The Seoul of Asia

Things have been pretty hectic here in the TY recently. We had our open classes last weekend and they went really well. So well, in fact, that we all got bonuses of 100 to 150 thousand won (depending on how many classes you had to teach). This week we have been trying to plan out as much of our Japan trip as possible before we get there. We've hit a snag trying to reserve hotels because our Korean debit card doesn't work outside of Korea. Fortunately, Japan is extremely accomodating for unprepared tourists such as ourselves! They have information booths all over the place with fluent English-speakers that will reserve hotels for you. Hopefully, there will still be some good deals in convenient locations by the time we get there on Saturday.

Since we're not taking our laptop, we won't have a chance to update the blog for a while. Here are a bunch of pictures from our two weekend trips to Seoul to hold you over :P

Us at Tomatillo - a restaurant similar to Qdoba


Admiral Yi Sun-Sin - the man follows us everywhere!




A real life Mexican mariachi band!




Katie's chimichanga at a Mexican restaurant called On the Border. If it wasn't for the homogenous Asian population, we might have gotten confused and thought we were in Mexico, what with eating Mexican for lunch and dinner and stumbling upon the mariachi band!

My fajitas, gotta have 'em.

A really cool band - two bongo players, a beat boxer, two guitarists, a drummer...and a tap dancer

Kittens - Katie was begging me to get one. The lady was also selling little chicks!

My Korean-style hotel room. It was actually really comfortable; also, it was fun because it reminded me of sleepovers.

The next day we went to a Dr. Fish coffee shop, where you can drink coffee, eat pastries and let fish nibble on your feet! This fish was begging us to let him at our feet.

Apparently my feet looked the most appetizing. I had the majority of the fish on my feet for the first five minutes or so. Then they moved on to Katie and Gerard.

A close-up of the feeding frenzy

Workin' on Katie's toes. Our feet felt really smooth afterwards; it was quite an experience.

Guards outside Namsan Tower. They were standing beside fireplaces where signal fires were lit during times of invasion (usually by the Japanese).

After the ceremony, they encouraged us to take pictures with the guards.

An interesting tourist attraction at Namsan Tower: people, usually couples, write something on a lock and then attach it to the fence before throwing the key over the edge.

These next few pictures were taken from the top of Namsan Tower.

The outline of a TV. We tried to take pictures that made it look like we were in the TV, but the shot was either too wide and you could tell we were in front of it, or too narrow and you couldn't even see the outline of the TV.

A cool temple/palace with burial grounds (we think). We'll figure it out the next time we go.

It's hard to see, but in the center is the Blue House

I think this is Changdeokgung, but I'm not sure.

We thought this was funny: "You are 50% responsible for any damage or breakage..."

Katie's plate at a Japanese buffet. It cost $40 per person, but it might have been worth it because I was able to skip dinner two nights in a row after that.