A Weekend In Seoul

Hello, everyone! I miss writing to you. I don't think I've written since the great haircut vote of '08. Number 1 was the clear favorite and it's how I was going to do it anyway. Thanks to all who voted! It was a blasty! The real bummer is: I didn't have the heart to tell the girl that she didn't cut enough off, so it feels like I already need another haircut. Next time I'll get more of a 'summer cut', they last longer.
Well, where to begin...? I just spent almost the entire weekend in Seoul. On Saturday, a co-worker of mine took a small group of us to Seoul. He didn't actually take us, the bus did. He just acted as our tour guide. Sarah stayed home to rest and work and I went as a scout. We went to Itaewon which is supposedly geared toward westerners. We ate lunch at Smokey Saloon. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall burger joint. The burgers were thick, juicy and very much American style. After lunch we went to Myeong Dong. Myeong Dong is a major shopping area. I've read that about 1 million people go through the area every day. I guess you could say I was one-in-a-million! Say it! It was so crowded. There were four of us and if I stopped to take a picture I got cut off from my runnin' crew. John and Amy are the couple from Texas that arrived two weeks ago. James is my co-worker and our tour guide. He's from California and has been here for about a year. I had to wade through a sea of people several times to catch up with them. There were some interesting food vendors in the streets. I got a few decent pictures, but it was hard to take the time necessary to line up my shots. I found a great messenger bag at the Puma store where everything was on sale for 70% off the original price. It cost 7500 won or about $7.50. Sweet! At 5 0'clock James suggested that we go to Outback Steakhouse. I wanted to call Sarah and see how she was doing, so they said we could head back to Suwon, get Sarah and go to the Outback here instead of Seoul. We went home and rescued her from her work and we all went to have dinner. It was very delicious. We had ribs and chicken on the bar-bee. I was just glad that Sarah was able to come with us. It was the only option I could imagine.

On Sunday, we met up with the same folks to visit James' church in Seoul. Jubilee Church. We left Suwon at around 10 am. First we went to a huge bookstore that has a pretty big English section. Sarah got Wicked.(a book about the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz). I was looking for anything by Hwee Hwee Tan, but the computer said they didn't have anything. There were several books that caught my eye, but I couldn't pull the trigger on any. After the bookstore we went to Quizno's for lunch. It was the first time we had ever been to Quizno's anywhere. It was mighty tasty. The church service didn't start until 1:30. There were quite a few westerners in the congregation since it is an English service. Everyone was between 19 and 28 years of age.(not including me, of course). Worship was pretty good eventhough it was quite different from home. The keyboard player is a pop star in Korea. His older brother is the pastor of the church. During the service, we were supposed to recite the Apostle's Creed which includes allegiance to the Holy Catholic Church. We also sang the Doxology which is actually a decent song to sing but it just made us feel like they were trying to appeal to many denominations. We had a fun day, but we are still basically set on going to Kevin and Kate's church from now on. I hope everyone enjoys this post. Love you all ~Micah