Itaewon and Tim Burton

Today was one of those days where a lot of different things happened. Amy, Van, and I headed out at 11am to Itaewon, which is a part of Seoul known for selling clothes in so-called "Big Sizes" for Westerners. It's located near the military bases in Seoul, and turned out to be quite a seedy, dirty sort of place. Compared to the rest of what I've seen of Korea, I was quite disappointed by it all. The place was full of t-shirts with slogans complaining about being based in Korea, or over-priced merchandise because the Hilton Hotel was in the area too. It was also full of miserable, rude people who would wander around the streets loudly and complain of the place being "provincial" or who would say "It's locked. That's why he has to come and open it" when we stopped by to go into a shop (the man did unlock the shop at that point, but there wasn't a sign or anything, and there was no need for this American man to be such a smarmy so-and-so to someone who was just going to try and enter a shop. If it hadn't been for the shock of what he said, Amy and I both would probably have gone for him at that point.

All in all, Itaewon's not really worth a visit unless you absolutely must go there for something you absolutely cannot find anywhere else. It's filthy and old and full of people who hate life and the world. Avoid it if you can. Compared to Myeong-dong or the shops in Bucheon, it's really a horrible place to be.

After Itaewon, we met up with Brooke and Beks to visit the Tim Burton exhibit at the Seoul Art Museum. Tim Burton, for those of you who do not know, did the Nightmare Before Christmas, the Corpse Bride, and most recently Alice in Wonderland and Frankenweenie. He's known for dark humor and stop-motion animation. The exhibit was a continuation of one that had been originally done in the U.s. (primarily in New York). As the only Asian stop, Seoul's Art Museum was really popular, so popular in fact that it was hard just trying to get into the place. Tickets were 12,000won each, or about $12, and then there were so many sold they had to break up the number of people into groups of 100 to let in at a time so they didn't get overpacked. So we had an hour and a half wait before we got in. It was really good though, showing old work he'd drawn on napkins and paintings he did when he was younger all the way through the original Batman costumes, Edward Scissorhands props from the movies, and stop-animation clay figures used for the films themselves. As an artist, he really is an interesting piece of work. There was one wall covered in drawings he'd done of idioms taken literally. So flossing between the ears was someone actually running floss between their ears, and "Jen and Joe like to hold hands" was a picture of people just holding extra hands.

The front gate.

Part of the exterior.

Another part of the exterior.

The characters sitting in the windows.

Amy, Brooke, and Beks while we were waiting in line for tickets.

Then on our way home in the subway station we ended up being interrogated by an elderly drunk man who wanted to practice his English. When he learned we were teachers he wanted to buy us all coffee, and we couldn't avoid him, so we ended up with coffee we didn't really want. He then informed Brooke that she was fat and that was frowned upon in Korea, but that she also had "a real treasure, and would be powerful" whatever that meant. Somedays Korea can be a really weird place. After escaping him with our unwanted coffee (he wasn't a threat, he was just way too friendly, and over here they just tell you what they think straight away), we finally managed to make it home, or at least to the next station for dinner at a Japanese burger place called Mos Burger, which sells Melon soda. It tasted a bit like jolly rangers watermelon flavor, so I didn't have more than a sip, but the food was nice, and we had onion rings.

By that time we were finally worn out and it was 8:00 at night, so we headed back on the train to go home, and that leads us to this point.

Tomorrow we shall go and see about getting hair cut, but for now, that's me, signing off. :)