Iteawon

This afternoon I traveled to Iteawon with a few friends. Andreas, Kia, Rosie, Jumee, and Samantha from Waterloo, Canada, decided to explore this district of Seoul because we heard that it's very American friendly. And that it was! It took us about 40 minutes with walking and subway time to get there, also we had to make one subway transfer. When we ascended the stairs to the street we immediately saw a Mcdonalds, Coldstone Creamery, Subway and Burger Mart (basically a Burger King) all on the same block. This district was extremely American! Everything from the street vendors speaking English (not common in Sinchon) to the large variety of Western-style hotels, this was definitely more familiar to us. In fact, it basically looked like parts of New York City.

The reason Iteawon is so Western is because the U.S. Army base Yongsan Garrison is located there. We saw a handful of both American and Korean soldiers on the streets and in the shops and restaurants. We realized very quickly that Iteawon was not as great as we were hoping it would be. To be honest, it just felt a little boring after being faced with the culture shock of the much more traditional city-districts of Seoul. We decided not to have dinner there and return to Sinchon to eat. Since it's more of an international-friendly district, everything was more expensive. In Sinchon my rice and egg bowl was 3,000 won or about $3 but if we had ate in Iteawon I would've ended up spending about $8 or $9 (which is still fairly inexpensive compared to American prices).

The coolest thing I saw in Iteawon was a pair of socks for sale on a street vendor cart. Each sock had a huge picture of President Obama's face on it. Very cool, but very American. I know you're all psyched for the interview/bio on my roommate Valerie, but you'll just have to wait one more day because she got caught in the rain tonight and needs to dry off. It's rough times here in Seoul.