Seoul Souvenirs

Dear souvenir shops in Seoul,
You are welcome for all the money you made this weekend because of me.

Another week, another blog. I just did the calculations. I've been here for about 42 weeks and I have a mere 12 weeks until my contract is up. I wanna say time has been flying by, but when I think about when I said "see you in a year" to mom last September, I can definitely feel each week of those 42 weeks, if not more.

So this past week was really nothing too special. On Monday it was the Fourth of July. I wanted to see some sort of firework, but there was nada. Come on, Korea, if it wasn't for General MacArthur... Nonetheless, we will celebrate Korea's independence day in August and then this gap of not having a day off will be somewhat filled.

It was interesting talking to my adult students about the 4th. They asked me, "Do you hate the British?" I said I never had even put thought into having hard feelings toward the British. Korea's independence from Japan was only 66 years ago, so there is definitely still some animosity towards the Japanese. Plus, I'm pretty sure the British who appreciate a good cup o' tea are much less harsh than the Japanese who appreciate a good Samurai sword.

So, here I am in the morning before my first class wishing you a "Happy Fourth" in true Korean fashion. Thanks for the shirt mom!


The week was surprisingly dry. Sprinkles here and there, but for the most part I was able to get to and from work without being drenched. But then the weekend came. I actually went out of town for the weekend but apparently my little Gunsan got poured on. Here's a newspaper article I just found and the picture is not far from my apartment. It's a quick read. I know it's all in mm and you and I are so confused by the metric system, but it's basically saying this Monsoon season is bringing the most rain Korea has seen in awhile.

Actually, I was coming back on the bus from Seoul on Sunday around 7 and as we were driving I noticed these rice fields completely covered in water and even a few roads were covered by water. I thought to myself, "wow, this poor city, glad we're not back in Gunsan yet." Three minutes later I realize we ARE in Gunsan and about 5 minutes from the bus terminal. So, from the looks of things and the news article there has been some massive flooding. As for Myeong San shi jeong, everything is somewhat dry. However, I did notice when leaving this morning, a puddle accumulating outside my door...maybe more on that in next week's blog.

This weekend, I decided I needed to get all my souvenir shopping out of the way since I'll be sending a suitcase home with THE Ga Young in a few weeks when I meet up with her and her family. All I can say is if you are of the Anderson or Maritato clan, you have a lil somethin' somethin' coming your way this Christmas :)

I had two goals this weekend. 1) Buy all the souvenirs so that I'll never have to buy another souvenir again. and 2) Eat at Subway

I accomplished number one with a few visits to Namdaemun but number two was a bit more complicated. I couldn't find the Subway in a certain part of the city and my second attempt I was in mad search for this particular Subway, only to find out it had been closed not too long ago. However, on Sunday, after we visited the world's largest church, Yoido Church, we headed over to Itaewon. Itaewon is a part of Seoul that is very near a large American Army base, so this area is crawling with foreigners and Koreans are few and far between. So, when the little information lady dressed in red told us that we were a 30 second walk from Subway, the hallelujah chorus went off in my head! That Teriyaki sandwich is seriously a taste of heaven.

Like I said, Esther and I went to the world's largest church called Yoido. We went to one of the 6 services on Sunday morning. It was definitely very large and having a little headset that translated the Korean into English was pretty neat. However, I'm pretty sure our translator was either a newbie or some things just don't translate.

Sunday late afternoon, I got on the bus and got back into rainy Gunsan. There's something about coming back to this city that always gives me this warm and welcoming feeling. What a good little city.

Sweat update: On Tuesday I was running and sweating my usual yet large amount of sweat when the owner of the gym gets on the treadmill next to me, takes my towel, and then proceeds to wipe off my sweaty arm. If I was anywhere else in the world, I would have been very surprised, but for some reason I totally expected something like this to happen. All the ajummas laughed and I stayed dry for about 1 minute. The Fall season can't come soon enough!

Hope you are well and in a better state than me right now...it's only Tuesday and I've already got some stories for next week's blog. I can tell, it's going to be a long rest of the week...