My weekend food story.

(In Tintin Style) "It all started when... I went with Brian for breakfast on the Yongsan US Army base on Saturday morning. It has become a bit of a running joke that two minutes after I receive my food, Brian will look over and find my plate empty. For a little person one wonders where it all goes, but perhaps after three fat slices of Texas style French toast and sausage topped with whipped butter and maple syrup, "little person" will no longer be an accurate description.

"Now this breakfast was full in the knowledge that I'd be meeting one of my cousins for lunch in Apgujeong. She wanted to meet to exchange some gifts, and as far as it was nice to see her, the language barrier rather stinted conversation somewhat. Still, what communicates better than food, so we went for sushi rolls. It was good, if my stomach wasn't groaning a little.

"So the afternoon plan was to meet up with my multi-national group of friends for some bowling on base, but Jaideep, being from that huge terrorist threat of a country -- Singapore -- was shouted down and escorted away. Rather than leave him stranded we went to Ho Lee Chow in Itaewon for Chinese food. So Mr Lee sure does some good chow, but being the third meal out in day the rate of consumption was slowing on my part. You'd've thought this would be the last meal of the day. But no. I decided to skip salsa class that evening (shock :O) in favour of Brian's dance partner's birthday party. Little did I realise that this would involve a full sit down Italian meal. The exercise probably would have been a better option, but I'm sure the drinking followed by dancing at Caliente compensated, right?

"Sunday we - the Brit, the Canadian, the American, the Korean, the German and the Singaporian - met up in Hongdae for some Indian-?-style curry. After wandering the quirky clothing stores we wandered back in the direction of our usual hangout in Itaewon. There we met Jenny, who in her busy work/study schedule, managed to fit us in so we could celebrate her birthday. Baskin Robbins icecream cake and noraebang all the way baby! We didn't realise we were going with an actual professional jazz singer, but this didn't put the guys off doing possibly the worst rendition (and that's saying something) of Bohemian Rhapsody. :

"To top the weekend off, we went for Thai food at a local haunt. I'm not sure Brian's warning that anyone-to-split-food-with-me-should-claim-their-share-well-in-advance-for-fear-of-not-getting-any-food-at-all was needed in this instance. The company was great, but I think we were all rather bursting at seams by this point. But it sure was a multi-national food induced weekend with a wonderful group of multi-nationals to share it with^.^"

Norae-blogging

The cosy little street that I live on in the suburbs of the big smoke is home to a supermarket, a hair shop, several restaurants, a handful of bars, a couple of fast food outlets, and 3 noraebangs. I'd say this is a pretty standard set up for the side streets of Seoul. All of the above establishments have their own welcome signs, be they in bunting, logo-ed up vans, or the favourite: neon lights. There's always a man with a megaphone selling today's produce, and everyone is zigzagging up and down the street making their way from the mandu shop to the kimbap lady.

Lauren was due to leave Seoul on Thursday morning to set sail for our Japanese neighbours. After a never-ending course farewell meal at a traditional Korean restaurant with our co-workers she had two options: take a fleeting sleep and get up in 7 hours time, or spend a final night with her university friends (a.k.a. her fellow English teacher and boyfriend) on the beer and soju. I say she chose wisely.

Now I always thought Seoul life was 24 hours. A life of convenience if you will. I was put right when I left the PC Bang (in the days before home internet) at 1am to find no convenience store to sell me strawberry milk; another time when I wandered out at 8am in search of breakfast at the bakery but to no avail. Inconvenient. Heading out in the torrential rain at 2am on Wednesday night we were faced with a dark street. Quite the opposite to the usual buzzing daytime scene. Our options were Noraebang 1, Noraebang 2, or Noraebang 3.

Apparently it's illegal to sell alcohol in these singing rooms, but little seedy places like the ones listed above waver this rule. A couple of hours in a private room with a couple of dodgy mics, a list of dated songs to blast out and a bit of illegal beer, and Lauren was right set to board her 4.30am bus to Seoul station. I got a text at 10am to say she was on the boat. A good night had by all.