October 2, 2014

This past weekend, with Truman outta the woods, we actually went out and did some stuff!

On Saturday we went and saw our first movie in Korea at our neighborhood CGV theater. We bought our tickets at the theater on a large electronic machine. It had an English option so it was pretty simple to figure out. Our tickets were ₩10,000 each ($10) which is comparable to theaters in the US. Then we bought some popcorn and drinks at the snack bar; it was only ₩8,500 for a large popcorn and 2 drinks! There was a little confusion at first because we didn’t realize there were two types of popcorn – sweet and regular. The sweet looked kind of like a caramel corn? We’ll have to try it out next time. We waited in the lobby next to the arcade until about 10 minutes before the film. Then our theater number was displayed and we could go into our theater. We saw an American movie, Begin Again, with Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo. It’s probably not a movie we would have typically seen but it was very enjoyable – I would call it “a feel good” movie – and it was almost disorienting to step out of the theater and back into Korea. ( I apologize for the poor photos!)

Where we bought our tickets

The lobby

Squid Snack!

Begin Again

Arcade

After leaving the movie we hopped on the subway and went up to Ilsan to walk around the Lake Park. The weather has gotten quite a bit cooler so we thought we would take the opportunity to finally walk around the entire park. It really is a nice park to have nearby and once Truman is finished with crate rest it will be a great place to relax on a weekend afternoon. We couldn’t leave Ilsan without having curry for dinner at our favorite stall in La Festa. We have money now so we each got our own curry! Lucky for us, there was also a talent show going on in the background.

Talent show behind me!

All in all, it was a pretty laid back Saturday. On Sunday we spent the afternoon in Itaewon. First we wanted to check out the Seoul Central Mosque. After visiting Istanbul last year, the mosque was rather underwhelming. I think my expectations were a little too high. However, it was still an impressive building; it was built in 1976 and is Seoul’s only mosque.

Seoul Central Mosque

The neighborhood around the mosque has a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants, bakeries, and imported products. We stopped in a Turkish bakery and picked up some baklava – yum!

It smelled so sweet!

Then down another block we stopped in a store where we could find anything we could want – at a price that is. They had 12 packs of Dr. Pepper and A&W Root Beer, but we held strong and bought only a single can of each.

For lunch we stopped at Mr. Kebab and had some tasty lamb kebabs. They were much better than some others we’d had a while back at a different place.

Chicken with lamb in the background

We wrapped up our afternoon with beers at Craftworks Taphouse. They had a nice outdoor patio and a good selection of craft beers that they brew. We will definitely be going back!