Chuseok in Seoul

Chuseok was a lot a lot a lot of fun.
For Saturday and Sunday, Vanessa and I just sat and lounged around. We really needed some time to just hang out with out doing anything... it's been go go go, with her coming back and getting settled in, and all that jazz. So we just sat around and relaxed a lot.
On Monday we went to Seoul. Since we had a "whirlwind" introduction before she went home followed by months on skype, we haven't really had a lot of chances to have "dates". So on Monday night we put on a dress and a tie and headed down to Itaewon. I was relieved to find that my dress still fit.
We wound up at a really nice Indian restaurant behind the Hamilton Hotel (for those of you who know the area). It had a patio that was elevated and surrounded by trees, so the atmosphere was really nice, and made for a good date locale. The food was amazing, hot but very flavourful, and the atmosphere plus the excellent food made the higher than usual price definitely worth it. After dinner, we met up with everyone else who was in town (Jon, Emily, Meena and Bobby, and Bobby's mom and dad) for a few minutes. They headed to another restaurant for dinner, and we went out for some drinks with plans to meet up later.
We wound up on another patio out in front of the main drag of Itaewon, and we had chocolate mousse and Martinis (well, I had maritinis, I felt it was necessitated by the tie, plus, I love martinis). The drinks came with pretzels, which we quickly combined with the mousse. After two martinis, it became clear that I was in no condition to meet mommy and daddy Bobby for the first time, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.
Tuesday was an early morning. With it being Chuseok, and most Korean children being involved with the making and eating of "SongPyeon" (a sugar-filled rice dumpling), being bored by grandma or leaving feasts at the feet of graves, we headed to the one place where they would normally be on a holiday: Lotte World.
Lotte World is as close as you can get to Disneyland without actually crossing any legal lines. Imagine magic mountain, or whatever the hell Disney calls it, but with one extra peak, or a Mickey head outline but with pointy ears instead of round ones. It was... special.
Our companions for the day were Jon and Emily. They deserve a big thank you for suggesting the trip, and for being awesome companions for the day.
We started our day pretty early, around 9 am, and had breakfast at the only place that seemed to be open: Krispy Kreme. Forgetting that they give you freebies, I ordered myself three donuts, because it seemed likely that this would be my only food until lunch in the park. Then we got a bunch free too. So I started my day with five (I think) donuts and a large coffee. I could basically pass through walls from the vibrating.
Because most Koreans were busying themselves with the various customs and traditions of Chuseok, we were able to ride all the rides with much shorter than usual lines. Which meant: awesomeness.
We also ate hotdogs, which is much much more exciting than it should be. I loved eating that hotdog, let me tell you.
Anyway, they had a few familiar roller-coaster style rides, plus the drop-zone style thing, with the additional fun of a cork-screw ascent, which didn't really add much to the ride except to show you how high you were even compared to the surrounding very high buildings. That's another cool thing about Lotte World. It's right in the middle of town. It's just like they bought up a city block and built an amusement park.
After our quick hotdog lunch, we headed in to the indoor part to get out of the sun. Inside they had a few more roller coasters, and some more theme-parkish "experience" rides, like the ones you see based on movies. They had one roller coaster with a loop, and it was a bit of a disappointment. We all had our heads pretty rattled by the thing, and I had a headache that lasted about twenty minutes from it. And the line was really long, and it was a bit of a leer-fest. There are some creepy guys out there... all eyes and creepiness.
After that Vanessa wanted to go on the teacups equivalent, which was terribly named "Drunken Baskets". Wait, maybe not terribly. Maybe just terribly appropriately. But we thought that if you're going to ride the drunken basket, you should really make a go of it, so we both worked about as hard as we could to make that thing fly around. So hard, in fact, that Vanessa's pigtails stuck out backward like she was hanging her head back off a swing. So hard that our ride continued for a good minute after the actual ride stopped. So hard that I broke a sweat from whipping us around. I'm serious, I think people laughed at us, because they were starting to get off, and we were still whipping around and screaming, not realizing that the ride had ended.
There was another ride inside called "The Giant Loop", and it was possibly the worst ride I have ever been on. It's just as simple as it sounds. It's a row of cars that drive around a giant loop. They go back and forth until they build up momentum, and then they slowly roll around the loop. whoopee. We sat in the back car, so when it had almost but not quite enough momentum to swing us around in a circle, we were left for about 5 seconds or so with our entire weight being supported by a safety rod that locked in on our crotches. yeah, it was great. Did I mention that it stank like puke? Or that Vanessa was too small so her whole body weight actually shifted when we were upside down? It was a terrible ride.
We also hit up a candy store, which was awesome. We spent ten bucks on candy. I don't know if I have ever done that before. haha. But we discovered two new and previously unknown taste sensations. I hesitate to share them now, because I may be giving away a billion dollar recipe that rivals the Caramilk secret... but here I go anyway.
1) Caramel Apple Jelly Belly Jellybeans with Peanut M&Ms. It rivals Raisinettes for hard to explain explosive-tastey goodness.
2) Fuzzy peaches and Hershey Kisses. Seriously, just press the Hershey Kiss' point through that hole and give 'er a chew.

We headed back outside, and discovered that as they day went on, the lines had gotten longer. Luckily, Lotte World has this thing called "Magic Pass". You just pass your ticket under a scanner, and it prints you ticket that lets you skip to the front of the line sometime into the future. So we got magic passes for the long lines and then did a few of the shorter-lined rides while we waited. We did this one ride twice more, called the gyro swing, which is basically a big swing potato-masher shaped thing that spins while it swings back and forth. It's great because you get the awesome variation of plunging both forwards to a watery grave and backwards to a watery grave. Good times. Seriously though, there are few feelings for me that rival that of my stomach feeling left behind as I free-fall (or close).
Jon and Emily are masters of waiting games, so they were awesome companions for the long lines at the end of the day. Whether we were playing twenty questions (I still say that you technically COULD eat a screwdriver) or predicting how many thumbs would come up, it was a great time.
Once while we were waiting for the Gyro-swing, we were playing a game, and when we got to the front of the line, the girl working there asked me if I had had any beer. I understand, because we were laughing a lot and being boisterous. But when I said no, she leaned in to smell my breath! And then, because that apparently wasn't enough proof, she went to get another worker to come appraise my readiness for the ride. I was pretty offended by this point, because I hadn't had anything to drink all day! And then, when we were waiting in line for the ride for the second time, I saw a guy stumble off, clearly drunk, and almost ready to vomit, and they didn't say a thing! But, it's easy to single out foreigners here, unfortunately, and it does happen, no matter what anyone says, where local people are not questioned at all.
But I don't want to be bitter...
After our last ride (unfortunately this whole thing unfolded in the leadup to the last ride) we headed back to the hotel to clean up/nap/make room for dinner. We went back to Itaewon for dinner, and had a delicious meal at a Greek restaurant, where we all came dangerously close to exploding like that guy in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life". The Tzatziki was amazing, the company was good, and I have not enjoyed a beer with dinner as much as I did that night in a long time. I don't know why, but I felt like George Bluth with an ice cream sandwich for some reason ("I am making love to this ice cream sandwich"). We ate (at least Vanessa and I did, Jon and Emily shared a dish) to the point of danger, and then we headed to the same little patio where we had martinis and mousse the night before for some more of the same. We met up with Bobby and Meena again, and Jon had a cigar, and good times and great photos followed. And a big bill. Martinis are expensive. Who knew?
The next day Vanessa and I headed to... oh man, where did we go? I'm losing my memory in my old age...



We met back up with everyone around 3 or so at the train station, and then headed to a black market DVD market near the train station... of course, we didn't buy anything, because that would be illegal. But it was nice to just see it, haha. Also, I am now addicted to Grey's Anatomy (embarrassingly so), however that is unrelated. We rode first class on the way back, but I'm not sure it was worth it. We got access to the dining car, which was kind of cool, but they didn't have stuff that was on the menu, and then we saw people eating things that weren't on the menu, and the dining car experience was just a bit of a drag overall. We finally got back, and collapsed into bed.
Then it was two days of work before the weekend. Most people like the short weeks, but I found it to be a bit of a hassle more than anything. Also, I had been led to believe that there was no staff meeting on Thursday because we were keeping our classes form the week before, but I arrived (an hour after the meeting) to discover that I had in fact missed a meeting and now I had to scramble to prepare for new classes.
I also don't really like short weeks because I am a major creature of habit, so I find it difficult to prep stuff for just a couple of days when I am used to doing stuff that lasts a full week.
anyway... venting.