Catching Up!

Well the rest of last week (all one day of it...) sailed by uneventfully and it was finally time for the weekend.  On Saturday afternoon, Angie, Noyoun and I headed out to Gangnam to meet people and visit the Dr. Fish Cafe.  We met up with Brigid, English Tom, Sal, Laura from Chicago and Brigid.  Mina (Korean American Tom's friend) met up with us later at the cafe.  After struggling juuust a little bit to find it, we made it into the cafe.  It is really quite a nice place with comfy chairs, people scattered all around reading and talking, and unlimited fresh baked bread when you order drinks.  We sat down for a while and had our drinks before it was time for us to go up to the Dr. Fish tanks.

Before you got to the tanks, you had to wash your feet off in this little foot shower.  Then you picked at seat at one of the tanks.  We ended up in the tank with the smaller fish by some random chance.

One ot two tanks with seat cushions.

The fishies were definitely ready to eat.  They were swimming around with their mouths open at even a HINT of feet. If fish could salivate, I think these were doing it.

Laura and I posing.

The "big fish" tank with Angie, Brigid, Noyoun, and Tom.

The fish were definitely an interesting feeling as they nibbled on your feet.  Some people with really ticklish feet did not handle it too well and had to keep taking their feet out (ahem, ahem, Natasha and Sal).

Sal could not handle it.  Hence the face.

Here is a little video to show you how thins went down:

Fish Feet from Meaghan Shanahan on Vimeo.

We had quickly lost track of time so we realized we were now going to be late to the baseball game.  We said goodbye to Noyoun and Mina and booked it out of the Dr. Fish Cafe (stopping to wash and sanitize our feet in the foot shower, mind you).  We headed over to Sports Complex to meet up with Esther and Sue and  see Seoul's Doosan Bears take on Busan's Lotte Giants.

The stadium is on the same complex as the Olympic Stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies were held for the Seoul Olympics.  This is the outside of the baseball stadium.

It is very interesting to me that all of the sports teams here have their sponsoring company as part of their team name (and cheers).  Doosan and Lotte are both companies here in Korea, so you have to imagine going to a game like the NY WalMart Yankees versus the Baltimore Target Origles.  So random.  We bought our tickets and headed into the stadium. (On the way in you can also buy bags of beer.  Like big cans were about $2.50 so we brought some in with us so that we wouldn't have to pay concession stand prices.  Can you imagine being able to bring your own food and drinks into any professional sports game at home?)

The tickets were only 8,000won, or about $6.50.  Little did we know that it was because we would be STANDING the whole game...

Yeah...turns out that baseball is MAD POPULAR here and the stadium was absolutely PACKED.  Like people-didn't-have-seats-so-they-were-sitting-two-deep-on-all-of-the-steps-creating-a-gigantic-fire-trap packed.

The packed stadium.

Good thing we didn't need to get up and down the steps too quickly for anything, as there were bodies all over them!

Brigid and Laura (the obvious Cubs fans from Chicago) and I at the game.

Enjoying the sun.

Overall the game was (as) decent (as a baseball game can be), even though the Doosan Bears (home team) lost to the Giants by one point/run/whatever they call it.  After the game, we went back over to Gangnam to chill at a restaurant and have some drinks (mmm, pomegranate flavored soju is delicious...).  The menu at this restaurant was absolutely ABSURD.

Gigantic and overwhelmed with pictures.  As Laura said "as a graphic designer, this is my WORST NIGHTMARE!"