Oot and Aboot

Yesterday I began exploring my immediate neighborhood in Incheon, in an attempt to familiarize myself with what's where. Only problem being, of course, that a lot of this stuff is really not obvious. One of the very few signs I understood was on the second floor of this building to the left - Karaoke is universal!

Other than that, I discovered that there are no fewer than 4 grocery stores all in a span of 3 blocks. There are also several stores that, although they smell like fish, what they sell doesn't resemble any fish I know. So i'll probably be staying away from that for now. I really don't wanna be 'that guy' in the street that thinks he's really 'experiencing the culture' while eating cat food.

One thing that was again highlighted yesterday is the fact that driving here is (for lack of a better word) nuts. It's quite commonplace for people to burn through red-lights. It's also common for scooters to pass in-between cars, drive on the sidewalk, and not wear a damn helmet. I've nearly seen 4 of those guys knocked down by a car so far (and it's not even been a week). Another thing that i'd never seen before are 'U-Turn' lanes. Since the traffic volume is fairly high, there are usually fences on the medians, so if the place where you need to go is on the other side of the street you're gonna have to wait until you find your U-Turn lane.

Honking is also very, very common. It doesn't stem from rage, though, as it usually does in North America. It's genuinely used as a means to warn people. And trust me, they NEED to warn each other a lot. But hey, their road system must work, because I haven't seen one accident yet.

Last night I went back to Seoul with another teacher, who took me to Hongdae; an area near Hongik University that's got quite a large youth population, along with many bars and clubs. We found a street vendor selling drinks in a bag, which was so awesome that we had to get one. This is a Tequilla Sunrise in a bag.

Afterwards we went into a bar called 'Ho Bar'. It's just a name, don't read too much into it. There are actually 5 of these bars in Hongdae, all numbered 'Ho Bar 1, Ho Bar 2, (...) Ho Bar 5'. It was fun, but there's still cigarette smoke in these bars which is very very bothersome after more than half an hour. And here I thought the anti-smoking legislation had gone 'round the world! Alcohol in bars, as is to be expected, is a bit more expensive, but still nothing compared to our bars. One beer (depending on the brand) can go from a dollar fifty, to 5 dollars. It also seems to be common to buy a bottle of liquor for everyone at the table to share (although that starts at around 50$).

Today on the menu should be the Korean War Memorial, so stay tuned kids!