It always feels comforting when I walk into the front door of my apartment after being gone for a few days. Although this place has begun to feel like home, it's about time I begin preparing to head to my real home in the U.S.! ...
Korea was a lot of fun. It was much more of a vacation than any of the other trips I've been on, which was a good change. No work, just play ;-)
I arrived in Incheon around noon on Thursday, and I jumped on the subway to head in the direction of Kyle and David's school (Incheon English Village - ICEV). From the subway station, I took a taxi to ICEV...giving the taxi driver my finest Korean accent while saying the name of the school in what I believed to be Korean. He looked very puzzled at first, but after a few 're-dos' on my part, he understood where I wanted to go.
Their school was pretty unbelievable - very similar to a college campus, but a place where Korean children go for extended periods of time (weeks or months) to learn English:
I was directed to the area where David and Kyle were teaching their summer school 8 year olds with a bunch of other teachers, and I helped out for a couple hours. First, we all had an ice cream break, which I didn't complain about. Then we did a spelling/writing game where about 80 kids broke up into groups of 10 or so. Next was dodgeball, again I wasn't going to argue! Overall, the time I spent there was a lot of fun, and if anyone reading this is looking for a fun job for a year, I would most certainly recommend looking into becoming an English teacher at Incheon English Village - they pay for you to fly to Korea, cover your apartment costs, some meals, and you get paid on top of that. Plus you're in a new and exciting place with a great group of fun people. It seemed like Kyle and David really enjoyed what they were doing there.
After school ended at 5pm, we took the school bus to the apartments, and then headed for some drinks at a place around the corner from Kyle's building. A bit later, Mike, John, Kyle, David, Mark, and I went to dinner at an authentic Korean restaurant. The food was amazing - they give you the meat and you cook it right there at your table, I'm pretty sure we had some kind of beef and some kimchi (Korean cabbage...not a huge fan). The older gentlemen next to us kept encouraging more and more drinking, so we partook. That's when the Korean lessons started. I will admit that Korean seems to be a much easier language to learn than Chinese is, but my brain has barely grasped much Chinese vocabulary and grammar, so learning Korean was just screwing with what I've been taught the past 3 months ;-) It felt very odd being in Korea. I was just beginning to feel pretty comfortable using my Chinese regularly in China, and then I got thrown into an entirely new language where I once again feel like a total foreigner...it comes with the territory of traveling I guess! Overall, learning different aspects of Korean culture and language was a lot of fun. They taught me that the oldest person at the table always pours the drinks, and when your drink is being poured, you always hold the glass with two hands. One Korean man next to us ended up giving me a bracelet for good luck in my travels because I was new to Korea, which was very nice of him! (but the bracelet was pink...not exactly my 1st color of choice)
^Kyle, David, and I^
From there, we made our way to some bars for the night and I slept most of the next day ;-) I did wake up with time to explore some of Incheon, though. I just walked for about 4 hours taking in all that I could...it was a pretty great area. It seemed that Incheon and Seoul were much more 'green' than both Shanghai and Beijing. Lots of trees everywhere, parks on almost every corner, and the sun was shining very often, which was a nice change.
Once the evening came around, I arrived back at Kyle's apartment just in time when the bus dropped him off from work, and we started getting ready for the night. His boss was taking everyone out for dinner as like a 'get to know you' with the new Korean interns that they recently hired. But I got to tag along for the meal/evening adventures as well! We ate some great Korean food again, hung out and played lots of games at the restaurant. We had the entire upstairs to ourselves (although we took our shoes off and sat indian-style on the ground next to a 1 foot tall table - quite uncomfortable in my opinion, I'm more of a chair and tall table kind of guy).
^David, Mike, Kyle, Me, and Mark^
So dinner was a lot of fun, and then we headed off to do a couple hours of Karaoke. Karaoke in Asia is much different than it is in the U.S. On this side of the world, you have your own room with a big screen and some couches, where you hang out with just your group of friends singing songs until your voice is horse. In my opinion, the open restaurant/bar singing on stage is much more exciting, but this was still a lot of fun.
My personal performances were some Jimmy Buffett, Coldplay, and Olivia Newton John ;-)
The next morning, I woke up pretty early to head over to Seoul to visit Gi Bum (G.B.), a good friend who I met over here in Shanghai. He came through NSC to intern in China as well, and we lived in the same building until he went back to Korea a couple weeks ago.
So, I hopped on a bus that cost me $1.50 to get to Seoul from Incheon, and about 50 minutes into the ride we got a flat tire...I have had zero luck with buses taking me places lately:
Surprisingly, another bus came relatively quickly, so we all jumped on and kept going. 20 minutes later, I had arrived. Then I took a taxi to GB's place, and met him and his family. He has 2 sisters and a brother. His parents were unbelievably nice. They showered me with food as soon as I walked in the door. The amount of food that they kept putting in front of me actually ended up getting pretty ridiculous and I had to tell his mom that I didn't want any more ;-)
After lunch, GB showed me around the city. It was great because he has a car (a nice black, 4-door, lexus), and so it was incredibly easy to get around Seoul. The weather wasn't exactly in our favor once the afternoon came, as it started raining a ton, but we toured almost every part of the city by driving by in the car ;-) It was nice. Seoul is a great city filled with some wonderful history and a very youthful atmosphere. It's broken up into a north side and a south side, divided by the Han River. GB lives on the south side, which has recently grown to hold a lot of large companies and new bars/clubs/restaurants/etc. Many parts of the city reminded me of San Francisco - lots of hills, very unlike the flatness of Shanghai - and lots of small streets with tons of bars and restaurants. I've never seen so many coffee shops. There was a Starbucks, Tom N Toms Coffee, Coffee Bean, or Coffee Smith probably every 2 stores...I couldn't believe it.
We saw as much as we could before it got dark, then grabbed some coffee, then drove up to the top of the mountain on the north side of the river for a bit (saw some cool views of the city down below), and then we met up with Miss Korea. Miss Korea as in Miss USA, but in Korea ;-) Apparently GB is friends with her. So we picked her up and went to dinner together. 
She was a lot of fun. A very smart and driven girl. She wants to get into Korean politics, and it seems that she's on the right path so far! GB is trying to date her ;-) hopefully he gets somewhere!!
At dinner, we ate some delicious deep-fried peppers stuffed with beef, and spicy Korean fried chicken. Another A+ Korean meal in my book.
From dinner, we met up with on of GB's buddies down at the river and had some drinks together. Fireworks randomly starting going off across the water, so that was pretty cool. Then we headed off to the bars! I caught a cab back to Incheon at about 3am and met Kyle at a local bar right before he was getting ready to head back to his apartment, so that was lucky. We called it a night and then I woke up a couple hours later to jump on the subway for the airport! I slept almost the entire plane ride back to Shanghai, and actually, a stewardess woke me up by poking me in the arm and saying "Sir, you should probably get up." I opened my eyes and noticed that there was not a single passenger on the plain except for the 8 or so crew members. I looked around and said to her, "Why yes, you're correct, I guess I probably should get up!" They laughed at me, so I laughed back ;-) At least I got to sleep!
Now, I'm back in Shanghai safely and I'm preparing things to head back to the U.S. This journey to Asia has been one great adventure, that's for sure!!
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PMM
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