My sweet friend Katie recently moved to Korea to teach English! We were co-workers back at the high school I worked at in Arizona! She was an English teacher and I was the Admin Assistant to the Principal!
She's been living and working in Korea now for 2 months and came down to spend the weekend with me in Busan! Her town is about 3 hours by KTX (Korean speed train) north of mine! When I picked her up at the train station and hugged her, I said, "Can you believe we're hugging in ASIA?! I'm so happy your here! This is awesome!!!" ... It really was awesome!
Unfortunately, it was pouring rain all day, so we nixed the outdoor sightseeing and went straight to my place, dropped her bags, and met Aaron and Meagan for lunch at a small soup restaurant across the street from my apartment!
Then, we went back to my place and lounged around... played chicken foot, ate banana bread with real American canned FROSTING! (Thank you Katie!!!), played with Kitty, and did a lot of catching up!
Aaron sat close by, but completely tuned out whenever we talked about the high school we worked at in Arizona or the newest gossip amongst old co-workers! lol
Meagan came over and the 4 of us lounged around and watched Mission Impossible 4 before taking a taxi over to nearby Jagalchi Fish Market, one of the 10 famous landmarks of Busan!
(iphone photo = bad quality!)
We picked out 1 live fish to have cooked, 1 live fish to eat as sashimi, and 1 huge crab!
Then the guy took us upstairs to a table where they served us! )
Speaking of serving... The man at the table next to us had had a few too many soju's and was eager to feed Aaron some of his seafood! (Yes, this is actually common!)
Our food came out and was as delicious as it looked!
Meagan almost single handedly finished off an entire plate of sashimi!
Katie and Aaron split the crab!
I was lucky and got a few bites!
The people at the table next to us had ordered fried rice inside their crab head! Apparently the cook mixes all the head juices and butter together and fries the rice with it. We went for it too! It actually wasn't too bad!
Remember the drunk guy who fed Aaron with his chopsticks?! Well, he must have really liked us, because when the rice cake salesman came walking through the restaurant, he eagerly flagged the guy down to buy some for us! Not our favorite, but it was a sweet gesture for sure!
It was STILL raining, so we decided to stay indoors and take the subway to Lucky 7 Casino in Seomyeon! Neither of the girls had ever played Roulette, so it was really fun! Aaron didn't get to sit at our table because it was a busy night! So the three of us girls had a blast - laughing, clapping, cheering when we would win! Luckily the Japanese people who were sitting at our table thought we were great and would clap and cheer for us as well.. even when we would only with a coupled dollars! We ended up all walking away as winners! Aaron was the big winner though... He won 80,000 (about $75.00)!
It was a late night and we didn't wake up till almost 10am! Luckily the rain had left and the weather was turning out to be quite nice! Even Kitty agreed!
So, we met Sam and Gill in Nampodong for coffee at one of our favorite little cafes!
They loved Katie... of course! At about 1pm, we all bid farewell and Katie headed to the station to catch her train back home to Cheong-ju. (???)
Katie, thank you so much for coming to see me! Everyone loved you and had such a great time getting to know you! We miss you already!