weekends = GOLD!

Now that I have explained what I do during the week here in Korea, I will share about my last couple weekends here. Weekends are wonderful here! It is a great break away from the school and all the comes with school - kids, planning lessons, correcting HW, etc. The past two weekends, my friend Taylor who is teaching in Ilsan, Korea (it is about an hour and a half away from Mokdong, where I live), has come to visit. Taylor and I have gone to school together since junior high, including college. It's nice to see a familiar face here. The first weekend Taylor visited, my coworker/friend Elyse and I showed him around our area. We first showed him where our school is and the surrounding area. In the picture on the left, there is a blue and white POLY sign. That is my school, it occupies the 5th and 6th floor of that building.


There is a park nearby the school, Paris Park. Most of the parks here in Korea have exercise equipment in them, which is extremely entertaining. Here is Taylor and Elyse trying out the equipment. Of course, there are Korean children in the background watching because we, foreign people, are very amusing and fascinating to Koreans. We are constantly pointed at, waved at, smiled at - haven't decided if I like it or not. Don't really mind the attention from the children because they are usually cute and very excited to see us but from adults, it's just sometimes all together uncomfortable. Ah, oh well. It is just something I am getting used to, slowly. :)





After spending some quality time in the park, we went to a delicious sushi restaurant that had a conveyor belt with different colored dishes going by you. You would pick whatever you wanted to eat as it passed you, stack your dishes up, and then would add up the amount in the end. This restaurant is right by my school! I will definitely go back to it. A bit pricey, but totally worth it.















Delicious sushi restaurant! --->






To continue our exciting weekend, we headed to Itaewon, a city district of Seoul about 30 mins by subway from Mokdong. This is a very popular area for foreigners as well as US Army personnel because of a military base located there. I found it to be a very refreshing area because of the diversity there. For once since I arrived here, I did not feel like an outsider and that I stuck out. I was surrounded by many other foreigners - about every other person I passed on the street was not Korean. In my own Seoul neighborhood (mokdong), I only pass a foreigner about every 3 days, if that. So Itaewon was very exciting! Along with the foreign people, there are many Western restaurants and stores. Here are a couple examples! A Subway below an Outback Steakhouse. You can also find a Quizno's next to a Coldstone as well as the Hard Rock Cafe.


As well as many Western food options, Itaewon also has numerous options of other types of food including, Indian, Thai, and Turkish - just to name a few. We opted for Thai food, which was delicious. Here is Taylor, Elyse, and myself at the Thai restaurant in Itaewon, enjoying a bottle of red wine! :)