Weekend Escapes

I have discovered that to maintain my sanity, I must get myself out of town from time to time. Lately, I have been feeling that urge every weekend. The only problem for me is, in Korea you can't go very far. For all practical purposes, Korea is an island. The only country that borders Korea on this peninsula is North Korea, and they won't let me go there. To escape the peninsula is very expensive. And on the peninsula, it is kind of difficult to travel to different cities that are not connected on the metro because it involves a lot of changing buses, and most things cost a lot of money. So I have to get creative.

Two weekends ago, I talked the English teacher into going with me up to Suwon. Suwon is a bigger city between here and Seoul, about 6 stops up on the subway. The area around the subway station is pretty nice, and there is actually a big mall built over the subway station. We planned to start out in the mall and then walk around, but it had just turned cold and we were freezing so we never left the station. The mall was very nice but there were too many American stores and restaurants there. It also has a huge bookstore with an English section we looked in before getting some lunch. Then last Friday night a couple of us teachers decided we wanted to celebrate the fall since the leaves are starting to turn and it is getting cold outside, so we ended up at Aftan's apartment (the athletic director) and the two of us attempted to make pumpkin pie. You may be laughing since pumpkin pie is like the easiest thing in the world to make, but remember we live in Korea so the only reason we had a can of pumpkin is that someone from base had given it to her a year or so ago. They gave her a pie crust too, but there were so many bugs in it we decided to make our own. Fortunately another girl showed up who could sort of make one from scratch. Our problem was that no cook books give recipes for making pumpkin pie from scratch... they just assume you can go and buy the ingredients. So we threw some sugar, spices, milk, and anything else we thought would taste good in muffin tins and a small pan (we didn't have a pie dish) and then cooked it longer than we needed to, but I must say it was pretty darn good for being in Asia!
Then Saturday the number of us needing to escape had grown, so we woke up too early for a weekend and drove to the Costco in Seoul to stock up on meat, cheese, salsa, and other western things you can't get anywhere else. We made it back by lunchtime, and then 2 other (older) teachers and I journeyed back to Seoul yet again, this time on the bus and subway. We headed to the COEX mall on the east side of Seoul, supposedly the largest mall in Korea with lots of stores, a kimchi museum, an aquarium, and a hotel. We didn't go in the muesum or aquarium, but we enjoyed walking around the maze of hallways and got lost a few times. The hallways kind of wind around, the ceilings are kind of low, it is a little darkish with some neon lights, and there are tons of people so it feels a little claustrophopic, but we felt like we had reached civilization. We went in lots of stores, Korean, American, and Spanish (:^) The most anyone bought was lipstick, but we had a good dinner of Vietnamese egg rolls, Whopper Jrs, and coffee (quite a combination) and enjoyed getting to know each other better. We spent the afternoon and evening there before coming back.
And now I'm sitting at school trying to make plans to escape somewhere next weekend! Heh, we'll see how that turns out!