Goodbye October

Part I: Saturday

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We are almost always successful in our random journeys in this city, but not this time. Armed with granola bars and fruit, water bottles and a camera, we set out for the long bus and subway journey out of Seoul, north to Yangju-si, where we’ve never been. Another bus was to be caught there. With ease we found and boarded the bus and it slowly took us north and away to the middle of nowhere it seemed, or all the way to North Korea (gasp)!

We realized about ten minutes in that this was going to be a long bus ride. We did not expect this. The promise of the misty gray morning wearing off into a bright, blue-sky afternoon was appearing more and more false as the clouds became lower and the air continued to cool. We missed our stop. In fact we don’t know where our stop could have been on that windy, bumpy road. We got to the very end of the line, after miles of construction and confusion, to a small town in Paju-si, population two hundred maybe? Everyone exited the bus and it turned around. We needed a break so we opted to stretch our legs and breathe some fresh air before backtracking.

This unnamed town in the northernmost province of the safe side of the border was not a pretty or charming place. The people did not seem too thrilled to have us loafing about. Military personal and construction workers dominated the area near the bus stop corner, and we noticed on the way back some covert Korean military bases tucked into the foothills. Eerie! By now it was half past three, only two more hours of good light; our hike was not going to happen, which was depressing (and we were hungry).

You know when you’ve been looking forward to something for days, researching and planning, excited, then every little thing that could go wrong does, changing your plans for you. Well it got under our skin this day and put a damper on our spirit. What we thought was going to be a rejuvenating, crisp fall day in the mountains ended up being about six hours of public transportation. Ugh. We felt exhausted like we’d been on a long flight but not nearly as excited.

But not all is bleak; after all we do have each other and a host of good friends. After a tasty dinner at Bao we strolled over to Haebongchong for what had become a mini street party with our buddies slingin’ their famous homebrew and some costumes to boot. So I guess it’s true that beer makes everything better!

Part II: Sunday

There must be some way to make up for a day off spent underground in subway stations and on crowded, squeaky busses. Indeed there was. We kept it simple by sticking in our neighborhood. The weather was about as opposite from the day before as it can be in the same season. Shorts and a t-shirt…asah! So we set out once more, this time on foot to see what beauty this fall day could reveal to us, as it most certainly did.

i just had to capture this. it's stuff like this that you just can't set out to find. i love the randomness! i do apologize if this offends anyone, it was not meant to :)

cute photos of pigs or dancing cows or singing chickens often are plastered inside and outside of the restaurants that serve the corresponding meat. aww, cute, now dig in!

while wandering aimlessly we came across a farmers market with all kinds of interesting/strange things, and some normal stuff too.

gross

a very common sight all over this city: a table selling lots of seemingly useless colorful crap probably all made in China.

then we found this place, which had a decent-ish burger, it's amazing how complicated it must be to make a cheeseburger! But there are only a few in Seoul that are by any means "good".

"sexy honey chicken" anyone?

and this changes everything. IPA, the real deal. I am so happy that a brilliant importer finally grabbed a west coast IPA. It's not so cheap, but I'll gladly pay the 8,000 won (7ish dollars?)

the all too familiar sight of scantily clad prostitutes fliers strewn about the streets of my neighborhood to entice drunk businessmen, and it works! This industry is quite big and booming here, and it's very well known, but not very talked about, of course. 

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Sometimes I feel very homesick, and while I’m excited about all the travel and adventure, there are days that I crave the stability of a simple life at home. Yesterday my homesickness lifted as I thought of all the knowledge and experience I am so fortunate to be gaining. And time moves fast!  So it really won’t be long before I return to a simple, stable life, where my people will be mostly the same, doing most of the same things as when we parted. So there is no sense wishing time to hurry…. It does that on it’s own.

Happy Halloween, farewell October, and welcome November…. Turkey month. Mmmm.

urban adventuring

each weekend, or as often as possible, we try to break away from the areas of Seoul that we are familiar with. maybe we jump a random bus or with a bit more direction find ourselves in a new neighborhood of this massive city. The sky was bright blue and the sun exceptionally bright as it became low in the sky. The day was strangely warm for being late october (no complaints here). 

we walked and talked and observed the city on a normal busy afternoon. we did what we usually do on this walk and this is finally post up on the side of the wide sidewalk with a few cheap asahi's from the mini mart. This time we were able to find a stack of empty crates to use as stools. We had absolutely no ties to this particular street, or this patch of sidewalk just outside one of the eight to ten exits for this particular subway stop, we did not have any reason to stay other than the company, conversation, comfort, and of course that awesome lack of a law against open containers. From our patch of cement we watched a beautiful sunset that lit up the sky in a beautiful way: