A challenge

What? You want me to only eat things that are cute?
Okay.



This is a bao bun that was pink, filled with something yellow and had a face.
This photo looks a little gross but it was really cute.
It didn't taste so good. But it was cute!



This was a bag of dried beans(?) with little pieces of hard candy mixed in. Pretty good.

Kyoto

Before Seoul, Dan and I went to Kyoto.
He posted some beautiful photos of our trip on his site.
http://danhenrick.com/

Happy Birthday to me

I got to spend my birthday roaming around Seoul doing whatever I wanted.

I wandered around the arty neighborhood and found these awesome earrings.
They were my birthday present to my self.

They are just too perfect. The packaging was wonderful.



Then I had this. I slyly looked at the other dinners to figure out how to eat it. You crack the raw egg into the stew. Give yourself a portion of rice from the big stone bowl(it's not shown). Then pour water into your rice bowl to eat after the meal. It was good but spicy.

Then I went to a giant shopping plaza where there are all these high rise shopping malls. Tons and Tons of them. The way to the malls is lined with food stalls selling all sorts of food. I didn't feel comfortable taking photos if I wasn't buying something.
So I don't have any photos of those. I really wanted to see a movie and Blood Diamond was the next showing.

It was awesome. The ticket seller didn't speak English but we figured it out. It's assigned seating so you pick where you want to sit. I got some popcorn and settled in. I cried through a lot of it but it has a good ending. Leo is my new boyfriend.

I tried to window shop after the movie but was getting some very hostile stares from shop girls and they wouldn't let me look at things. I couldn't figure out if it was hostile shop girls in general, or anti American/Western hostile stares or maybe I wasn't cued in on proper Korean etiquette. It only really happened in smaller independent shops so I'm going with anti-Western.
A birthday girl can only take so much so I called it a night.

Thanks to Dan's family for sending a care package to Japan that had some birthday goodies for me. Pirate Booty! Grape Nuts! Candy! Tums! (it's a calcium supplement) Thanks to my parents for the gift card, I used some of it to buy dinner in Seoul!

Signed yours truly,
Kate Depp Damon Owen Farrel Fillion DiCaprio O'Leary - (Amy G., Did I forget anyone?)

Where I stayed

The guest house I stayed in was off this alley.



This is the courtyard and my room. You left your shoes on the little ledge where my bag is. All the rooms are warmed through heated floors. It was really cozy and warmer than here in Japan where we have a big kerosene heater in the main room.


My room.



She sat out in the sun all day. The house phone is there next to her. I'm not sure how this works when is rains or snows. Maybe they bring it in.



This is a little touristy candy shop. They sing songs and make the candy in front of you. It's lots of fun.
It's a traditional court cake called Kkul Tarae (honey skein). It's made of ripened honey and malt, which was once presented to the king and valuable guests.

It's sweet and once it melts in your mouth it forms a hard block over your teeth like taffy. I got the almond flavor.

Good things about Seoul

Can anyone tell me which way to go for line 3?

I'm going to focus first on what was good about my visit.

The subway system is amazing. It is by far the easiest subway system I've used and I'm including foreign and domestic.

You would have to be extremely drunk or mildly learning disabled to get lost and even then if you can identify colors you could find your way around.

Basically it was built with the English speaking tourist in mind.

All the stations have maps with English and Hangul. There are 8 different subway lines all of them with a different color.

All the transfer stations have these big, bold lines on the wall with arrows pointing you to the transfer site. I've been in so many airports and subways where you wander around looking for a little sign or they word things in a strange way with a vague arrow.
This was perfect. Giant color coating is the way to go. I never once got lost due to the subway and the tickets were easy to buy and cost about a dollar a ride.

On the trains they announce all the stops in Korean and English and some of the trains have T.Vs.

Yaay.

Now the annoying.
I was warned that Koreans shove and that they are a proud people.
I'm glad I was prepared for the shoving but that didn't make it any less aggravating.

In Chicago on a packed rush hour train you have to shove on to fit. That's to be expected. It was the same in Korea.
No problem.
The difference is at home when navigating a tight space you maneuver around people avoid bumping into a should here or a bag there. In Korea rather that moving the couple of inches to avoid you they just throw the shoulder.
At home this happens but it's considered a little rude and the person is in a hurry or careless. Here that's just the way it is.
I couldn't help but feel the constant invasion of personal space as a rude. I felt so harassed every time I went out in a large crowd. And it's always a large crowd. I was so overwhelmed by the people everywhere. Everywhere just walls of people.
Getting to any major destination required being emerged in a giant mass of people for at least 40 minutes. There wasn't any break. No side streets that were less crowded. Just people everywhere.

Throw in the fact that I had cramps and back aches the whole time I was pretty miserable.

Back from Seoul

As some of you may or may not know I just got back from Seoul South Korea.
Why? I had this little issue of not having a visa to stay in Japan longer than 90 days.
But.
If you leave and come back it renews.
Technically I wasn't doing anything wrong. But I did get some hard stares from Customs officials and confused questions by airline employees. It's all good and I'm here from another 90 days.

I choose Seoul because it was the cheapest easiest country to get to from lovely Hakodate. Hakodate has one international gate and it goes to Korea. I got a deal but had to stay for five nights!

Five nights in a big city that I didn't really want to be in.
Don't start boo hooing what a terrible life I have. I know that I sound selfish or something but I really don't enjoy big cities.
I'm also not making a lot of money right now so I have to be conservative with what I do.

I lived in Chicago for seven years and I have developed opinions about cities and why I don't like them.

I like to travel to places that interest me in someway and or inspire me. I've never been that curious about Korea.

I got a Lonely Planet and started researching what would be interesting there to me.

But basically it's a big Westernized city of 10 million shoving people. The next few posts will be about my trip.

Cool Link

This is a cool link with some really interesting stuff.

http://www.paumes.com/

email

Yaaay
I think I figured out the problem with my email and hopefully it's fixed.
So I should be getting emails now. Yaay.

K

Email

It seems for the past couple of weeks I haven't been receiving a lot of email. I think it started around Christmas.

It was confirmed when I was working on a freelance job and missed some important emails.

This is really upsetting because I love getting email. I really appreciate it when people take the time to write because it gets lonely here sometimes. It's especially frustrating knowing something was sent and still didn't get it.


I try to respond to people in a timely manner. I've lapsed on a couple of people but I'm pretty good about getting back right away.

So if you have sent something and haven't heard back from me please try sending it again.

Okay that's it. thanks

Hello

I've updated my website
http://www.kateoleary.com/

I've also added some products to my cafepress shop
http://www.cafepress.com/arsonistcow

This guy is available on Postcards (package of 8 for 7.99)
Come on how can you resist? Just in time for Valentines Day!
Cafepress offers $5 flat shipping rate for the first five items. That should cover all your Valentines.
You can cover them all with Monkey Poot.



We're off to Kyoto for a few days and then I'm going to Seoul for a week.

:)