Samsung + Lotte + SK = Korea

Korea is exceedingly good for some things. Korean food for instance, or cheap electronics. What I didn't know was that there was a rad rad market there that rivals any market I've been to in terms of concentrate cool.

Located in front of "Hong-dae" university (Hong-dae? Seriously? Guys, I'm on to you.), we got there about an hour too early and saw a few students unpacking things out of suitcases. Didn't look impressive at all. After wandering the area for a while, finding nothing but dodgy looking food and awesome artsy looking places that weren't open to the public, we returned to see stall after stall of artsy goodness.

Before that, we had really bad gelato. Way lol.

And afterwards we had really bad espresso. Not so lol.

We've been walking around shopping alot lately. Korea is full of awesome consumables. We've obviously been eating a lot of street food like Ho-dduk, which is basically dough with brown-sugariness inside as well as O-dang, fishcake on a stick. Both of these are far more incredible than you would imagine them to be right now. And the amount of ice-cream that Mia can go through is absolutely amazing. It's not even particularly great ice-cream. Although she can't do rice for more than a meal or so a day, I get the strange feeling that she could eat ice-cream at least four or five times a day.

ANYWAY.

Check the photos to get a look at the markety goodness. I loved the Ocarinas on sale, and the guy that wouldn't stop playing "My Heart Will Go On" for every passerby, as well as the various painted shirts, hoodies and shoes. A lot of absurdly cute asian jewlery abounded as well, with little doves, zebras, turtles, cats and a whole variety of korean characters. The bookmarks were so pretty that I don't know how I resisted buying one, while everything else was merely gorgeous but not my thing.

So damned good. I'm glad that we made it, since it was the last one of the year ^__^

After that, we decided to be good tourists and go to Myung-dong, an area that I didn't have many hopes for. It was full of brand-names and shitty stores, as expected, but also had awesome street vendors, really really shitty mugs and awesome amounts of classy food. We ate spicy ramen and we looked at things we could plausibly buy. Narrow streets full of people and stores, it was fun to just get around and be part of the atmosphere.

Staying at my uncles kind of sucks. The room we're staying in doesn't have a door that closes all the way, and the ceiling is so low that we barely fit. And if you remember how tall we are, that's pretty low. However, it kind of rocks because he's my dads younger brother and I basically feel like I can be comfortable without being rude or whatever. The son doesn't talk, and he kind of just lazes around all day, so we can kind of use it as a base to travel the city from.

Tomorrow, hopefully we'll be heading here to get our culture on. Does anyone know anything about Korean art? Jared? *pointed look* Apparently there's a leader of video art named Paik Nam June? Regardless, it should be an awesome day. I enjoy just using the smart card to get around, so I wonder how much fun I'll have doing something rad? WOO.

I just wish the Wilco tickets didn't cost so much -_-