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Published: February 1st 2006
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Dongdaemun
This is a picture of the gate to Dongdaemun. I can't believe it's February! Actually I can. Part of me feels like time is going so freaking slow but the other part seems like it's going really fast. I suppose that's what time does a lot of the time. I give up trying to figure out which it's doing. I keep telling people that this break is really what I needed to heal from everything in China - my relationship with Camillo, my very backward relationship with Stone, working all the time without a two day break anywhere to be seen, kids that either don't want to be in class or have nothing to talk about but their studies, having my first full time job ever, foreigners who are going through some crazy stuff and making it a whole huge drama, and who knows what else. I don't know whether getting away will actually make it all easier or not. I suppose if it's what I believe enough then it'll come true. Maybe I can take this break and go back to the world I know in China and make a few changes to my daily schedule and make everything change. Maybe not.
People keep referring to me as
Seoul Tower
This is a picture as taken from the Seoul Tower, the highest point in Seoul. if I'm Chinese here. It's really strange I'm "that girl from China" all over the place. On Sunday when Chris and I went to the Seoul Tower and there was something there about the war between the US and Korea. I told him something to the effect of "that's what we did back then" (or something relating to "we") and he said "Who's we?" I looked at him like he was blind. "Um, I'm talking about the US." He said "You never know with you." I looked at him like he was crazy this time but didn't say anything. I mean sure I've been living in China for a little while but if every time I went and lived in a place I became a person of that country I'd belong to a crap load of countries right now. Of course America is still my home! I may not like it very much right now, and I definitely don't like it's president right now but that doesn't mean anything about it not being my country!
Anyways!! Yesterday Chris went and got me a temporary pass that lets me go on or off the base as many times as I
Changgyeonggung Entrance
This is the entrance to Changyeonggung with the modern city of Seoul behind it. want to without Chris having to be right there with me. This is definitely good as he started working 8 hours a day again and I don't want to just stay on base the whole time. So now I have this pass that says "USFK Pass/ID - Visitor" It has my social security number on it and the dates that I'm staying in Yongsan (on base) as well as my name, signature and photo with the US flag behind me. Anyways, after getting the pass I walked over to Tairen's place with my Popeye's take-out food. I banged on the door a couple million times but he wasn't there. So I ate my take-out and ran into him on my way out of the place. We decided to go to a part of Seoul called Sinchon. I took my first Subway. Sheesh the Seoul subway system has the cleanest subwys I've ever been on in my life. And they're unlike any other moving vehicle I've ever been on either. The subways in Seoul can go and stop a million times and you don't have to hold onto anything or brace yourself for anything because unlike any other moving vehicle they won't throw you. If you're on a Chinese bus and you don't hold on before it goes you'll get thrown half-way down the aisle. It may not be that bad for any other transportation service but it's definitely slightly true. Not so for the Seoul subway system. It's awesome.
Tairen and I ended up going to lunch together and then I went and bought some awesome CDs of Korean music that I'd never heard before (but I picked some good ones at random). Afterwards I wanted to go down to Dongdaemun and do some shopping but Tairen wanted to go back to base and insisted it was going to rain - even though it never did. We went back and played some games of pool. Then I walked back to Chris' room and got my Harry Potter books to go have some of the best pita sandwiches I've ever had in my life - they were more like a burrito the way they were wrapped but man were they good! I've been hooked on the "Lost" TV series for a couple days now so that's what I did when I got back - watched it for a little while. Then today I got up to watch some more Lost. Around 11:30am Chris and one of his Katusa's (one of the Koreans that works here on base as a soldier serving both countries - every Korean man is required to do this for at least two years). This is a pretty awesome Katusa who speaks pretty decent English. He paid for lunch for us at the Katusa Snack Bar. I had my first Mung-doo (I think that's the right word) soup - it's dumpling soup with rice cakes in it and some seaweed (as a side note to anyone who hasn't had seaweed don't start because you'll be addicted - at first it may be a strange flavor but once you start really eating it it's absolutely awesome). Of course we also had kimchi, seaweed and some fried dumplings. You almost can't eat Korean food without eating kimchi. I'm not really sure how I would explain it except to say that it's cabbage, lettuce and ... some sort of sauce that I'm not really sure how to explain all mixed together. After lunch Chris and his Katusa dropped me off at the buses behind the main post area and I took a bus over to Gate 17 (pretty far away). It was a free bus and just a very short walk over to the National Museum of Korea. It wasn't exactly my kind of museum in the kinds of things that it had in it. There were a couple things that I really liked a lot which I took pictures of (without the flash) but that's about it. After I got done looking through the museum I had some coffee - everything here is so expensive! I mean in reality it's almost exactly the same as in America but I'm not exactly used to it. I'm used to a coffee for 25 kuai (3 dollars) being extremely expensive in China. Here in Korea 3 dollars is the cheapest you can get coffee for - and coffee isn't exactly the only thing that's expensive. After the coffee I walked over to the subway system to take it to Dongdaemun.
At first I was very upset with Dongdaemun. I walked into what I thought was an absolutely huge building - walked around up and down and across four different floors and found nothing but fabrics! It was a fabric mall! If anyone ever needs to find fabric that's the best place I've ever been to for fabric. But I wasn't looking for fabric. So I walked out and almost right in front of me was the Dongdaemun gate. I took some pictures - walked around like I was a dumbo and walked back to the same huge building I had just been in. Then I kept walking and walked into a great mall - this time it did have clothes. I ended up buying three different pairs of pants and two shirts. There were so many Chinese people in the mall! I kept hearing bits and pieces of conversations all over the place. One little girl even walked up to me and the owner of a shop where I was buying some pants and asked us where something was (in Chinese). The owner looked at her like she was nuts. I knew what she was asking but I didn't know what the answer was or what exactly she was looking for so I didn't respond. It was very strange that I (the foreigner) was the one who understood and not the shop owner.
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