us in Canada and Ireland about 20 times). And that actually turned out to be the point of him sitting with us: he kept buying rounds of beer and snacks and we had to keep talking English with him; then he brought his daughter into the bar and we had to speak English to her. This is the Koreans way to get more practice with their English, even though for 4 ESL teachers who spent the last 5 days in our classrooms, we wanted to have a conversation with other English speakers without one-word questions and answers. We were able to drag ourselves away and find another bar that served imported beer and had less people that were interested in us. There wasn't any Canadian brands, so I had a Miller Genuine Draft. Jenn had some Vodka based drink called KGB. They even had Jack Daniels, but we weren't about to spend the $200 price tag. We don't know what one drink of Jack cost, but it seems to be the normal procedure to buy the bottle for your table instead of ordering by the glass. We also learned another Korean custom about drinking: You aren't supposed to pour your own drink into your own glass; someone pours for you and you pour for them and then you drink together. We didn't know that until now, so we may have offended some Koreans in our first month. Same goes for the removing of the shoes rule - we're not sure when we are supposed to and we may be breaking the rules all the time but not know it.

The next afternoon we caught our bus and made it to Seoul around 1:30. Our first stop was lunch and this is where we gave in to not so much a craving, but a taste of the familiar. We partly blame Carrie for this. She has made numerous references to Filet o' fish in her comments and Jenn knew she wouldn't last much longer before she had to get her favourite McDonalds sandwich. So our first experience in McDonalds was the same as anywhere else in the world, except we were 2 white people in a sea of hamburger-eating Asians. No kimchi to be seen. We both agree that it was tasty. After that we went straight to Namsam Park, which is the biggest park in Seoul with the highest mountain in the city. Atop the mountain stands The Seoul Tower, which is remarkably similar to another slender tower we all know as the CN Tower. The park is a beautiful arrangement of sprawling greenery, babbling brooks, traditional Korean architecture, and paved walkways. And there are stairs - thousands and thousands of stairs that lead up to the summit. We had the time and the ambition so we took the stairs to the top, expecting that the sights would be worth the effort of getting there. It was worth it, except for one huge letdown. The Tower was under renovation and closed to the public (kind of like going to Paris and not being able to go up the Eiffel Tower, hoping this doesn't happen to you this week Michelle and Paul). There may have been signs along the way that warned visitors of this, but of course, signs in Korean don't help us one bit. So we enjoyed the scenery from the mountaintop and it was still spectacular.

After our afternoon in the park, complete with a downpour (and us umbrella-less again), we went to Itaewon street. This is the area of Seoul where you see a high percentage of people that are not Asian. It was still raining when we got there, so we had no choice but to take a break in the 3-storey Starbucks (the biggest one in the wordl) until it stopped. Then a bit of walking around and a motel for the night.

The next day we left early to attend a Christian church in the city. On our way to the subway, we passed another McDonalds. We both looked at each other and said "Egg McMuffins??" We knew it was a bad idea to have McDonalds food twice in 24 hours but that didn't stop us. What did stop us was the fact that McDonalds in Korea does not serve breakfast food. So we were saved from going through our own personal version of the "Supersize Me" experiment, but we were slightly disappointed. After a while, we realized we didn't have good enough directions to find the church so after wandering a bit, we finally gave up. We bought an English newspaper called the Korean Times to pass the time while we road the subway trying to figure out what to do next. Jenn had the sports section (oddly enough) and she read that there was a tennis tournament at the Olympic Park. After a quick study of the subway maps, we realized we could get there relatively easily, switched subways, and after a few wrong turns stumbled upon the tennis stadium in Olympic Park. It was quite spectacular. The schedule and draw from the 1988 Olympics were still posted in the parking lot. Steffi Graf won the Women's final and Miloslav Mecir (nicknamed "The Cat") won the Men's, for all you tennis fans who forgot. The tournament that was going on was a professional WTA event, but it was the qualifying rounds only so the tournament was not fully underway yet. We were able to walk around the grounds and check out the qualifying matches that were being played. I checked out the draw, but there weren't any big names. No one ranked higher than 20th in the world was playing this event. We got to see a Korean play against a Japanese on Stadium Court, and even though there were no tennis superstars there, it was still very cool.