Trip to Seoul Continued...

Well we are now finally getting back to normal. I put my parents on a plane yesterday morning headed back to the US. They stayed in Korea for two weeks. I think they had a lot of fun. We took them all over the place. I am going to need about a week to recuperate from all of the traveling and food we ate. The trip was capped off with a weekend in Seoul. We visited sites all over the city ranging from Namsong tower to the Korean War memorial. It was pretty great. To check out all the pictures you can look at our album.

hotel of love...

Love motel: a hotel rented out in small time increments ranging from one to three hours. These are found throughout Asia as well as South America to provide a place for locals to go with their lovers or prostitutes.

A love motel is a perfect getaway for single men and married men alike looking to hook up. Single men and women commonly live with their parents until marriage in Korea. If either sex is looking for some intimate time, their mom's house is the least likely place to go. Married men obviously do not use their homes for these endeavors. As such, a need was formed and, as it is not illegal to run a cheap motel, the love motel industry was born. Dependent on the area these hotels can range from windowless hook up rooms to exotically lighted and colorfully decorated rooms equipped with anything from a moving bed to mirrors strategically placed about. Prostitution in Korea makes up for more of the national income than agriculture if that says anything about the size of the industry. (paraphrase from speaking Korea) As you walk through the streets you can find pornographic advertisements for coffee girls. (coffee girls are ordered to deliver coffee to your home or hotel and for a small additional fee a number of other things) They are amongst the poorest paid prostitutes in country going for about ten to twenty bucks a pop according to one of my foreigner friends.

Well, I can now honestly say I have stayed at a Korean love motel. It was by accident of course, but it was interesting all the same. On my weekend trip to Seoul with my parents we looked for a hotel in the Gangnam are. It is a nicer shopping district in Seoul and is full of great spots for food and fun. We thought it would be a great central location to stay. We had our boss book it for us. It was not cheap so we thought it was legit. Well lets just say we found out otherwise as soon as we stepped into the elevator. The walls were covered in iridescent darkness accented by a stunning leopard print velvet. Our room was " beautifully" decorated with blue and red mood lighting that pulsed above both the bed and hot tub. The overhead light only was bright above the sink. The room was littered with little cups with condoms inside. It was pretty hilarious.

We had to check in early so we had an additional fee. The normal check in time was at 11:00 pm. Pretty hilarious if I do say so myself. The time for full night check in is strategically chosen based on public transit availability. I will say on the hotel's behalf that it was clean and the staff was pretty friendly. One more thing to check off on my life's to do list. haha

Birthday fun. Seoul, Nikon, and photoshop...

This past week was a milestone for me I suppose. I turned twenty five. As my sister "lovingly" put it, I am half way to fifty. (Thanks Jenn.- by the way, you are half way to sixty) I have never really celebrated my birthday in any large capacity. Given that it is within a week of my sisters and the fact that I am a pastor's kid (meaning we didn;t have a huge amount of money) birthdays were never ranked much higher than a cake and friends or as I got older movies and embarrassing singing at the annual restaraunt of our choosing.

This year we decided to change all that. The weekend before my birthday started out with a trip to Kumho World (금호월두). It is a multi-level store that sells everything from toilets to furniture to instruments. We typically go for the computer section as it is the only retailer that sells Apple products that we have found. We went in and headed straight to our planned sales counter. NIKON. We walked up and the guy kind of didn;t take us seriously until I told him it was my birthday and pointed to the beautiful D90 on the shelf. We purchased a new camera, Two lenses, a cleaning kit, and a travel bag. All of which were really nice and some of which were complimentary from our salesman since we were making such a big purchase. Towards the end of our buying frenzy he handed me a remote and said Happy birthday. It was a great start to the week.

From there we got our stuff together for church on Sunday and left shortly after a quick afternoon lunch with our school principle. We headed to U Square (the bus terminal) and bought our tickets to Seoul. We splurged an extra five bucks each and got the luxury buses. The seats recline a rediculous amount. It is like first class airplane recliner. Nice. We arrived in Seoul around seven and were met at the Seoul Gangnam terminal. One of our friends from university, Ryan, and his super awesome newly wedded wife Christina helped us grab our bags, took us to our Hotel, the Hawaiian, and took us out to a great dinner. It was our first non-"koreanized" Italian food in months. It was amazing! We cant wait to go back.

The weekend progressed and we hit some awesome spots including the palace, Butterfingers (western breakfast joint= amazing), a Nore Bang (Korean Karaoke rooms/bar), an amazing German restaurant, and a stop by a piercing place to get my nose re-done. (SIDE NOTE: I took my other one out for our last church job. I figure why not? It didn't help me keep that job. haha) We ended the week with a sad goodbye and a trip back to the terminal in Seoul. We only walked around for forty minutes looking for the Honam line inside the terminal. :) We caught a bus nearly ten minutes later. At least nine of which were used scrambling to find a bathroom before the three hour trek home to Gwangju. We arrived safely home around three in the morning and hit the sack. Happy birthday to me. haha

It has been great. Playing with my Nikon, editing all the photos with photoshop (cs4) that was gotten for me by our friend Peter, who teaches at the other campus of our school, and just enjoying possibly the biggest birthday celebration I have had to date. So despite the fact that I am half way to fifty, it was a pretty awesome time.