AnYOH (Hey in Korean),

Before I go any further I wanted to give everyone a little background info on my trip because you might be getting a little confused that last week I was in China and now I am in Korea. My Dad has been working in China for a few months and will be there until September, so after I got my Visa I flew out to China on June 20th to stay at his place. He is living in the port city of Nantong which is a few hours from Shanghai. At the same time my friend CJ, who goes to Iowa State, wanted me to come stay with him in South Korea. So the way the timing worked out I spent one week in China, I am here for one week in Korea, then I am going back to China for three weeks.

I want to tell you guys more about my time in China last week and in Shanghai, but Korea is so much fun that I am going to skip it for now.

I spent my first night in South Korea in Seoul. It is the capital…

of South Korea and a very large city (area and population wise), the population is about 12 million. I flew in to Incheon Airport (their are 3 airports in Seoul), met CJ, and we grabbed a bus to one of the downtown areas. For those of you who do not know CJ, he is one of my best friends and one of the coolest people I know. He is also a really smart student. We met up with two of CJ’s friends downtown, Joseph and Hun. Joseph is Korean but he is a student at University of Michigan Ann Arbor and speaks English really fluently. Hun was not very good at English but CJ and Joseph would actively translate for us back and forth (actually very few people in both China and Korea are fluent or even good in English unless they have lived in an English speaking country).

Seoul is a much wealthier city and the culture is more developed than Shanghai. In the area of Seoul that we were in many people had designer clothes on, the streets were clean like the nicer areas of New York City or Boston, and the cars and taxis were new. There are tons of lit up signs in the city like in Tokyo. I haven’t been to Tokyo yet but it seems to me like Seoul parallels many of the aspects of Tokyo.

So after we met up with CJ’s friends we went to a this kind of restaurant that is unique to any place in America. The way the name of the kind of restaurant translates to English is “drinking house,” it’s a really fun place. The restaurant has LCD screens, black lights on the ceiling, and there are a lot of people there with their friends just having a good time. You sit down and they serve you finger platters and this spicy soup with pasta, as well as Soju. Soju is really big in Korea, it’s a 23 proof alcohol served in a beer bottle. Soju just matches really well with spicy food and isn’t too strong so you don’t need any kind of chaser. Also, Soju is only $1 a bottle in Korea (whereas I’m told it’s $7 a bottle in the US). There are tons of places like this in Korea and it would be cool if we had them in the US.

After we were done eating we went out to some of the clubs. We went to this club in Seoul called Circle, it’s really famous in Korea. Check out this video that was taken in the club: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_7cOC8QX0 This song by Lexy is really popular in Korea too. I’ll post some more links at the bottom of this email to some other popular songs in Korea if anyone is interested. There were a lot of people at Circle and we had a good time.

After the club we went to sing kareokee with three girls we met. You might have guessed it by now but kareokee is huge in Korea and also in Japan. It’s kind of different than normal kareokee because you get a private room and sing just with your friends. There is always a big screen, large speakers, sitting area, and two wireless microphones. They have a lot of American songs like Justin Timberlake and the Beatles etc.

After kareokee at about 7am (this will be our schedule for the whole week) CJ and I grabbed a bus to Daejeon where his apartment is (just outside Seoul about 2 hours). Daejeon is also a huge city in Korea but it’s a really cool place.

I’m tired of typing so that’s all for now, I have a lot I want to tell you guys about but only so much time to write it.
Trevor

Popular Korean songs:
Lexy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_7cOC8QX0
Huen deul uh boa (Shake it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv8k26uEVdw
Chocolate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke7HnEnk_-4

Popularity: 100% [?]

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Seoul, Korea, Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.