Friends

I've never been the type of person to have tons of friends who feel more like acquaintances than anything else. I'm picky about who I let in my inner circle. I am also quite comfortable being alone, either at home or out in public. All of this adds up to why I have had very few friends over the past several years. But since arriving in Korea, I've made some awesome friends. Most of them live in Daejeon, and I haven't made the trip up there for a little over a month. So when my rockstar of a friend, Maggie, invited me to her going away get-together, I knew I had to hop on a bus and get up there to see my friend before she left the country.

On Saturday, I took an W8,000 taxi ride, which is quite expensive for this country, to U-Square, the Gwangju Bus Terminal. I bought a 'General' bus ticket for W10,500 at 4pm and arrived in Daejeon a little after 6:30pm.

*A word on the buses:  There are 3 levels of bus to get you around Korea: General, Excellent, and M-Excellent, which I take is the best because it's the most expensive. I took an Excellent bus from Incheon Int'l Airport to Gwangju back in March, and that was nice and roomy with headphone jacks in the seats to listen to the tv that was at the front of the bus. I took a General bus the other day, and it was a little more of a tight squeeze and no headphone jack for the tv, but otherwise quite the same. All direct buses have a tv, none have a bathroom. However, the bus will make at least one stop about half-way through at a rest stop where you can use the facilities and/or grab something to eat for about 10 minutes.

Saturday night was spent out with Amy, Elizabeth and Joseph, and we enjoyed ourselves very much. We had dinner at a Shabu Shabu restaurant, and it was delicious. (This is the meal where everything goes in the soup broth and cooks, you eat it, more stuff goes in, you eat that, and the process continues until there's nothing left to put in except rice. You dump in the rice and it soaks up the remaining broth, and you eat that. It's one of the most delicious meals, if not the most delicious meal, that I've had in Korea so far.) After Shabu Shabu, we walked around Doonsan-Dong. We had soju cocktails at the Bier Garten, a bar that decorates its interior with US sports team memorabilia. We sat in a booth next to this monstrosity:

And anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely cannot post that without posting this as well:

Go Gators!

They did not have a Gators poster, and telling them they needed one would just have confused them.

Later on, we walked by this coffee shop that Elizabeth and Joseph saw earlier in the day. It was just a bundle of awesomeness. Check it out.

Can you see the panda, koala, snake, and zebras?

After that, Elizabeth and Joseph went home, and Amy and I went back to her apartment to prepare for Sunday's festivities. This included making some very delicious brownies. :)

Sunday came and brought with it the third day in a row of cooler temperatures and sunny skies. After a morning filled with very little sleep, haircuts, and coffee, we met to start the day of celebrating Maggie's time in Korea.

We started at Dr. Fish, which this time was at a jimjilbang. A jimjilbang is basically Korea's version of YMCA (even though they do have YMCA here). You can sleep here overnight for about $2, you can work-out in some of them, you can use the 'bath' facilities (read: hot tub and sauna, which include separate areas for men and women because of the required nudity), and in this particular jimjilbang, you can Dr. Fish. Dr. Fish is the cool foot treatment where you place your feet in water and the fish nibble on the dead skin on the bottoms of your feet. We Dr. Fish'ed. For $3 each. It was great.

Jessica, Bomi, Maggie

Amy, Marisol, Lee Ann

Elizabeth

Me, Jessica

Look at us! We're Dr. Fish-ing!

After about an hour and a half of that, we all went to see Larry Crowne, which I really enjoyed. I love Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Following the movie, we all went out to dinner. We had Ddock Galbi. There are different ways to do ddock galbi, but I've had it this way twice. All of the meat goes into a cooker on your table, followed by the vegetables of your choice and the ddock, which is a little rounded rice cake thing. I could do without the ddock, but a lot of people love it. We also had lettuce and sweet potato, but you can also add cabbage and various kinds of mushrooms, among others. You stir it around until everything is cooked, and then you eat it directly from the cooker with your chopsticks. (Most food in Korea is eaten in this particular style - 'sanitary' goes out the window when your plane lands at Incheon.) I found this photo online because I was so caught up in the cooking process yesterday that I forgot to snap my own photos. Sans the mushrooms, the food that I shared with Maggie, Bomi and Jessica looked exactly like this. The rest of the group was split up among 2 other adjoining tables, because each cooker is only big enough to serve four people.

While we were at dinner, Maggie and I were reminiscing on the night that Amy, Maggie, Bomi and I spent in Rumboats, the bar with the big pirate ship in the center. We decided to head over to that area of town and see if it was still open. Sadly, it was closed, and we concluded that the night spent at Rumboats was not meant to be relived. Instead, we found another bar close by that had this sign out front (parental discretion is advised):

Not wanting pimples, we all went in.

In the interest of saving face in the future, I will not post the photo of the menu items on my photo site. But for those of us who were there, we will probably always remember our reactions when we first glanced over the menu looking for something to order. I'll just say this: The owners of that bar were gutsy.

We drank beer and cocktails, we sang along with the throwback songs on the big screen, and we probably entertained a bunch of Korean guys sitting behind us just by having fun and being ourselves. It was a blast, and we got the bartender to snap this photo (times about six so everyone could have one):

Lee Ann, Joseph, Marisol, Jessica, Maggie, Bomi, Me, Madelein, Amy and Elizabeth

After making plans to open a Korean restaurant together in the USA sometime in the future and dismissing the same cab three times, we gave a tearful goodbye to Maggie. I was able to postpone my goodbye to Maggie a little longer because we were fortunate enough to get the same train home - Maggie and Bomi to Nonsan, and me to Gwangju. We asked a sweet ajuma to take this shot in front of Seodaejeon Station:

"It is not goodbye, it's see you later. We promise."