Sport's Day and Saturday

I love"Sport's Day". In the morning the kids dressed up in brightly colored costumes and performed folk dances, they banged on traditional drums, and they performed impressive martial arts in perfect unision. In the afternoon the kids played soccer and ran relay races. I felt pretty sick all day but the sight of these little kids playing an intense world class game of soccer made me feel ten times better. There was a lot of cheating going on and I gave out half a dozen yellow cards. Man I miss playing on a soccer team! When I get back to Canada I'm going to get back into organized sports. There were more spectators watching primary school sports day then there was at the both the Legion Track and Field Nationals and the Canada Games. It was pretty impressive. I cancelled my trip to Busan because I haven't felt one hundred percent and so yesterday(Saturday) I just spent the day in Seoul doing various relaxed activities. I jumped on the train at eight and went to see a palace near city hall. None of my new friends are morning people, which is something that really works out for me, because I get to choose what I want to do on weekend mornings. So on Saturday morning I went to the palace(which is beautiful) and then to the nearby Rodin gallery.

At noon I met up with Dave, Bonnie, Kelly, and Callie and we checked out the 63 building. It's the fifth highest building in Asia and for twenty dollars we went to an Imax movie, an aquariam, and an art gallery(which was on the top floor). The Imax was hilarous, we thought we were seeing a documentry about the Nile, instead it was a weird Korean manga film. Our headphones had an english button, but a lot had to be lost in the translation because the movie didn't make a ton of sense. We spent the entire hour bent over in our seats hysterically laughing over the weird broken english and odd nonsensical plot. The aquariam was amazing. There were dolphins, seals, otters, and way too many snakes. The art gallery was just okay. I prefer to do galleries by myself because I don't like to be influenced by other people's reactions to the art. There were some original Warhol's though, which was kind of cool.

Then we went to Itaweon which is the Western section of Seoul. It was dirty and marked by tons of ciggerette smoking and beer guzzling foreignors, Macdonalds resteraunts, and Dunkin Donuts. At first I was skeptical and was doubtful that there was anything worth seeing in this part of Seoul. It's near the American soldier base and is where the off duty soldiers basically go to get drunk. However Dave changed my mind when he showed me an English bookstore(one of the few in Korea) and I tried really hard not to blow my savings. I bought two new comic books(Angel and Amazing X-Men) and a piece of nonfiction entitled God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I'm usually a DC girl and have been convinced that DC is far superior to Marvel comics but I lately I've felt like branching into Marvel territory. I'm also trying to read more nonfiction, I sometimes feel like that the fiction I read is the literary equilvent of a happy meal so I'm trying to challenge my brain a little.

After the bookstore(Dave bought Superman Red Son) we went to a middle eastern resteraunt, where I had a shwarma, a glass of white wine, and hummous. After weeks of meals that have consisted of fish broths, squid, burning hot kimchi, and rice this meal was the best thing ever. We were so appreciative of the food that we couldn't even make conversation. Afterwards Dave and Bonnie suggested going to this weird little ice-cream shop where customers create their own icecream by picking out flavors and toppings and blending them together. It was the perfect ending to an already great day.

Today the kids from Seoul are coming to visit me and we're going to check out my neighborhood. Tomorrow(Monday) I have to work, but Tuesday is a holiday and we're going on a hike with Mr. Kim. Supposedly this hike will involve a ton of rope work and rappeling-I'm looking forward to it.