Wow, so Seoul, is a pretty cool city when you finally get a chance to explore it and hanging out with other people in Seoul makes it really fun! By now I'm sure you realize that I'm not actually in Seoul but I'm trying to catch up on my blog because I have had an amazing couple of weeks thanks to Ian Fisher, Jen Russell, Matt Bonser and Peter Boston. For Seoul, and Tokyo the 5 of us took the cities by storm! It all starts with...
Monday, August 31st 9:00a.m. Singapore time
Ian: "Don't know if you've heard from Jen but a typhoon warning in Tokyo has delayed my flight and canceled hers..."
Hmm maybe I'll be starting in Seoul by myself but luckily Ian's flight was able to leave a little later and make it to Seoul before the start of our visits which is good because I was really looking forward to group visits in Seoul hoping to bring in more students to each visit.
Ian Fisher is a rep from Reed College in Oregon and like me attended his institution prior to working for it. You never know what to expect when you plan group travel, many times you don't get a chance to meet each other before you say "yeah! lets spend 2 weeks together working for 16 hours a day in a stressful environment," but luckily every group I have been a part of has been a lot of fun and this one was no different. Ian and I got along easily and before I knew it he was trying to lead me around Seoul (he has never been there), and as he told me, like his Dad I would wait until we were going the wrong way to say anything.
Seoul is a massive city, think New York City and each of your visits are as far apart as possible one side to another. It easily took an hour each way to get to our visits on the first day, but true to form, with more than one admissions counselor visiting we were able to draw a bigger crowd. By the end of the day it was time to explore Seoul! This is my third visit to Seoul but the first with enough time to really explore the city, so Ian and I walked around for about an hour seeing the City Hall area and Cheonggyecheon stream.
Ian had also heard that the street food was awesome and when we found a cart, we jumped on it, eating whatever they were selling. We still don't know exactly what we ate, I know I had fish paste on a stick (tastes much better then it sounds) and we had spicy and hot rice cake and fish something that was amazing...
We topped it all off with the best donuts I have ever had. This old guy was making and selling the donuts on the street for 50 cents a piece, 2 for 25 cents a piece and you could dip it in as much sugar as you wanted. These donuts were the best, you could actually feel your arteries constricting as you ate them but they were great! I think all together we spent no more than 5 bucks on the entire dinner.
By the next day Jen had finally arrived from the U.S. to join us for our visit, and it was right in time. Our first visit was an hour taxi ride away, but the school visit was great and my wife is going to love the gift they gave me! By the afternoon Matt and Peter had arrived in Seoul to meet us at our final visit for the day. Neither of them had ever been to Seoul and somehow I failed to mention the awesome, easy and efficient bus service that runs from the airport directly to our hotel, so instead they took a train to another train to the subway to the hotel, but either way they arrived safely.
That evening while Jen and Peter met with alumni, Ian and I took Matt on a tour of the city, basically seeing what we saw the day before and eating the exact same street food as the night before but it was still awesome! We then went to a couple cool bars in Seoul, where we were pretty sure we were the only foreigners for about a mile radius but no one cared and we had a lot of fun!
The next day was our last in Seoul and it was sad for all of us as we had a great time in the city. We went to the first visit early in the morning which gave us a lot of time to eat one last lunch in the Lotte Hotel underground market. This is the same market I have mentioned in previous blogs where they have tons of different vendors, and of course my favorite dim sum and sushi. This time I also had a pineapple and kiwi fruit juice where they basically took chunks of pineapple and kiwi and blended it up then added just enough water to make it a juice but it tasted great.
Good times in Seoul, now off to Tokyo.
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