an afternoon in kat's hood

After the wonderful bacon for lunch, kat and i explored her neighbourhood - hogye-dong - and the one where her school is - chongbuk-dong (not sure of that really... but she thinks so...) anyway, it was interesting to say the least... here are a few quirky things that i saw on the way to her house:

the "open" tree - it's full of open signs...

Marilyn Monroe! she's alive and well in Korea! this statue is in front of a restaurant... very odd.

we headed over to the area where her school is taking the easiest route we could - under the bridge!

it's only 1.5 meters clearance... but everyone uses this path to cross the trani tracks... otherwise it's a good twenty-minute detour... speed vs. convenience?? definitely speed! but even I had to duck under it! for the first time in my life i'm TALL!!! (of course the koreans all have to duck under it too...)

on the other side is another complex of apartments... a huge, huge, complex... these are just a few of the buildings. there are at least 10,000 people living in this small area... you'll get a better idea of the size when i post about the mountain climb, i took pictures of it from the top.

in the other direction there is farmland and mountains... how beautiful. if korea has nothing else, it has incredible landscapes.


while walking around the hood, we came upon the fire station - where the mascot is a whale holding a baby and a fire hose... i took a picture of the fire trucks in the station, but the firemen came out and made me delete it... weird. we thought they were coming to ask if we wanted pictures of them, but they were freaking out that i snapped a shot... after we "walked" away, i took this one quickly... not very good, but if you enlarge it (click on it) you'll get an idea!

then we headed to the Homever... a big grocery store where they had all these chuseok gift packs on sale... and the sales ladies were all dressed in traditional clothing - i had to get a shot of it... she was freaking out a little that i wanted to take her picture, but she finally agreed.and of course, what would chuseok be without a SPAM gift pack... it's a little sick how much they like SPAM over here... still haven't eaten any myself, and will steer clear of it for as long as i can!

this last shot is a just a nice one that i took on our walk home... it's my desktop on my computer right now, i just think it's really nice, hope you do too! ...up next on documentarist - our night at the WA Bar... drunken koreans, chicken wings and too much beer! stay tuned.