Yesterday started out to be a great day. M went to the office and I had the whole afternoon to myself. I thought I'd go back to Hongdae (the area surrounding Hongik University) for some shopping. We were there a couple of days ago and I spotted some things that I wanted to look at more closely. Okay, I wanted to buy them. Since the weather was so nice I decided to walk. On my way I ran into Hera, who is the graduate student who told me that I was pretty but that I should exercise more. She was so happy to see me and gave me a big hug. It was great to see a familiar face on the street and we talked for about 15 minutes. She told me again how pretty I was and then asked if I had a chance to start working out or to play squash. I was still pleased to see her and to chat about other things.
After that mini meeting on the street I called Mina, who is M's colleague's wife, and we made plans to go shopping on Tuesday. I've been in Seoul for three weeks and I already have a few friends and my social calendar is beginning to fill up. (Tomorrow I'm going to the hair salon with Yerim, another graduate student we met, and some of her friends. After getting hair cuts we are going to meet up with M and have a night out on the town.) As each day goes on I feel more and more like I actually live here. I even stopped calling our apartment the hotel.
Anyhow, I walked to Hongdae with no problems and was able to find the stores that I remembered from a few days back. I went into a few shoe shops and things started going down hill. First of all its really embarrassing to tell people my shoe size here. It's 255! Most places only carry shoes up to size 245. I found a few places that had 250 but 255 wasn't happening.
I moved on to clothing. I should say that up until this point I have not met anyone in Korea that was anything but nice to me. In fact I am grateful to all the people who have been super patient with my lack of Korean language abilities and for putting up with our barbarianism (much more on that later.) After getting a few odd looks from the saleswomen in the store I decided to ask if I could try on an adorable and affordable shirt. It was made out of a cottony stretch fabric and I am certain that it would fit. The shirt was a size small - that's my size. I went up to the sales clerk and asked/motioned to try on the shirt. She shook her head and said that I couldn't try it on because it only comes in that one size and that it wouldn't fit me. The few other girls in the shop giggled at me. It was so embarrassing but even more annoying because the shirt would have fit me! I thought that I'd just go somewhere else but the same thing kept happening. I can't tell for sure what they were saying each time but in the end I wasn't able to try anything on. I was in a bad mood but I kept on shopping. I finally passed a shoe store where the shoe salesman called me in to practice his english. He told me he had some shoes in my size and so I bought a pair of black low heeled shoes that seemed comfortable. I made it all better by buying some makeup (and the saleswomen were so nice and really helpful).
When I was done M came to meet me and he made it all better. We decided to start the night off early and went to the first Hof we saw. Soju and beer was no brainer but we had to choose something to eat with it. We ordered what looked like grilled sardines on the picture menu but they tasted more like what I think dirty fuzzy carpet would taste like. We drank up and decided to move on.
A few blocks away we found a happening Japanese place that was packed. We were able to get seats in the back, facing the open kitchen. We took our chances ordering another grilled fish from the picture menu and it was a huge success. We could see the chef preparing the fish and then putting it on the grill. We drank our booze and watched our fish being grilled while the room roared. It was a great atmosphere to lighten my mood. We de-boned the fish and dug in right away. It tasted like it was caught 5 minutes before we ate it. It was fresh and light yet smokey, salty and meaty. It smelled like grilled ocean. We ate as much as our chopsticks would allow. If we were at home we would have picked at it until every piece of meat was eaten and then we would have sucked on the fish bones just to be sure we didn't miss anything. Unfortunately for us we are trying to limit our barbarianism, at least in public, so there were definitely wasted bits of fish left on the plate. A shame if you ask me.
Here are a few pics. The first is one of the clothing stores that I'm mad at and the rest is at dinner.
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