The adventures keep on coming. . . .


So, last night I did go out to dinner with the girl from Canada, her boyfriend, another girl that used to teach at my school but is now at a different one, her boyfriend from the military, and then another girl and her Korean friend. The place we wanted to go to was a two hour wait so we decided to ditch that plan. We ended up at Tony Ramos and still waited for about 40 minutes. The conversation though entertaining at time, I really didn't feel like I fit in it was almost like I was the loner of the group. The food was good, I had BBQed Chicken (ended up being half a chicken) but I was hungry and ate pretty much all of it including the french fries and vegetables. I also had a glass of red wine which tasted nice since I haven't had any wine since I have been to Korea. I left early though, plus I was tired the group and conversation wasn't doing it for me that is when I did talk.

I got up this morning and went to the bus terminal and got on a bus to see my friend and his family in Taejon or Daejon, whichever way you spell it. I took the wrong bus and got off at the wrong place, who knew there were different ones? (Apparently I didn't). I ended up taking a taxi though once in Taejon to his apartment, no problem. Anyway, his city is about two hours away by bus and it is about half the size of Chicago (about 1.5 million people). A city I can feel comfortable grasping and getting along. I was so amazed once I was there at how much laid back it felt than Seoul, the air seemed cleaner, and there were trees and parks all over the place. I felt like I escaped the big city for a little while today and had a retreat in the country. So, I met him, his wife, father in law, and his four adorable kids (3 boys, and a 11 month old daughter). We saw a lot and I took a lot of pictures including going up in a balloon attached to the ground by a cord for about 10 minutes and saw a spetacular bird's eye of the city. I'll post some pictures later. We had a fabulous Korean style BBQ dinner, they really treated me nice. Then when I left the wife gave me an expensive Korean tea and five things of bar soap. I gave them a gift when I went there, but I wasn't expecting that I always thought the guests take a gift and that is it. I'll post more later about this time.

Then I took the bus back to Seoul and as soon as I got off the bus it was like here we are again where everything seems rushed and it just feels stressful sometimes. I feel so overwhelmed by the size of the city sometimes. . . I could go on. But then I rushed to the subway station to try to catch the last subway and I thought I did until I had to get off two stops away from my stop at like 12:00 AM tonight. But I am too cheap to get a taxi at this point and decide to walk by myself to my apartment which ended up being a good forty to forty-five minute walk at a brisk pace. I mean I didn't anything of it, because it is Seou, but if it was Guatemala City or even Kansas City Missouri there would be no way in hell that I would do that. But I just followed the signs to the next subway station and ended up walking by Olympic Stadium so now I know how to walk there in a very lovely area. (Except it was night and no one was really out.) It felt very surreal, a little bit nerve wacking, like what am I doing? Am I crazy walking in this huge city this late by myself, but at the same time I knew I was okay and figured sometimes people were looking like what is that crazy white guy doing? But add that to my list of adventures I have gone on, walking for forty-five minutes in the middle of Seoul on the sidewalks at 12:00 on a Sunday night!

Don't tell my family!
Haha~!!!