itaewon-wonn-wonnnnnn

another weekend has come and gone in our new korea life, and i'm starting to feel the "fly by" of time that everyone told me would happen. tomorrow marks our one-month-since-arrival anniversary! holy crap.

this weekend was a lovely mix of all things a weekend should encompass: coworker dinners, copious amounts of alcohol (soju specifically), crane game wins (inevitable, really), sleep ins, lazy couch sitting, adventures to seoul, shopping, indulging in the north american-ness of itaewon, reunions with friends from home, mountain hikes, and the weekly sunday evening duck bbq dinner. it was whirlwind and lazy all at the same time. perfect.


mark and i rounded up shanna and dave around 4pm on saturday for the trip into seoul. we'd been told stories of the foreigner area we were about to experience, and as we headed up to street level from the subway station, i mentioned to dave that i felt like i was about to enter the circus. "nah," was his response, but i'd been warned about the seediness of itaewon's overflowing foreigner population. and while it wasn't as sketchy as i was anticipating, it was bizarre after having become so accustomed to the lack of non-asians to see so many ... races. every person who passed us was non-asian! i've never heard so much passerby english in, like, a month. heh.

we did some shopping and had some burgers at a joint called "happy days" - the hamburger buns were homemade and whole wheat* and ohso delicious. we hit the much talked about foreign book store, what the book? though i only perused, do to the seven-book library i brought with me (one of which i've started ...) by the time evening came, we made it to rocky mountain tavern** to meet up with mark's friend from TO, derek. RMT, as those in the know call it, is canadian owned and operated, and features live canadian tv feeds! i was more in awe of the tim hortons and telus commercials than the hockey game, but that's not really surprising. also, randomly, as we walk into the bar i hear someone shout my name and turn to see a familiar face from western (an ex boyfriend of a friend, ooh, who's going to be the first to guess who it was?? heh), small world, what! we also ran into a girl we met at the toronto korean consulate at the same bar; i suppose it really is where canadians congregate in seoul! we stayed a few hours and bar hopped to another placed called wolfhound, where we bumped into rj, a fellow foreign teacher from our school. the theme of our evening continued.

on sunday, mark and i made another trek up the hill next to our apartment. as my new personal trainer***, he also had me doing interval runs. of course, i was huffing and puffing and complaining like hell, but it was easier than last week and is becoming a necessity considering my new favourite dinner/lunch/snack is a ₩5,000 pizza from our local pizza school. next thing you know, i'm going to be fit! (or, hopefully at least of standard proportion and able to continue with my cheap and greasy indulgence).

* ironically, as i make commentary about being a minority, the abundance of white bread in korea is ... abundant. brown and whole grains are proving to be very hard to find!
** more than once i have referred to this bar as "rocky mountain high" and i get blank stares. i suppose this is what being from burlington does to you.
*** mark's new job that he might not know about yet ...

love you and miss you tons (and again, happy mother's day!!)
xoxoxo