Time sure flies when you’re doing nothing. Today is Thursday, and I usually go to my second school. Today and tomorrow are mid-term exams. On exam days, the students are finished after lunch. So, since I wouldn’t be teaching today and would be stuck at school all day, my co-teacher said I could stay home! Shadi has tomorrow off because his second school has exams. Too bad we didn’t have the same days off together! I like having random days off…except I don’t seem to get a lot done and time flies like no other!
Next week the majority of schools in Korea have exams. My schools starts on Saturday and ends on Tuesday. Wednesday is a national holiday: Children’s Day! That means no school! Woohoo! Two of our Arizona friends might be coming down from Seoul next Tuesday and spend some time out of the country. They haven’t been outside of Seoul yet. One of them describes Seoul as “Northern Virginia”. It’s really funny because…it’s sort of true. Those who live in Seoul don’t see how the rest of Koreans live. I sure hope they are able to come down and spend some time with us. I’ll just have to figure out what to do with them!
Last weekend we went to Seoul to spend some time with them. We had a fantastic time! I’ve known Erin for 7 or 8 years, and I actually hadn’t seen him in a number of years. It was my first time meeting his fiance Renai. We had been talking on facebook for a number of months and on instant messenger, so it was nice to spend some time together! They are the ones that are going to be traveling with us this summer. Everything is up in the air right now because of what is happening in Thailand, but hopefully we’ll have solid plans by the end of May, when we need to buy plane tickets.
So Saturday morning, Shadi and I got up at 5. We quickly showered and headed to the bus station. We got on the first bus to Seoul at 6:20. It’s a 2 1/2 hour bus ride, so by the time we got to Seoul it was around 9. It took us nearly an hour on the subway to get to Itaewon, a popular foreign area. After getting some Starbucks coffee, Erin and Renai arrived. We sat for a bit drinking coffee, and then we set out to look for What the book. What the book is a bookstore that sells English books. They also import books from America if you can’t find the book you need. Shadi and I have been volunteering this school year at in2books and we needed to get our final book for the school year.
After the bookstore, we went to the Middle Eastern area of Itaewon. We found the making for hummus!! I’m so happy. We didn’t find any bread though. 
After doing a little bit of shopping, we headed over to the mosque. It was really beautiful. It was prayer time, so we weren’t allowed to go inside, but it was really nice to visit it.
After the mosque, we headed back to the subway to head out and get some food. Oh, I forgot to mention that there were so many foreigners walking their dogs in Itaewon and I was so nice that everyone let us pet their dogs. Koreans don’t really understand dogs and most of them are just accessories and the dogs aren’t friendly at all. It was so nice being able to pet all the dogs. It makes me miss Bailey even more!
So after that we headed over to Tomatillo’s. Tomatillo is pretty much the Korean rip off of Chipotle. It was so freaking delicious! It was expensive, but delicious and so worth going. 
Everyone was really happy with this place, and I’m sure we’ll go back when we go to Seoul again. After lunch, we walked over to the American Embassy which was just around the corner. We also got to see some statues of a famous kind and general. After that, we went to a famous shopping area of Seoul. Coming out of the subway stop we got to see Dondaemun. Dondaemun is the East Gate. The gates around the city are part of the old city. They are all that remain. One of the oldest gates was destroyed in a fire a few years ago. 
We went into a building that was only textiles, fabrics, ribbons, and buttons. It was amazing. Renai is an artist and also a knitter like me, so we were in heaven. It took forever to find the yarn section (the building is like 9 floors and goes on forever), and it took us even longer trying to find good yarn. We finally found some and Renai got a ton of yarn at a great price. We then walked a bit further and went to a huge shopping center. Shadi got a new pair of shoes and I got some new flip flops. I didn’t find any shoes, but thats okay.
After that we rushed back to make the 6:40 bus to Yecheon. We missed it and decided to have some dinner before we left on the 8PM bus back to Yecheon. After dinner, we headed back to the bus terminal and headed home. We got back to Yecheon at 10:30PM. It was such an exhausting day, but we had so much fun. I think the next time we go to Seoul we’ll end up staying the night. It’s just a long day and Sunday we were just so exhausted we didn’t feel like doing anything (of course I did laundry and cleaned the house, but I didn’t want to).
So our weekend was great, and I really hope Erin and Renai are able to come down next week. Maybe I’ll take them to a temple. Apparently it’s supposed to rain next Wednesday, so it depends on how the weather is. Either way, we can figure out what we will do this summer, eat some local food here, and maybe play some games.
That’s all for now.
Kathleen
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