September 23rd - Tuesday

This morning I took my first walk through Nowon-gu. I woke up early for me (around 7am) since I was beat last night and crashed around 11pm. I didn’t want to laze about in bed on a beautiful day and I was hungry so I got dressed and headed out to find some breakfast. The first thing I came across was this little alley with a sign saying Sanggye (pronounce sAHN- gEE) Market. I figured I might find some food there and decided to explore it even though in the US in major cities you don’t go down side alleyways unless you want to get mugged. Anyway, I turn into this opening in this building and there I am in this really nice supermarket with pretty much everything you could imagine. All of it in Korean, obviously, but still everything. All you would need for Oriental cooking plus some others that are more Western. Someday I’ll have to go on a photo tour of a Korean supermarket to show just what is there. I ended up getting myself a packet of soft baked squid – literally a whole squid – and some Korean beef jerky along with a Coke. The squid I ate for breakfast while walking down the streets and taking a good look around.

Everything is very compact in Korea. The shops are all stacked vertically on top of one another. You might have a 4-6 story building. On the bottom floor at street level you’ll find lots of little one room shops selling anything under the sun. Then each floor above that is filled with different shops. And each shop uses the outside wall as signage. It ends up making everything very colorful – especially at night when neon signs are lit. There are little side streets everywhere and these are all very pedestrian friendly though cars still drive through. They’re filled with shops and eateries. And then you have all the street vendors. I’ve never seen so many street vendors in my life as I have in Korea so far. They sell everything from shoes, to toys, foods to camping gear. And they are all over – especially near any major intersections.

Eventually, I turned around and walked back to the hotel where I met Hannah just coming out looking for her breakfast and coffee. We walked the other direction til we found a coffee shop. We both got coffees and she got a choco pastry. We sat and chatted for awhile til my feet stopped hurting and then we headed out to finish our walk. After the walk we headed back to the hotel for the first meeting with Hannah our supervisor who Mr. J brought by at about 11:45am. They were supposed to be here by 11am but they ran late. They both are very nice. We went over a few things and I start training Thursday at 3pm.

After lunch, we headed for Nowon Station and Lotte (pronounced Low-tay) Department Store. That place is amazing! It is 10 floors tall, I think, including the two basement levels. The basement floor we started out on had a door in from the subway (we saw it and decided to investigate). It was all a supermarket with everything you could think of at expensive prices. It was well lit and floored in marble. The entire department store was! The rest of the floors except for the top were all designer clothes and way too expensive jeans. I liked a red leather wallet I saw but it was way over 100 bucks. We saw a fur coat that was over a thousand. The top floor is a movie theater. But all the signs for the movies are in Korean and I don’t know if the American movies have Korean subtitles or if they are actually in Korean. Heh. It’ll be fun when I finally go to a movie!