Garosugil or "tree lined street" in Sinsa-dong

as i write this i am sitting at a cute, european-style cafe in the Sinsa-dong neighborhood, on a side street of the famous Garosugil-also known as "tree lined street".  This cafe is so out of place in Seoul! This whole street is quite out of place, to be honest, it seems like it could be in Belguim or Paris, with it's scores of boutiques, fashionable couples strolling along, expensive cafes and trees! Yes, there are trees in Seoul, believe it or not. Alley Cafe has several little rooms with antique furniture and light fixtures, odd art and old advertisements adorn the walls, and they have bunny rabbits, too. we stumbled upon this place after taking an afternoon stroll with the goal of finding some new shoes (success.), and have decided to post up for a bit, enjoying the air conditioning and decent wine and tea.

this street, as i mentioned, is tree lined (unlike other streets in this city), reminding me somewhat of NW 23rd in Portland, only bigger, more crowded, and more expensive. We came with the goal of finding this store called Aland, a sort of Korean version of Urban Outfitters (to continue the NW 23rd theme). They had cool clothes and useless fashion items and Tom's shoes (our goal, the item which led us here), which Josh got a pair of, and I skipped, cause I have lots of shoes already. 

as we strolled along we noticed a Guinness promotion thing going on. a small shop decked out in guinness garb, we entered and a young guy in all black tried to explain to us in his broken english that we had to do some game/quiz then we'd get a free pint of beer! Okay... we tried, I tried. It was a funny experience all together, the young guy helping me out was so nice and he could say a few things in english, helping me cheat at the game... we laughed about it and went on our way to pour our own guinness! It was a throw back to my bar tending years, not so long ago. Another guy was telling me in great detail (in all Korean) how to pour the beer, and I was thinking: "yeah yeah, I know it, I've done this more times than I could tell you". The beer was delicious, and just what we needed to continue our trek through this pretty shaded street.

long walks and bitter beer

getting off work this early in the day is something nice that I am easily getting used to. I will admit that those early mornings are sometime hard, but all in all it is a schedule that I am happy to be getting accustomed to. It allows for all sorts of things to be done during those beautiful daylight hours. summer school is well under way, in fact it's almost done now (hell yeah). the summer classes have us busy but we are done at lunch time! so nice....

speaking of early afternoons it was a blazing hot one the other day, and I decided to take a longer-than-usual walk across the city. we live south of the river, in Yeoksamdong, I eventually wanted to make it up to the Iteawon area, which is north of the river a ways. Josh was busy brewing beer again. this evening was the first night that the beer he's made would be on tap at a bar! So I had to make it up there. I ended up walking the whole distance. I had time to kill and i wanted to take some photos and just spend a few hours deep in my ipod world, looking at things with the selective eyes of a photographer. the walk took me an easy three hours. i managed to find some of the least populated streets in all of Seoul I believe, which was so nice for me, as this concrete jungle is quite overwhelming at times. I walked through Gangnamgu, past the Express bus terminal, had to go underground for a while, just to cross one of the insane intersections, and I almost got lost for I was so turned around under there, with it's maze of identical corridors and dozens of stairways leading to exits above. just crossing the street is a long walk in this city.

I made it successfully to the Banpo bridge and across the one kilometer wide Han river, then up up up the hill to Yongsan, where Bar Carmen exists. a funky little bohemian style hangout with paper lanterns and comfy couches and lounge chairs. paintings of swirling trees in gold and navy blue and red on the walls, a very miniature chess board and: the beer. So good. A hoppy slightly opaque pale ale, bitter and strong and cold. Nice job guys, another fabulous beer!

My feet were sore from trekking so many miles in my flimsy little flip flops, but all in all the walk was so good for me. I got to think and dance my way down streets and stop on the bridge to let the strong, hot wind blow my hair dry my sticky flesh.

as usual, here is what i saw:

love love love

a report

It has been one of those weeks where not a lot out of the ordinary is going on. It’s raining really hard, every day. I love my umbrella

This past weekend we went out to some gay bar til the sun came up; it was pretty great to see a 7-foot tall tranny in a sparkling white gown! There is a neighborhood in the infamous Iteawon called either: homo hill or hooker hill. You can probably guess why. This hill is crawling with hordes of people all night and into the light of the morning. It is not my favorite area, but once in a while it can be good. It was fun and we were in good company, we told stories and shared lots of laughs!

As the week started out we decided to brave our way through Costco. I have never seen so many people as I have seen in Costco in Korea. It is insane. One needs to have a lot of time to prepare for this event, I kid you not. I believe it is the busiest Costco In the world actually, to give you and idea. While I don’t really enjoy crowds, and I generally detest shopping, I happen to love some comforts of the western world. Such as cheese. Oh of course I love cheese, we both do. And we can buy the one and only Tillamook pepper jack and Philadelphia cream cheese and even some crazy expensive Parmesan… and we do. In fact this is why we go! For cheese and tortillas and tortilla chips. The wine selection is pretty good as well and they have the usual Costco snack bar with the best pizza in Korea. Haha, it’s true!

Last night we grabbed dinner at our favorite dakgalbi restaurant near Gangnam station with Nathan, Ryan, and Cat, to see her one last time before leaving town. It’s been rad to have a little bit of Portland around this place!  Dinner was awesome as usual, and we stayed up too late, as usual. It’s been a tired week! We are doing so many things…. something every day it seem!

Tonight I’m cooking an Italian feast for our friends and we’re going to play cards and probably stay up too late! We never learn do we…

In any free time Josh and I have just been planning our trips and loosely planning our future! So much fun, life is very exciting right now; there is so much to look forward to, with exciting and out of the ordinary things going on each month as far as we can plan!  And most of all we have been enjoying each other to the fullest, we are great travel companions and adventure sharers as well as good housemates and friends. Must be love…

he's busy

our building is the one on the left!

interpretive dance?

raindrops

more raindrops

raindrops with color! 

Something strange about living in Korea:

The ambulances and police cars all drive around with their lights flashing the whole time. No one ever pulls over or moves out of their way, even if their siren is sounding. I hope I never have an emergency. In contrast, the tow trucks are equipped with sirens and lights and cars always move and clear the way for them to get by.

Just throw all your logic out the window, really. They mop before they sweep and leave the windows wide open in the winter. It’s hard to explain the lack of logic, but it is everywhere…

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.