"breaking up with boredom"

After awhile, as with anywhere I guess, things start to feel the same here. You really have to put energy into venturing out and doing different things to avoid repeating the same stories with the same restaurants, same bars, and even the same friends. Here's two things:

"roof-topping"
I discovered a new favorite pastime. After brunch one day, some friends and I were enjoying the beautiful day. Walking around Jeongia (another part of Bundang), we meandered between high-rise apartment buildings, not unlike all the others sprawling around suburban Seoul. We were looking up, embracing the Spring weather and sunshine and noticed trees on the tops of some of the buildings. Being the type of girls that we are, we decide it would be a fun game to play to try to get up to some of the rooftop foliage. We proceeded to walk in and out of apartment buildings for the rest of the afternoon, pressing the highest number in the elevator and sneaking up to the roofs. It was incredibly beautiful on top with trees and benches, mini parks really, about twenty stories high. We coined the term "roof-topping" for our new favorite game.


"treasure hunt"
One thing that takes a bit of getting used to here is training your eyes to look up for things. Buildings here will have restaurants, nail salons, pool halls, karaoke bars (karaoke in Korea = Nor-ay Bongs) in all corners and on all floors. So walking down the street, you'd miss a whole lot just looking at the places on Level 1, as most buildings have at least 3 to as many as 7 floors packed with fun. Part of my "hood" includes Samsung Plaza where I hang out quite a bit. But for a while I was going to basically one spot over and over in the Plaza. Naturally, I started to get sick of it because you always see the same faces, drink the same beer, eat the same food, etc. I decided to start wandering these buildings a bit more. Pressing different buttons on the elevators, walking around inside to find the places that don't have signs on the outside of the building. I discovered two new bars that I love and a few more restaurants to check out too. The best part is that if you find a tucked-away place, you can be one of the first foreigners to show others. I believe I have actually singlehandedly increased the business for two of these places with the amount of friends I've brought there. And yes, I am lucky to have so many friends already but have met a lot more Koreans this way too. Finding new places in Bundang, means less trips to Seoul, cheaper cab rides home, and more of a feeling of appreciation for living outside of the city.

Now that it's officially Spring, I've really been enjoying living in the suburbs more. There's something to be said for it, especially when the weather's nice. I have the most gorgeous flowering trees in my neighborhood right now. I'll have pictures up to prove it soon.

march 21st - "gang-neung, not to be confused with gwang-yang"
This was the weekend of Jamie's Birthday. Jamie is from Canada, Manitoba to be exact, and is reeeeaally into curling. Yes, curling, like shuffle shuffle the big rock across the ice... As it turns out, the world curling championship was held in Korea this year, of all places. Jamie knew this because she actually follows curling. She asked some of us if we felt like venturing a bus ride away from Seoul to find it. I decided I wanted to go to help her celebrate her birthday and because it sounded nice to get out of Seoul. After a few hours, we should have been there, but no. We noticed the trees were budding and thought that was strange as well as we didn't think we were going anywhere much further south than Seoul.

The short story is we got on the wrong bus, the most wrong bus we could have possibly taken short of going to North Korea. Instead of traveling dead east, we went south. This was about the equivalent of trying to get from Seattle to Boston and ending up in Austin, Tx, although of course on a much smaller scale. I know now how long it takes to take a bus across South Korea from north to south. It was an absolutely horrendous bus ride that ended up taking about 36 hours by the time we got back home. There was more laughing than crying on our trip, but definitely some of each. One would think we would have at least seen a lot of neat things in Korea on this bustrip, but honestly, it was all the same and quite boring and terrible. Oh well, just another story for the blog... ;)