darts, street carts, and GS marts

this is itaewon. lots of white folk. lots of western fast food. lots of t-shirts with garfield and calvin and hobbes saying extremely inappropriate comments. yes, THIS is itaewon.

i totally understand missing the comforts of home but when you live abroad in a foreign city like seoul there is so much that is different in this culture that you can immerse yourself into. you can learn the language, eat the food, converse with the locals and read about korean history. itaewon is different in that respect. it's a relative small part of seoul where foreign english teachers live to be close to these comforts of home. many foreigners swear by. don't get me wrong, it's nice to go there and be able to eat a veggie burrito or order a pint of guinness, it's just that some people seem to be living there and not experiencing the rest of the culture. this is unfortunate but alas, i don't judge, only this person can.

there are so many different types of food there you could compare it to a really dirty bloor street in toronto where there are different restaurants next door to each other that will serve thai, greek, french, and australian food (if anyone knows what australian cuisine is, please tell me what they serve at syd and mel's). lots of craft shops and souvenir stores that sell fake merchandise with owners that are much pushier than any other part of seoul that i've visited. bah, it's itaewon. i'm still glad it exists.

hugh, jason, bob and i went to said part of town yesterday and shopped around. visited some stores that sold fake sports jerseys. i can get a ccm mats sundin leafs jersey for $20 here. i also bought a new pair of shoes as i've been wearing out my other two pairs with all this walking. they're not the same ones in the picture. they're brown like those ones except the white stuff is all orange. anyway, we went there to eat mexican food which was really tasty, followed by this little black market shop where you can buy all sorts of products from back home including campbell's thick and chunky and deodorant. heck, you could even buy tobacco chew if you're down with that. we ended up drinking and playing darts for three hours in the afternoon at a place called the alley cat pub. it's pretty much a replica of a sports bar back home. then we went to a bar called the baby guinness, hung out there for a bit and ate dinner at a thai restaurant. that was pretty much the first nice restaurant i've eaten at since being here. went home and planned to watch the liverpool-everton match at the hollywood grill and then the wolfhound. stuck around until 2am and i decided to take off because i was falling asleep. i wussed out while the others were going to pull the all-nighter and stick around for the 4am rugby world cup match between england and south africa. i slept well. i'm happy i slept well.