Ode to Seoul

So we made another Costco run this weekend, but instead of turning around and going home, I stayed in the city and met up with Mike, Tyler, and Derek from Prov.

If you've followed my blog thus far, you'll know that my impressions of Seoul are not particularly positive...not awful, but between the hoardes of people, concrete jungle, bad air, and multi-cart pileups in Costco I'm usually not too sad to leave. This weekend however, was much different.

I went through the western district of Itaewon, found an English bookstore, and two Canadian resturaunts, and met up with Mike and Derek around dinner time. After getting harrased by another older drunk Korean man, we met up with two of Mike and Dereks friends (girls! and they spoke pretty good English!) and had a fun time. We hung out on their roof, and hiked up to Seoul tower (the top picture) In the morning I was going to go home cause I was feeling sick (thanks Tyler!) but I decided to stay and go to their church and I'm really glad I did.

When we got there I was actually in shock.....there were Koreans speaking fluent English! Haven't seen that in Wonju. Even my supervisor who can communicate really well doesn't sound anything approaching fluent. Fluent English everywhere....the music was great....the message was awesome. It was the first time I really felt connected to a church for a long time....probably since before I left for Providence 5 years ago.

Afterwards, we were going to just leave, but I had left my bags on a couch and me and Mike decided to go talk to the people who had sat down around the bags. Most of them were English (from London) with a Korean background and that was sort of a mindwarp too. Hearing a whole bunch of Koreans with a British accent was funny....kind of like the first time I heard Chinese people speaking Dutch in Holland.....though not quite as shocking....

Anyway, we ended up going out for lunch and ice cream and hanging out for a long time....and it was so much fun...I don't know if its just the two + months that I've had without the chance to really banter in English....but we had a lot of fun together. And girls that spoke English were a bonus too :) Again...maybe its just the two and a half months talking, but it was really, really refreshing....

Made me sad to leave..like I said, that was the first time I really felt connected to a church for years....and the first time since Prov that I really felt some community being with the guys there at their house. It made me realize what I don't have here in Wonju living in my flat with not much community to speak of. I'm definitely going to hunt down the rumoured English Church in Wonju and see what its like.

So anyway, a refreshing weekend, a few more facebook friends and I'll definitely be back to visit Seoul more often as a result.