It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

    When you live in the middle of downtown, it's very hard to not want to simply go out and wander around all the time - especially at night. When I walk out of my apartment and around the corner, I am immediately greeted with neon lights, bustling city streets, and hundreds of new and exciting sights and smells. The main smell being that of barbecue ribs! There is a place practically right outside my door called Mr. 늑골. Literally, that is what their sign looks like... "Mr." in English and then the rest in Korean so for the first few days I didn't know what it meant, just that it smelled amazing, and then I mentioned it to the subject teachers and Young knew immediately what I was referring to, got all excited, and said it was called "Mr. Rib" and that it was delicious! So I will definitely have to go there sometime soon.  

    These types of "Konglish" signs are all over my neighborhood. When trying to relate an idea from one language to another something is almost always lost in translation, and these signs are no exception - which makes for a real good time when you're wandering around downtown. Some of my favorites:

Meaning.... more than one V.I.P. I suppose??? Also, it's hard to see unless you enlarge the picture, but the awning says, "Fresh Life Restaurant" and I'm still not sure what that means.

This is a "Western Bar" but I have no idea what it's called because I can't read Hangul and don't speak Korean. I find this to be a bit of an oxymoron since it's supposed to be geared toward westerners. We do know they have Miller Lite though! 

And now.......... drum roll please..................

"Can More Fruit Story" which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and so I won't even try to interpret it!

There are also various other places that I like, including, but not limited to, "Pizza School", "The Wow Coffee", "Sexy Bar", and "Noise Garden Clubby Bar".

     Aside from exciting reading though, there are also many other things about the city that are different and cool. Like the fact that it is built straight up and down! Everything here is a least 6 stories high, and almost every street-level entry has stairs headed up and headed down to a basement. And businesses are on all levels. Much different than downtown San Diego where businesses are mostly on the street level with housing above. There is an Outback Steakhouse on the 4th floor of a high rise building in Ingyedong, one of the next neighborhoods over. So when you look up at all the buildings, it seems really cluttered with signs, lights, and window decorations.

This is the building on the corner of the large intersection by my house

And the row of buildings across from my street corner

    As I was out exploring I saw a lot of things that we don't have in the states, like crosswalks that are half a city block long, public phone booths, outdoor exercise areas complete with equipment, and seafood like you wouldn't believe!! There is a king crab restaurant right around the corner from me that has live crabs in a tank out front.... these suckers are bigger than me! And there is another seafood place up the street a little ways with a whole wall full of tanks out front containing fish and octopus and some strange sea cucumber looking creature that I wasn't able to recognize. I suppose it's too bad I don't like seafood, but judging by the looks of that sea cucumber, I don't really feel like I'm missin' out on much....

Huge crosswalk!

I hung out here for a minute just to see if Superman would show up (...he didn't, in case you're wondering)

For some reason this makes me want to go here wearing a Flashdance outfit and just work it out!

I wish I had a way to give scale to these guys... The picture really doesn't do them justice!

    I did a little shopping while I was out because that, after all, is what I do best. Language barrier or no language barrier, I will find a way to get shoes!  To be fair though, Claire told me that I needed to buy a pair of "inside shoes" kind of like slippers for school. Because people don't wear their shoes indoors here, I would need something to change into and wear during the school day. I scoured the land for something adorable, because not just any shoe would work of course, and just when I found the perfect pair and thought this was the happiest possible ending to my story.......... it got happier! That's right. I took my new found loves up to the counter and in very rough English, the clerk told me that these particular shoes were on sale, 2 for 1! What?! Two pairs of shoes for the price of one?! Now this is the kind of culture shock I could get used to! So I went back to the rack and looked for another pair. They only had my size in the same color, but that was fine with me because they were pink and you can never have too much pink.

The newest addition to my shoe family.... Twins! 

Needless to say, I came home very happy (...and very tired! I must've walked for hours all over the city!). I'll go ahead and end this post on that happy note, but I will leave you with a couple more pictures of the view from my apartment and the street where I live. Also... if you are interested in looking at further pictures that are just as exciting, but wouldn't all fit in the post, I have added a link at the top left of the blog page called "Oodles of Pictures" where you can go and check out the rest!

View from my kitchen window

My street

The intersection at my street corner

**PS- This is totally off-topic, but I had to include it because it's completely rad! This is what we learned in school today. I got to listen to it 5 times in a row and now I think it's probably safe to say that I will never forget it...... Ever. Enjoy!