Yongsan and Suwon

Three days ago our Nintendo Gamecube caught on fire. The voltage in Korea is different but we thought the Gamecube had a transformer... guess not. So we decided to buy a transformer. Word on the street was that you could get them at Yongsan electronics market and so that's exactly where we went yesterday. Of course the market wasn't like the Fredericton High School Flea Market... it was a series of department stores and street vendors spread out over a few kilometers. You know how you always hear about bootleg DVDs being such a big problem? Well I'd never seen a single one before, but yesterday I saw a street-full. It was only 3,000 won/DVD and they had full seasons of Lost, South Park, and even the new Jackass movie that came out in theatres last week.



Oh yeah, we got our charactures done for 10,000. We attracted quite a crowd!



This is the exit of Yongsan Station (where the subway let us off). The stairs had rainbow lighting. The shopping began at the bottom of the stairs.



One of the department stores was built around this concert stage and provided a cool view. We found a couple of plug converters in the department store but when we got home we found that it didn't convert voltage, just the shape of your plug. I found that out when the infamous travel iron caught on fire. Oh well, we'll have to find one when we go back for our cheap DVDs.



Today we went to Suwon, which is where our real school is located. As a reminder, we are only working in Seoul because our school is "under construction". Suwon was okay. It's not as cool as Seoul but it's okay. We walked past at least five huge department stores that will be fun to explore, but beyond that we are quite far from anything interesting. The commute on the subway was 1 1/2 hours. And I didn't see any western food or nearly as much english on the signs as we're used to in Seoul.





Suwon (and Korea in general) has a lot of outdoor statues. These were across from City Hall. We were told our new school is being built around city hall and next to KBS, a korean TV station. The schools' director was pretty excited because she'll be able to see a lot of Korean celebrities. Whoopie! I can't wait to meet... umm... I can't think of a single Korean celebrity. Oh yeah, the chick from "lost". But anyway. We walked for a really long time and we finally found KBS. There was some construction next to it...



... but it was all covered and hidden.



But that never stopped me from spying through a crack. Looks promising, eh? It's just a bunch of dirt and some old looking buildings. Now we may not have found the right place, but I have a feeling we did. Rumor has it our apartments were built in three days in a rush before this schools' opening. You know what though? We're a-okay with staying right where we are for as lonnnnng as we have to. We have much more to discover in Seoul. We took an 'express bus' (slowwww) back home and en route we got to see parts of Suwon that we didn't get to on foot today and it looked a little better. I even saw a Mickey D's (phew!) and an E-Mart (our new favorite K-Mart type store).

So I'll leave with this, another sideways video (just tilt your monitor). This is a public washroom... I'd heard about this kind of toilet but I'd never seen one before today. I actually saw two. I didn't use it.