Rainy season

Express train

All the subways have train doors and station doors, like elevators, which I think are to keep people from getting crowded out in front of the trains at rush hour. Sardines in a can... During the day, though, all this hot air gets trapped in the space between the doors. When you're waiting as people get off your train, and another train comes in the other way, there's this huge

WHOOSH

of air as the other train comes in.

Shopping in translation

I had my first experience with online shopping in Korea. After I ignored Eunhye's advice to get a set of window curtains, it sunk in that the floor-to-ceiling window of my officetel faces towards the windows of about 100 offices full of hard-working people burning the midnight oil. Not very far away, and not a lot of privacy, oops! So I ventured onto Gmarket's webpage and ordered what I thought were a set of normal, navy curtains. I ended up with purple-ish fake velvet, but they do the trick. No more flashing the neighbors.

Hello pup!

After language class on Friday, Sochi (from Taiwan), Kazu (from Tokyo), Joseph (from NYC) and I went to Hongdae for drinks. We wandered into a quiet bar off a side street and were greeted by this little guy:

Accidental mob scenes

On the hunt for Mexican food, Joseph and I trekked over to Itaewon to Vatos Urban Taco, a Los Angeles Koreatown style food place where I had a kimchi/bulgolgi/french fry burrito. Delicious! Their guac needed work though. On the way to Vatos, we had to barge through a huge line - not for Mexican food, but rather for the Eat Your Kimchi duo, Simon and Martina, who were doing a charity photoshoot.

Lazy sunday

Sunday turned into a big Luce meetup! Daisy Larios and Roberto Padilla both did their Luce years in Seoul, and liked it so much that they live here now. Renata is just finishing up her year in Taiwan, and came through Seoul on the way to Jeju for the wrap-up. We got together for lunch, followed by bingsu, of course. Then, Zoe met up with us too and we wandered around Garosu-gil, which is as neat as everyone says!

Oh, and it's started raining a lot!!

I need a bigger umbrella...