slums, islamic center, and kebabs

As I write this there is an epic storm hovering over our section of the city. The rain and wind are forcing their way into our apartment, the thunder is shaking our building. Crazy! Yesterday was about as humid of a day as I've ever experience, there was a thick fog over the city, limiting visibility and ensuring our skin to be a little sticky at all times. Josh and I decided to get on the first bus that came to our stop, could be one of about thirty! Our plan: to ride it for a while and get off whenever we felt like it and explore a new part of the city. We rode for about thirty minutes and our random bus took us across the Han river and turned west, this is when we disembarked.

we stopped to buy some sponges from this guy

Seoul is a rich city. In our neighborhood it is not uncommon to see Ferraris and Porsches and Lamborghini’s every day, maybe driven by an eighteen year old kid even! Seoul is a massive city as well, a city of twenty million people, so there must be a lot of working class people to keep it running, those who do the dirty work of the city. Our random bus, number 421 to be exact, took us to where these people live. The slums. It was wow.... so different than what we are used to seeing and also the most impoverished looking neighborhood we've explored in Seoul thus far.

taking a nap I think...

this was a fresh fire, still smoking

the neighborhood was deserted it seemed! Not a soul in sight, we would imagine it to be an abandoned neighborhood if it weren't for the sounds coming from the open windows and the sight of laundry hung out to dry. Some homes were fully collapsed on one side and still inhabited. The roads winding through were far too small for any motorized vehicles. There was almost an eerie feel to some areas. We traversed the hills, taking stairways and alleys, sometimes hitting a dead end, until we came upon a more populated area. We found ourselves in the Middle Eastern district. A beautiful huge mosque was on top of a hill in the distance, and street signs were beginning to have arabic on them. We headed up towards the mosque and ran into an Islamic center and lots of foreign food stores and many Arab vendors. We stopped to chat with one man, who said that we could go in and tour the mosque and Islamic center, but I was too hot to put on the required clothing, so we said thanks and kept meandering through the area. We stopped for lamb kebabs from a little shop, run by some Turkish guys, it was so good and cheap.