This weekend was packed with adventures and festivities as usual. On Saturday after Korean class, I strolled down to the Seomun market in search of a jacket. It took about 15 minutes. The Seomun market is huge. Some of it is indoors and some of it is outside. You can buy anything there from traditional clothes to fresh squid. The mixture of sounds and smells is impossible to describe. I found a winter jacket that was only about $33, I couldn't buy it because I had limited funds for the weekend. I'll have to go back there next weekend if I have time. I didn't take any pictures of the market because I get self-conscious taking pictures in busy, crowded areas. People stare at the silly foreigner when I do that.
Afterwards I went to E-mart to find a costume for the Halloween party. With the help of the kids at E-mart, I picked out a black and gold witch's hat. Lame, I know, but I didn't feel like putting much effort into it.
I tried to go for "sophisticated" witch this Halloween.
Diana and I headed downtown later that night for the Halloween festivities at an expat bar called Thunderbird. We split up afterwards as we met different people to hang out with. The cocktails there were only 3,500 won, which is less than $4. After Thunderbird, I went to another bar called Commune. They had live music there and a costume contest. I met up with my friend Meg there. She was dressed as kimbap (think of someone dressed as a sushi roll). She ended up winning of course.
Some guy dressed as an ajumma (old Korean woman)
Afterwards, my new friend, Scott from Ottawa, and I went wandering around looking for some bar called Old School. We never found it, but we found a huge movie theatre that was still playing movies at 2:30 am. We saw Resident Evil 3...well we bought tickets for it. I ended up sleeping through most of it. There was some girl killing zombies. That's pretty much all I remember. We had some fries at Burger King then I took a cab home at about 5:30 am.
Sunday was spent mostly sleeping and grocery shopping. I bought the ingredients to make stir-fry and pasta, so that will be a change from the bagels and cheerios I've been eating. Sunday night, Diana and I went to Jinny's sister's house (Jinny is one of the Korean teachers). Most of her family was there and we had a huge meal. Her nieces and nephew were absolutely adorable.
Jinny's nieces
In other news, I got my yellow belt today in Taekwondo. Hooray for me!!! At school, we are giving out the kids' monthly tests so everything is pretty relaxed. We're planning a Halloween party for them on Wednesday. It should be tons of fun. I also got my bank card yesterday and I'm super excited about getting my first paycheck on Monday. Right now, I need to get reading. The book club I joined is meeting on Sunday and I'm on page 93 of about 500. My goal is to get to about page 200 so I don't look like a complete slacker. The book is Korea's Place in the Sun. It's pretty much the entire history of Korea with some funny anecdotes along the way. I'm enjoying it, but it's not exactly a page turner.
