Ping Pong Room

In Korea close friends are made very quickly. Case in point; this is Sun Ki, whom we met yesterday at the singing room. Sun Ki is already our very good friend and has invited us to stay at his house near the beach.

For some reason Leo decided that this would be a perfect spot to pose for a picture. Maybe he can use the picture for the cover of his new album of love ballads.

Sun Ki took us to this ping pong room. According to Sun Ki, in the Korean military one plays table tennis everyday and as all Korean males are required to do 2 years of military service it would follow that most Korean men can hold their own at the ping pong table.

Unless you haven't done your military service yet (i.e. James and Leo).

We Are Adult

 This is another friend, Sally. She likes to remind us that she is not a child, she is adult!

 On this day the gang wanted to go to a bar at 4:00 in the afternoon. So that is where we are headed.

The purpose of the early expedition to the bar involved a girl that Tall James wanted see. You will soon realize that all of Tall James' ideas involve his desire to date western women.

 We are adult.

Wow! Who is this oh-so-handsome-guy? Is he an international card shark? British playboy? Top mathematics graduate turned Christian school teacher? Yep. This is our new teacher Matt.

 His skill at bar games tipped us off about his prior life in the mother country.

 Still adult. . .

 Sort of.

Fun and Game(room)s

 Recently we introduced you to our new friend James. Today we met up with him and his friend James. To keep them straight they go by Handsome James(left) and Cool James.

 They took us to a game room. In a game room you pay an hourly rate and can play as many games as you like. When you choose a new game an employee comes to your table and teaches you the rules (in Korean). This is a game where you force a pirate out of a barrel with little knives.

 This is game called Blokus, it was pretty fun (I wont go into how to play the game, as an explanation would take more than a few sentences ). Another exciting aspect of the game room is that when you loose, you get dared to embarrass yourself in front of other game room patrons. One man from another table came over to ours and sang "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid!

 I thought that Furries were NOT allowed to remove their heads in public!

 Holly cow! Are those mariachi owls?!

We took James and James to our favorite bar, Korean Traditional Pops. Here they are drinking cocktails involving fruit juice and milk.

 Here we are making friends in foreign lands.

Another day well spent.

Korean Traditional Pop

 We came to Seoul in search of another jazz club. We could not find said jazz club.

 After wandering for a while Megan spotted a place with a sing reading Korean Traditional Pop.

This bar only plays Korean pop music from the 1960s onwards.

I have a new mission to explore Korean pop music of the 1960s.

This mission is even better since it includes coming to a place with such amazing decor.

New Friend

 Wrapping tires in gold really cuts down on the mystery regarding which tires to buy.

This evening we were taking the subway into Seoul. On the subway a young man sat down and started up a conversation with Megan. He told us that he was practicing his English and asked what we were doing this evening. We told him that we were going to a club in Seoul to hear live jazz music, to which he replied "I've never heard jazz music before, I'll come with you."

This is a picture of our new friend James at said jazz club.

Mega-church

We visited a "mega-church" with our boss.


It wasn't all bad though, beforehand we had this festive meal that involved rice wrapped in what I am guessing were banana leaves.

Don't tell Megan that I put this picture on the internet.

Another highlight is that we saw this guy on our ride back home.

Scenic Post

This is a scenic post.

 We took the cable car to the top of Namsam mountain.

  As you can see the views are pretty nice from the cable car.

 This is a view from the top of the Seoul Tower.

 Sadly, most of the views out the windows are "obstructed" by dirty windows.

 I found that if the picture is blurry enough it's hard to see the dirt on the windows.

Shinee Lucifer

This is the Namsangol Hanok Village, it is a village of traditional homes.

The village is located down an alley of high rises and food stands.

Here I am trying to decide what delicious treat I want.

Fish shaped pastries filled with red bean paste,

nuts and puffed rice cakes,

hot dogs, corn-dogs and fish-dogs,

or possibly cotton candy.

Did I mention that it is still very cold out?

Here is Megan in a traditional Korean costume.

We were informed that if you sit at the entrance of the house, you will receive good energy from the spirits who have lived here in the past.

Historical...

Here is Megan asking our tour-guide a pertinent question about Korean social structure and how it influences architecture.

Here we are enjoying history.

This meal consisted of several types of dried noodles that we cooked ourselves over a hot-plate in the middle of our table.

Included with the meal was the Korean version of ice cream. It really put the "ice" in ice cream.

Shinee Lucifer, indeed.