Subway Tour

Let's just say we had an awesome time yesterday!

Our subway tour started at 9:15 am, but we headed out the door around 8:40 am to get there a little early. We needed to get some Won at the ATM, and the lodge where we were meeting at had one. We were the first ones there , and we waited for like 15 minutes before someone else showed up. We had thought that it maybe got cancelled and we didn't know of it.

Any who! The second people that came in were the Mason family. They were very sweet and we started off chatting right away. They have one little girl and her name is Madison (she is the cutest). She is 2 months older than Story, but is almost as tall as Mackey! I was so happy to find out that they live on our road, a couple houses down. I don't make friends easily, but when Andrew is around, I guess I feel more comfortable talking to strangers. He is a social butterfly, and I tend to follow the lead of who I'm around...blah blah blaaaahhh

Well...lets just say, I think our families hit it off!

Finally, others started to come in and Joe (remember JOE from the spouse orientation ?) lead us out of the camp. We walked left off of Camp Walker and took off to the subway station. 

Side note: There were A LOT of stairs involved with this tour, so if on the video I'm out of breath, that is why (and I'm out of shape :) )

Here is the Video:

Ok, first we had to decided if we were just going to buy tokens for the train or buy a TopPass that you just load up with Won and don't have to worry about tokens. We choose the TopPass since we will be living here for 3 years and we think we will use it a lot (plus it was only like 2,500 Won...almost $2.50) Only a couple of us wanted it so we had a short line to go through while the others waited for about 10 minutes for the tokens.

Side note: We only had about 30 people on the tour compared to the 90 that signed up. Thank you!

Then went down some more stairs to where the train was. It was neat seeing it for the first time come speeding by. By the way, Andrew and I have never been on a subway that we can remember. We hopped on board and away we went to the next 3 or 4 stops. I watched a you tube channel called Eat Your Kimchi (they talked about everything Korea) before we left to come here and they said that Korean people hate it when Americans are loud on the subway. That's why I was trying to be quite.

Our first stop Joe took us to the stop where E world is. E world is a amusement park in Daegu and we are defiantly going there when it starts to warm up.

Side note: When we were walking to E world I was walking with Mackey and she had her hood on over her head. A older Korean guy just walked past us coming from the other way and knocked her hood off on purpose and just started laughing...if you know Mackey, she did her uahhh (growl)..it was the funniest thing ever!

In front of  E World

Joe also took a group picture of us all..but I don't know if he will be sending us a copy. Soon, we left E world and headed back to the subway. Joe then gave us a potty break and I took the girls to the bathroom where we saw this

Why yes..that IS a toilet in the ground.

Luckily they had 2 REAL toilets, we just had to wait a couple minutes for them. You also have to grab your toilet paper outside of the stall before you go in.

See that to the right on the wall...that is not paper towel for your hands my friend..that is your toilet paper!

Side note: This might not be in all bathrooms around Korea, but I don't easily gag at smelly smells...but OMG! I thought I was going to throw up..no joking!!

This was right outside the restroom where we stopped.

 Restroom break over...more walking ..more train riding and we head over to the stop where the Seomun Market is. Right before we went to the market.. Joe gave us a heads up when to be back ..I think that was around 11:30 and we had to be back at 12:30.

This little Cutie is Madison, our new friend!

The girls where all about the hugging!

 We then headed toward the market and the first couple stores grabbed my attention. They grabbed my attention so much, we bought something there..remember in the video I said we bought Story a dress...here it is

Love it! Story wore it to church this morning :)

And here is the shop I fell in love at first sight with:

There were so many beautiful dresses to look at that my eyes were going nuts. This dress wasn't but 15,000 Won.

We also found that doughnut looking thing and bought one. That's when the chaos started. We thought we would just move off to the side to eat our dough nut looking thing and notice many people were stopping to have a look at us and the girls (mostly the girls!)  They were saying stuff to us in Korean and we just stood there while they watched us eat (now I know how caged animals feel like at the zoo). One man even got out his wallet and gave both the girls 1,000 Won. It was sooooo weird!!

There were so many shops I wanted to go in, but we didn't have a lot time. I thought to myself, this would be an awesome place to go for when mom comes to visit..she would love it! A few minutes after walking around the market we ran into the Mason family and they were with one of the guys that was interpreting for our group. Story and Mackey's hands were getting cold so we stopped at a shop and bought them some gloves. We then just walked around admiring all the different shops they had and all the same shops they had...

Later, it was time to meet up with the group again and we walked back to the subway to go to our next stop. I was so hungry at this time and was thankful that's where we were heading (to eat).

Our next stop was Daegu Station...downtown Daegu. That place is amazing! We walked a good while and found ourselves at Chicken Kitchen. Our food was really good, other than the sweet potato noodles on bottom.

Andrew pouring our water

One thing that I found interesting was they don't charge you for ordering a soft drink..SWEET! All this food and our bill was only 25,000 Won.

They also gave us these nice little red aprons so we didn't mess our clothes up. We are beginners at chopsticks and the aprons were a good idea!

After lunch Joe told us all where to meet him back at (and gave us directions) and we totally understood them...well until we stepped back out to the real world. We thought we would stick around the Mason family since we enjoyed their company and it would be nice to walk around with some else that didn't know the city..lol. We thought we needed to find where we were to meet back before we shopped around. Well...it took us almost a whole hour to find it . We got so desperate we started yelling BURGER KING? BURGER KING? (that was one of the places Joe had said when giving directions) .We walked everywhere..and finally found someone that looked American and asked them where Burger King was. They told us (thank you!) and we headed in that direction. While on our way, we found an ice cream shop and decided we could use some of that in this cold weather :).
Here is what we got:

Ice Cream Cake

Some kind of Cappuccino Delight

While waiting for our food...Andrew saw someone else's left over food and told me to take a picture of it...I denied , so he got my phone from me and look it...he thought it was funny

See the smiley?

After we eat our ice cream we headed down the street where I saw this and had to take a picture..I even asked him if I could...love his look

I think he was directing traffic.

We finally made it back to our people in the center of the downtown Daegu shopping area. Madison, Mackey, Story and another little girl started dancing on stage and people started to gather to watch them. I was so funny that total strangers were having fun watching our kids play. Then little Madison started hugging everyone and our girls followed along. Jenna (Madison's mom) said we should bring them down here once a week and put a bucket out. The girls loved every minute of it and was sad when it was time to go.

We headed back to the subway to go home.

We said goodbye to our helpers and new friends.

The girls were so tired.


Side note: People stand up and let old people and kids sit down  before they do..

Last picture of the day.

When we got the subway we walked back to Camp Walker and gave Jenna and Matt my number so we could get together again.

When we made it home the girls both went down for a nap (3:30) and didn't wake up till around 7:00 that night...Story didn't wake up till around 9:00. We had a blast and I can't wait till we go back out there again.

Andrew said this about Daegu Station, "We finally have found a place to take people when they come visit."

Bless you all!

Coby