Subterranean Seoul

This morning, I managed a 3.5-mile run up part of Namsan mountain this morning, but I called it quits early in an attempt to be nice to my immune system. Today, there were tons of older Koreans out, wearing silly exercise clothes (visors, bright pink vests, etc.) and doing funny sit-ups and being generally adorable. The boyfriend said that towards the end of his run, an old Korean man gave him the thumbs up!

It has been raining non-stop in Asia. Seriously. This business needs to stop.

Since the forecast was still calling for rain today (and forevaaaaar), we headed to Coex Mall, which is a humongous underground shopping center. I imagine that it is like the Mall of America, but underground. There are several restaurants in addition to a large food court, four hotels, a big movie theater, and so much more.

For example, there is the Kimchi museum, which tells you all about the wondrous history and health benefits of pickled cabbage. I learned that it's good for your colon:


There was a tasting room with several different varieties. I did my best to express my feeling of [radish] kimchi with face:


Two seconds later, I realized that I had dribbled kimchi juice all over myself:


There was also a fun place to pose and say "kimchi!"



Jessica, this is for you:


Also inside the Coex Mall? A full aquarium! There was some weird exhibit at the beginning with common household objects (toilets, bed frames, fridges, etc.) turned into fish tanks. Some domineering Korean girl made her boyfriend take a picture like this by the mailbox-aquarium. When in Rome/Seoul...


The World Cup is coming soon! Obviously, the world needs more goldfish chasing after a soccer ball. Fighting!


This electric eel looked like a giant dong. I announced this loudly to the boyfriend in front of a ton of children...who mercifully could not understand/appreciate my crassness.


I love cheesey photo ops:



Towards the end of the exhibits, there was a giant underwater tunnel with a moving walkway. While moving at an excruciatingly slow pace, you could observe the sharks and sea turtles. However, apparently, the cool thing to do is to ignore all the animals and instead, to take couples pictures. I know this because I saw approximately 23983284230 couples doing the same thing.


Blind cave salamanders! I love these things. In third grade, I made a model of a cave and put a fake one in it:


After the aquarium, we wandered around the mall for awhile. I kind of hate shopping, but I did look around for some gifts and then found some Korean textbooks and workbooks to teach myself. I think I did a good job contributing to South Korea's economy today.

Dinner was quite an adventure. Following a suggestion in the guidebook, we found a hole-in-the-wall diner in the business district. The guidebook failed the mention that no one in the restaurant would speak English. Fortunately, they had one menu in English.

We tried the house specialities: mandu (dumplings--not pictured), sujebi (thick, hand-torn noodles in an egg and chicken broth),


...and kimbap!


Tomorrow, we are going to try to figure out the bus system to visit a friend of the family's family. Let's hope we don't wind up in...who knows where.