Miso, the Oregon Trail, and a street fair

The production last night, Miso, was beautiful. Miso is the story of two young Koreans in love and the challenges they faced. Most of the production was dancing to live music. There were a few times when a narrator sang bits of information, but as it was in Korean I haven't the slightest clue what was said. The music and dancing were amazing. It looked like the female dancers were gliding around the stage.

After the production 6 of us decided to grab a drink in Sinchon (I spelled it wrong yesterday). We set out with no particular place in mind and simply picked an alley. For a point of reference someone compared Sinchon to Times Square. It isn't quite as big, but there are lots of flashing lights, busy alleys, people, and vehicles. The first thing that I noticed was that once off the main road in Sinchon there were carnival games EVERYWHERE! As with most carnival games guys were trying to win stuffed animals for various ladies. It was just so weird to see so many game booths down every alley.

We ended up at a bar called the Oregon Trail. It was dark and somewhat dreary. The group of people near us were sharing a yard of beer that was being dispensed by a crazy contraption that had ice contained in the main tube to keep the beer cold. It was quite impressive, although from what I tasted wasted on low quality Korean beer. Once settled we reviewed the menu (an English version with photos) and ordered our drinks. Jack Daniels seems to be the available whiskey of choice here, which is good for me. In addition to the standard drinks of beer and cocktails we also ordered soju, the Korean version of saki. It doesn't taste any better, but I have experienced it. We also ordered some appetizers. We ordered a lovely fruit platter and a potato platter. The fruit platter had pineapple, melon, apple, banana, grapes, tomatoes, an orange, fruit cocktail, and something that was tasty, but that I had never seen before. The potato plate was a combination of all things good. There were tater tots, waffle fries, regular fries, and seasoned fries. These wonderful things were served with ketchup and honey mustard. Needless to say there was nothing left over. Also, we were given bowls of little puffed treats. Apparently these treats are often served for free at bars here in Korea. These treats tasted like fruit loops. We had two rounds of those.

On our way to catch a taxi we passed a photo booth shop. A little shop with 4 photo booths big enough to hold groups larger than 6. We went it and had a blast taking silly pictures. After we finished with the photos (six in all) we had the opportunity to photo shop them. While I didn't participate in that portion there was a great deal of fun to be had adding special effects to the photos (such as stars and crowns). It was only once they printed out that I realized each photo was the size of a stamp and was actually a sticker. Can you imagine the fun stickers like those would be to put on student work?

All in all it was a memorable first Saturday night in Seoul.