We’ve already been in Korea for half a month.  Can you believe it?  It doesn’t seem so long until you realize that it’s 1/48th of our 24-month tour here in Korea.  I wish I could say that we’ve had a good taste of Korea, but for the most part we’ve either stayed home or gone to work.  That will hopefully change during our next 15 days here.  It was a beautiful day today, and the temperatures are supposed to creep up into the 40’s (Fahrenheit) next week.  I hope the weather will stay nice for a few weeks before the Yellow Sands (황사) start blowing in from the Gobi Desert.  We can finally get out and do some outdoor activities such as visiting outdoor markets like Namdaemun.  Until I get better though I won’t be going anyway.  This cold/flu has been nagging, and I plan to take the day off tomorrow to rest and recuperate.

Well, yet another Seattle sport team disappointed again.  The Husky men’s college basketball team lost their final game of the season to Stanford 77-67, and the Arizona Wildcats clinched the Pac-10 Conference championship with a 70-68 win over Arizona State.  Maybe next year.  I think many of their best players will graduate, so who knows how the Huskies will be next year.  They can still redeem themselves during the NCAA Tournament, but who can blame a perpetually disappointed Seattle fan for being pessimistic?  Illinois looks unstoppable this year.

Yahoo! recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.  They offered customers a free ice cream cone to be redeemed on their birthday, March 2nd.  I downloaded the online coupon hoping to use it at a local Baskin Robbins, but then I noticed it was only good for one day.  One day?!  There was no way I was going to break away from what I was doing for a free single-scoop ice cream cone in early March.  If you ask me, that’s a gimmicky birthday stunt.  At least Yahoo! could have extend the validity period for the coupon over one- to two weeks, even one month.  How many people actually dropped everything on March 2nd to go to BR for a free 3.5 oz. ice cream cone?  I bet that on Google’s 10th anniversary they will offer a much more practical birthday present to customers.  Google is awesome.

My family ventured out to see more of Seoul for the first time.  We’ve pretty much been keeping to ourselves at home since we arrived, but we decided that it was about time to get out and see some of the local culture.  We first went to Itaewon, a shopping district in Seoul.  We then caught a taxi to the COEX Mall, a shopping complex near Olympic Stadium.  We ended the day having dinner with our next-door neighbors, a cordial couple who lent us their vehicle to use while they were out of town on vacation.  We are so impressed with the caliber of people who live and work here with us.  I am really looking forward to getting to know my neighbors and colleagues better.  While living in the Seattle and Washington, D.C. areas I rarely met any of my neighbors, and we almost never joined them for dinner.  We usually kept to ourselves, something that happens quite frequently in urban America.  Life here is a very welcome change for me.  I’ve been telling people that I had to move overseas to enjoy a "normal" American life.  I much prefer developing good friendships with the people who live around me to being too busy to get to know them. 

We want to explore all of Seoul’s famous neighborhoods while we’re here, especially Namdaemun and Dongdaemun.  We may go out again on Tuesday during Korean Independence Day.  Today we started in Itaewon.  The day was clear and cold, so we did not stay long outside in Itaewon.  We ate Korean food at Don Valley Korean Restaurant located below the Burger King in Itaewon.  The food was delicious.  No offense intended, but I don’t understand why anyone would eat at Burger King in lieu of the local fare.  We ate 불고기 (hot-pot bulgogi), 삼계탕 (ginseng chicken soup), and 반잔 (side dishes).  Side dishes are one of the highlights of Korean dining.  They remind me of Spanish tapas, a hodge podge of dishes unique to Spanish cuisine.  Korean side dishes such as various types of kimchi and bean sprouts wonderfully accent any Korean meal. 

Following our visit to Itaewon we took a cab to COEX Mall, one of Seoul’s largest malls.  My wife really wanted to take our son to visit the COEX Aquarium.  I hesitated going because I did not know how far the COEX Mall is from Itaewon.  Our trip turned out to be an expensive, half-hour jaunt in heavy traffic.  A round-trip cab ride cost about $20, and the mall was absolutely packed with Koreans.  (I only saw a handful of foreigners.)  We should have known that the residents of Seoul would converge at the mall on Sunday, the one day of the week when they can relax and have fun (most Koreans work or study at least half a day on Saturday).  We didn’t visit the aquarium after all.  Our son was too tired and fussy to enjoy sea life, and we thought it would be a waste of money to take him there in such a distressed state.  When I wasn’t tending to my son, I enjoyed people watching in the mall and catching a glimpses of Korean fashion and mannerisms.  I definitely dressed differently than Koreans do.  I definitely stood out in the crowd wearing tennis shoes, a bright ski jacket, and an NFL sweatshirt.  I saw very few people wear sneakers, bright-colored clothing, or logo-emblazoned gear.  Had I known beforehand that I would be going there I probably would have dressed differently and tried to at least make an attempt to blend with the crowd.  I guess I’ll have to trade in my tennis shoes for some casual wear.  Darn.

From the "Things that make you go Hmm" department:  Today we visited the Hyundai Department Store, rode in a Hyundai taxi cab, and passed by numerous Hyundai apartment complexes as we drove through Seoul.  I’m going to have to get used to the omnipresence of Korean chaebol in Korea.  Imagine if General Electric built your car, home, and served as your primary bank and department store in the U.S.  This is very common in Korea.  Korean commerce is heavily concentrated in chaebol, or conglomerates.