Korea - Day 1

This could kind of a spiritual journey for me. I studied abroad in Korea in 2001/2002. i was 20/21 at that time. The only responsibilities i had were basically going to Korean class everyday for only 2 hrs, then it was on to skateboarding, then on to drinking with buddies somewhere around seoul. I regret not hanging out with my native korean friends more, and not doing more than just getting drunk. Now mind you that getting drunk is a huge part of the culture so i was kind of forced into but on the other hand i wasn't fighting it all either. I never even took a trip outside of Seoul. I saw the world cup, taught an actress english (So Yu Jin 소유진), skated everyday, usually with native koreans, and drank everyday a lot of the time with Korean Americans who were also studying abroad with me. The "spiritual" part will be me back in Korea, 7 years later walking through the same streets, now as a slightly less dumb adult-like person and seeing how it feels. So far I can say that it feels weird, and i feel out of place. It feels third world in some places, and it seems like a souless city. Maybe I just think this because Korea left a "bad taste in my mouth" after being there for a year and some of that is still lingering. I am an adopted Korean American, so my Korean language skills are not good. by the time I left Korea in 2002 I had learned enough to conversate and do pretty much anything. Now I can barely put together a sentence, I have forgotten tons of it. so sad. I got a flight to Korea, roundtrip for 70 dollars, but the taxes and fees and fuel surcharge were $190 dollars. Its also an open ended return ticket so i dont know when im going back to beijing. I flew China Southern. Here on the ticket it says that they will donate 10 fen (0.015 cents, yes .015 cents) everytime you fly to their 10 fen caring foundation. wow how generous of them to donate a fraction of a cent. I'm staying with my old time buddy yoon. he was my roomate in korea, also was my roomate in New York for about 3 months before he get a job offer here in Incheon, and took it. Incheon is the city where the airport is but its big so he lives on the other end which is like an hr and a half from the airport, and an hr and a half from Seoul. So i've been taking the bus to Seoul from his house everyday. It's all english language schools, bars, and restaurants, just like seoul. I am seeing lots more foreigners in Korea now too. I got a b!tchin' fever the night before I flew so i still have it now. got korean medicine, which didn't work 7 years ago and still doesn't work now. Korean medicines don't really work ate budae jjigae, i guess it was invented during the war when US soldiers brought over spam, and maybe sausage and bacon. lots of english schools Korean looks angular so I think you can design well with it. Anyway it's a alphabet langauage so there are only 20 something letters to remember so it's really easy. Its distracting because I keep seeing all this stuff i can read (slowly) but might not know what it means. I met my old language partner Hyuk Jay. He now works for GE doing some kind of finance stuff. He told me he has done some crazy stuff in the past 7 years like invent the Taxi TV thing that is in a lot of the taxis, start an ad agency, work at morgan stanley, switch to GE, and lately, write a book on finance that is being published soon. Sounds crazy. I forgot to take a picture with him this girl on the train was pretty hot. I like the korean betty page/Patricia Arquette super white-faced red lipstip and pumps wearing, modern high collar peacoat style she has going on. and after that patricia arquette moment i saw this at the book store, the korean version of this david lynch book (patricia arquette co-starred in the lost highway with bill pullman directed by david lynch) I like Lynch and bonus points for using illustration on the cover. Koreans use lots of illustration on book covers it seems. looked like 40 percent of the books had illustration on the cover they also seem to be obama fans although i haven't asked them directly, just judging from the amount of books on the Obama table.