Sunday, July 31, 2011

Knockoffs are expensive too

I met up with Jung-soo and her family yesterday and had a great time. It was great to see everyone again! They live so far away and our schedules never seem to match up~ But it worked out today!

I took the subway down to the station where they're nearest and the subway ride itself (with one transfer) took close to an hour. I slept on the subway too knowing that the stop near their house was 15+ away when I fell asleep, haha. Halfway through my nap, I was holding a bag, and I dropped one of the handles and it made a noise. So I freaked out and woke up. Probably looked like an idiot...haha.

It was around lunch time when I met up with Jung-soo. We went and got burgers at a place called...I don't remember the name. But it had "saloon" in it. Anyways, the burgers were huge and really delicious. Reminded me of America...haha. First time I was reminiscent about the US. It was weird.

Lol, this is Jung-soo's younger brother. The whole family is hilarious, it's great.

Afterwards, we went to Itaewon to do some 짝뚱 (knockoff) shopping! This is where you go if you want to get the better knockoffs. These places are hard to find in Itaewon though. You have to basically find a really shady guy on the street and follow him down to a basement where they have stockpiles of shoes, wallets, bags, belts, watches, clothes, etc. It's really crazy.

As he lays out all the belts, we can look through a catalog of all the fakes they have. Wow... I took this picture very discreetly too because I'm sure they'd be upset.

Even though the 물건 (I can't think of the English word right now...I'm losing my English it seems) is/are fake, it's/they're still expensive. Meh. Not nearly as crazy as the real ones are though. And I'm not completely sure about how I feel about buying knockoffs... There's always more than one side to things...

While driving, Jung-soo's parents realized that the Samsung Leeum Museum was close by so we stopped by there too. I have some pictures. But the museum had a nice collection of old traditional stuff (mostly vases, pottery, etc.) and contemporary art. I can't really explain the museum, so if you're interested, you can look at their website.

 Outside the museum: memories of the future (huh...)

 Spider statues outside.

 The exposure was turned up on my camera and I forgot to change it. So that's why I look so white... And my hair looks awful. It was so hot outside that I was about to die.



 The really cool audio tour guide - it was touch screen!

This was the view of the stairwell. Cool, huh?

I was pretty exhausted after the museum. I forgot how much walking you really have to do when you're in a museum. Anyways, I wish I could have taken pictures of the art. Here's one I found online of one I really liked:

The blue thing on the wall is the work. The lights are part of it as well. The blue thing is actually a map and it had a bunch of "obscure" cities posted on it and the Korean names of them awkwardly written out. It was supposed to illustrate that despite how connected we are through the internet, we aren't truly connected. The piece was called "Wide World Wide." (The artist used Winnemucca, NV as one of the cities! I felt so proud to have known it, haha)

We went to 삼청동 afterwards and ate 수재비 (수제비? I always confuse ㅐ and ㅔ) It was delicious. Stephan, if you're reading this, you'd be jealous! =P I went back to the dorms after a delicious meal and just chilled for the rest of the night (i.e. filled people in on what they missed when they blacked out the other night - haha!). With all this stuff to enjoy in Korea, I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I get back to the US. Street food doesn't exist (really) and I can't simply walk anywhere or take a bus when I'm bored. The food is more expensive in the US and I'll be sad that there won't be BBQ places everywhere. Though the good thing about the US is that I'll never complain about the rain again. I'm sure I'll never see anything as bad as I have here... Anyways, I'll have a longer post about the things I'll miss and the things I've grown to appreciate in the US when I return.

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