Exit Impossible

I met another English speaking person today! For all of you surrounded by English speakers, don't take it for granted, let me tell you.

Let me give you a run down on the night:

We set up to meet at the Bupyeong subway station at 7:00 at exit three. Now, because I hate being late, I headed out with lots of time to spare. When I got to the subway station a train pulled up so I hopped on... it turned out to be the rapid train and it basically took me half the time to get there than I had allotted. So I was half an hour early and once stepping off the train realized that this was good because the place was huge!

I find a map and look for exit 3.. do you think there is one? NOPE. I see everything up to 21 except number three. This is now the second time this has happend. I tried to ask a Korean guy by me and he was nice and pretended to look and then shrugged and said "Don't know" and walked away. I stood there looking helpless and no one offered help. Then I saw white people (hooray!), so I ran over and asked them. They had never heard of an exit 3. Finally I get an answer from a guy that worked there and headed in the direction but there were no signs indicating the exit. I stood at the exit for awhile wondering if I was in the right place and after ten minutes decided that this couldn't be it. I went in search of a phone and called the guy and told him #3 didn't exist and to meet me at exit 6. All was well in the end, but a very stressful experience.

We headed out to find somewhere to eat. We ended up getting chicken galbi or something. You can get a bunch of different versions, the one we had was semi spicy chicken (mom you would have died), potatoes, cabbage (I think) and some other stuff. They cooked it at our table and we ordered some rice and chowed down.

The conversation was a little forced and was mostly me asking questions about his time in Korea. It was as natural as it can be with two total strangers meeting up in a foreign place I guess.

After dinner we wandered to find a western bar to get some beer (we only wanted a western one because they don't make you order food when you drink. At Korean bars they do apparently, although I don't know this first hand). When we got to the western bar all the beer was super expensive (Moosehead for 6,000Won anyone? I don't think so). We both ended up ordering Korean beer for 4,000Won... still not cheap, but better.

A couple of beers later and it's about 10:00 so we decide to head back, he had to work in the morning and I had my health check in the morning (which I don't know a ton about but I am sure it will be awkward and uncomfortable and I will blog all about).

So it was great to hang out with another English speaker. I relied on him to order and decide where to go since he had been here before too. Not sure how often we'll hang out since our work hours are kind of different and he always heads to Seoul on the weekend to meet up with his girlfriend and friends, but was still nice to meet up with someone who understood what I was going through!

Meeting up with two different girls on Saturday. Pretty excited about that. The second one is a fellow Canadian so I'm sure we'll bond over our love for hockey and burly men (two things that Korea definitely doesn't have).

Well it's night for me Canada so I'm off to bed, enjoy your work day!