Eggs, my daily commute and Digital City

Last night I ventured to Mokdong to explore my friend Tyler's neighborhood. A completely different feel from Insadong and much more of a family neighborhood. We started out visiting E-mart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mart) which they claim is a Korean version of Walmart. Personally, I think it's more of an upscale Target. We then went to a local Korean barbeque restaurant for dinner. I'm still not able to order anything nor can I pronounce anything even remotely close to how it should be, so luckily Tyler has got the food ordering down...

After we were about half way through our meal we noticed that the table next to us had ordered something that, from afar, looked interesting. We decided to order it - by pointing at their table. We were a bit surprised to find what we had ordered was a pot of scrambled eggs. I mean, that makes perfect sense as a side dish with Korean barbeque, right?

Today I experienced my first morning commute on the subway. One hour door to desk - including a 15 minute walk in the rain.

Not.

Fun.

I'll try to snap some photos in the coming days, however - and I'm not exaggerating - it may be difficult to raise my arms up to actually take a picture. Forget thinking that it's a leisurely subway ride where you can read or relax. Think more like what it must feel like to be one of the people crammed in here...

Envision an ant farm. You now have a visual of the Seoul subway system at 7 a.m. I can only imagine what it's going to be like come June when it's actually hot here (remember, it IS hot here - they just don't think so...).

My afternoon was spent in Suwon at Samsung's Digital City, which is about 40 minutes south of Seoul. I'm not really sure I can actually describe this "city" (the picture below gives you an idea). For starters, there are 20,000+ people working on the campus. The security was insane, mainly because all of their research and development facilities are located here. I'll be commuting there two days a week. Remember my recap of the morning commute above? Add this 40 minute jaunt on top of it...now picture the look of excitement on my face about it.