oh the time...

How it fills up! I have been wanting to blog for awhile, but haven't gotten around to it. This week I will catch up. First with Insadong. Like I said before, Insadong is a touristy area of Seoul(about 45 minute subway ride from here) that has a lot of shopping, street vendors, and restaurants. Its super cool. There are a lot of unique artsy stores. I went with Alicia, a girl I met from home right before I came to Korea and her friend, Jenni. I bought some GREAT stuff I'm super excited about(warning--if you get a Christmas present from me, it will probably be from there). I bought myself a Korean print to frame and put up at some point, the awesome (handmade) necklace you saw in the previous post, some cool paper to put on my wall, a cute cheap leather purse, and a wallet made from eel skin(supposed to last for a very long time).

A picture of the main strip in Insadong, yes, it was as cold as it looks:



We also came across a vendor that sold traditional Korean candies. It's easier to explain if you just watch the video(sorry it's sideways):





I haven't eaten a ton of Korean food outside of the school lunches that are provided for me, so this also gave me the opportunity to try something new. We had some SoonDubu, which is a spicy tofu soup(dubu=tofu), Kimchi fried rice, and a spicy dumpling soup. It may have been a little bit of an overkill on the spicy food, but it was delicious, nonetheless. Korean's sure like their spicy food! I guess I better get used to it.

Lastly, we went to a cute little teahouse. The teahouse seats were old airline seats, and there was a train track in the middle. We had some delicious tea and relaxed after a long day of shopping.

Here's Alicia and me and the tea house:





This is the only Starbucks in Korea written in Hongul(the language). Pretty cool:



Looking at some of the cool pottery:




"Mandu" is dumplings in Korean. The restaurant we went to in Insadong almost got the English translation right:) :



After Insadong, we took a trip to E-Mart, the Walmart of Korea. It's always a cultural experience seeing all the Korean families out on a Sunday afternoon, but I HAD to get a picture of these glittery toilet seat covers they had for sale. Gotta love it.


And that's all for now. I have lots more to write about, so another post will be coming up soon!