Getting acquainted with the city

Korea: 06/11/11 Morning (I'm 24 today!)

06/10/11 pics: First full day in Seoul!

The neighborhood I'm staying at. We are down the street from a bunch of restaurants and little convenience stores. If you keep going the shops become more varied. I got a haircut at a salon which was SUPER cheap compared to the states.. it was funny though because I passed for a Korean-born Korean there. I think it's pretty obvious that I'm American (looks/style and limited speaking skills) but I specifically had to tell him that I lived in the US, and then he thought I was an exchange student, to which I had to tell him that I was born there. Any and all pride I gained from this episode was lost when we took a taxi and the driver told me that my Korean sucked. HAHA.

Then we went to Deoksu Palace. Pretty cool. To be honest, I kind of just looked around instead of trying to get every historical detail.

Myongdong. I heard that this was a big touristy shopping area and that is not an exaggeration. Crazy amounts of people and lots of things to see! My mom took me to this kalgooksoo place that she used to go to all the time when she worked at city hall (we couldn't go into city hall because it's closed for renovations).. however, she wasn't sure if it was the exact restaurant.. it was still good though. Really garlicky and the noodles were chewy which I like.. the kimchi was to die for there. Fresh.

Then we went on the US Army base to pick up some groceries/etc. Not much to it though.

And that concludes day 1! I already have some pics for today, but this took forever to upload and I need a break. Hmm.. blogspot is not really efficient in uploading photos. :(