Checking out Busan again (part 1)

So it's been a lovely winter. Yes, can you believe I even put those two words together? But it's true. I've only ever lived in Minnesota and I just assumed winter was this God forsaken incredibly long season where you had to just deal with negative temperatures and 100 feet of snow. But now, there are places outside of Minnesota that have fairly pleasant winters! Korea is one of them. Now I'm sure many people (or most people) who live here would object just because it's too harsh for them, but it's perfect for me. Hardly any snow, and if there is it doesn't stay more than a few hours. It usually peaks around 35-40 F degrees and its fairly sunny too!

Anyways, enough small talk about the weather, I went to Busan for the Lunar New Year, and like before it was lovely. This time was much productive and touristy and I'm pretty sure I know Busan better than Gwangju at this point. So, I have a brief recap and PICTURES to go along with it!

Let's see, first we left early Saturday morning and as usual I fell asleep right before our halfway point which means I ended up waking up as soon as we stopped and didn't get to get some good rest in. Once we reached our destination it was off to the Hostel to unload our bags. For once I wasn't the one with the most luggage. Our newest traveling addition, Rupsha, carried a big backpack and a rolling suitcase for our two day adventure! Then, being the hungry broads that we are, our first stop was finding a place to eat (preferably non-Korean food because it's way more prominent in Busan) and we found.... BURGERS.. from a restaurant! We also discovered that Fliss has an obsession with taking pictures of me eat, which does not bode well with my Facebook profile. After consuming what felt like POUNDS of food we decided that any laborious site seeing should be left for another day, because, well, we were full and lazy. So we decided to hit up a tour bus. We caught the last bus and realized that the point of this bus was to get off at certain points, look around for an hour, and catch the next one coming, but since it was the last bus, we just sat around and looked out the window for about an hour and a half... needless to say, it was exactly what I wanted. We were the only people on the bus and got the prime seats in the back.

After the ever so exhausting day of eating and bussing around it was only necessary to consume more food and probably some alcohol. Since we were in Busan, we knew just the spot: FN Tacos! We prefer to pronounce it like "Effen Taco's" to exaggerate the excitement of getting to eat Tacos! I don't know if their name was intentional or not, but they serve a mean burrito and Margarita. Since this place is on the beach and also near a handful of hoppin' bars/clubs we had to get dressed up. I think I took the dress up part a bit more seriously than the rest of them though...

I know, I know, no need to compliment me on the extreme amount of cuteness going on in that last picture, I already know. So we sat, and did what we do best, eat and drink, and contemplated our next move after FN Tacos. Around this exact moment another group of foreigners came up to us and asked us if we lived in Busan and if we knew any good places to go, and as luck would have it, after we explained we're from Gwangju, they said they were too! The strangest part is we've never seen them. You may think that in a city of almost 2 million this would be easy to never see someone. But when that city has only a few hundred foreigners (or as the Koreans call us Waygookins) it's almost impossible not to at least notice another non-Korean. Either way, we tried our best to direct them towards what we knew, but we really didn't know shit. This landed us in a snazzy Korean nightclub where you had to pay 60 bucks a table just to stay there and beers were like 10 bucks. So, we paid our due, got a few free beers, and danced to Korean Pop music until the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday. Oh Sunday, how I wished I could have slept more on Sunday. Our big adventure was Busan tower, which showed a fabulous view of the city. Observe a bit of this adventure:

Ok, as the title suggests, this is only half, I'm running out of time/steam for these posts. I will finish soon, but for now I've got to go to dinner! Bye!

Two Months Down!

Can you believe it? Because I really can't. In so many ways it feels like I just arrived yesterday, but in other ways it feels like the people I've met here and the life I have here is so normal, I must have been here for years.

So, since my last update, things have continued on as usual. But here's a few highlights:

1) I ate at my first sushi restaurant here, and it was quite delightful. It wasn't quite the same as I'm used to back home, but still delicious. They loved to add tempura flakes to all the rolls (cough cough Winter Roll Niki!) and they were kinda stingy with the wasabi. On the plus side, the three of us (Me, Holli, and Fliss.. of course) ordered a platter for 24,000 Won and we couldn't even finish it. That's 3 hungry girls, sushi, and about $22 bucks and it filled us to the brim. I LOVE KOREA.

2) Every weekend I seem to meet more and more awesome people, and very rarely do I meet a dud. On the downside, for the majority of the weekday I chill in my apartment, watch bad TV, eat random food from random restaurants by myself, and generally just soak up A LOT of alone time. I can't decide if this is awesome or awful. Luckily I always have Tuesday night cards to get me out of the house.

3) I've finally seen the dark side of Korea. I know before I came here I was warned by people who knew absolutely nothing about South Korea that I should be careful over here, it isn't safe like the US! Now I know, they were right! Last Saturday me and my lady friends had yet another lovely night on the town. This time we dressed up especially cute, put on our fancy shoes and fancy hair and went to eat our beloved BBQ. We got to the restaurant, took off our shoes, and proceeded to the nearest table/bbq pit and enjoyed what I thought was a lovely dinner. That was, until our way out.... We paid the bill, headed towards the front, and BAM there it was (or should I say, wasn't!) Someone stole Fliss's shoes! What kinda bastard does something like that to a girl on a Saturday night?! Obviously those shoes were essential to her outfit, they were cute high heels! We looked, and looked, and looked.. but it was true. Someone stole her shoes. As terrible as I'm going to sound, I was just glad it wasn't me. My shoe size doesn't exist in Korea, and my shoes were like 10 times more expensive than hers, so I would have really been shit outta luck. Fortunately, being that it is Korea and they love their fashion, we were able to find a shoe store, at midnight, that was still open with a pair of super cute heels for only 20,000 Won. Whew!

So, as you can see, there's a reason I haven't written much lately. My life hasn't been very eventful. But just you wait, the Lunar New Year is coming up this weekend. Although I've never experienced this celebration, it's supposed to be quite a big deal. We get Monday off so what better to do than get out of the city and go to... another city. Out of convenience and lack of preplanning/money we are going back to Busan. I'm not complaining though, any excuse to see the ocean makes me happy. Plus, there's plenty more there we have yet to explore. I think the only real agenda we have is hitting up the taco place and drinking Margaritas, so it should be just fine.

Anyways, all of this talk of food is making me hungry. Time to get out of the house and try some more random food. Bye!

Ah I will for sure update

Someday soon. But all is well, Korea is good to me, going to Busan for the Lunar New Year, hopefully get an update by Thursday. Bye!