random connections!

so weirdly enough my aunt paula's neighbor has a sister who is in seoul currently and has been living here for 2.5 years. sweet! we emailed once or twice before i came over and decided to meet. so i got to put my new subway skills to the test to go about an hour from where i am currently to the other side of the city to Ehwa Women's University. apparently very famous. i left early because i didn't know how long it would take and i didn't know if i would get lost. very inefficiently and costly i made my way there. i guess you don't have to buy a ticket to each place you want to connect, just tell them where you want to end and that will be enough. :) so i spent 3x the money, went out of the subway and came back in and bought a new ticket with each switch - there were two or three of them. hehehe. its not that hard for the record. ;)

once i arrived there since the girls school is right there, the streets are covered in street vendors. i walked the same block probably 3 or 4 times and it never got old. during this time i found a global atm where i was able to take money out of my bank account and it was in english! i also found bennigans, starbucks, caribou coffee, mr smoothie, burger king, mcdonalds, greek food and a bellydancing studio. plus some great shopping!

patricia and i ate some great korean bbq which i really enjoy. :) then we walked and she did some shopping which was very useful to watch. she bought shoes so i know now how to do that though i need to pick up some small korean phrases to help me through it. it was great to learn from.

then she took me to Insadong and we had some traditional korean tea. the tea shop was soooooooo cute! seriously! and we had ompirui (?) tea which was this great fusion of fruit and spice and everything nice. and they served rice cakes and these little wafer things. it was so cool though. she gave me some pointers about life in korea and what she has learned. really there are not too many offensive things you can do if you dont speak the language. thats where most of the problems are. it was just a really, really great time and nice to hang out with someone who could show me the ropes. she also helped me to buy a Tcard which is for the subway and buses and you just recharge it. very nice.

i am hoping to visit her church sometime soon and maybe hang out with her small group sometime. it was a great saturday night! :)