Hoods 1

Chirs (aka Bosco T. Matrix, aka Stavros the Wonderchicken) and Seok Kyung. There's still a considerable stigma to being involved with foreigners. When the three of us were out on the streets in Gunpo, older people would often shoot extremely dirty looks at Seok Kyung. No big deal in downtown Seoul, as so much is going on that it's hard to notice anything, but it was pretty clear what the issue was and who was to blame. top bottom
I've forgotten the name of what we were eating here. Kind of a stewed beef thing. Not as many side dishes as get served most of the time; the focus really was the beef here. Bosco threatened to track down some Boshintang (the infamous Dog Stew Aphrodisiac that went underground during the world cup but has popped back to its regular availability). The prospect didn't excite me that much. Hard for westerns to get it without an inside connection -- it's not just the omnipresent suspicion of foreigners, but it's also about relationship building, if you're a foreigner, you just need to know someone to let you in any loop. The tough part about sitting on the floor for me is that me knees never quite fit under the table... but I always have knee trouble -- I don't fit in airplane seating or bus seating, either. top bottom
A visit to a "western" bar in Seoul after returning from the DMZ. (Western as in "north american style", i.e., you can sit at the bar and order drinks from a bartender with out the expectations and complications imposed in a korean-style bar). And as it was the first beer I'd had in several months, the Sapporo was especially refreshing. The guy in the middle is Greg, one of Bosco's crew of English teaches at Hansei University and party to our DMZ excursion. top bottom
Strangely, this is near the Gunpo station. Elvis Hof (hof=bar). Now, I'm scouring the signage to try and find "Elvis" in hangul, because I cannot figure out how the heck it could be done... and I see nothing that attempts it. And since the sign on the very top (mixed English and Hangul) is "Elvis Hof" (or more accurately, Elvis hop-uh), I'm guessing that they don't try to Hangulize it. Now that's reverence, because they hangul-ize nearly everything except key catch phrases for marketing, such as the word "let's" as in "Let's KT" (KT = cell phone company) or "Let's Beer!" top bottom

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