Korean friends

Yesterday afternoon, Kait and I met up with two of our co-workers to go downtown Daegu together. We started off by going to what is called a DVD room, a place where you can go and choose from several DVDs to watch right then and there. We had been to one of these in Thailand, and it was just a small room with a few cushions and a TV/DVD player. But this was definitely different: after we had all met up, we went straight to the DVD bang (room) and we remarked that it felt like we were walking in to a movie theater. In a sense, we were. Once we chose our movie (The Bucket List, a good movie, we all thought afterwards,) we headed to our room after having purchased some snacks at the front counter, and I had to chuckle a little after what I saw: teddy bears. That's right, I walked in and saw a very comfortable lounge bed (for a lack of a better description) that was covered with pillows and three medium-sized teddy bears. (Only in Korea would this be commonplace.) Also, it was not a TV we watched, but a small screen that used a projector that we had in our own room, so it was basically a small, private movie theater where a person could watch an out-of-theaters movie whenever s/he would want. Pretty cool, I say.

After that, we went to a very nice Vietnamese restaurant and had a great dinner together. I was worried most of the time that there would be some awkward silence between us all - as there often is when we are with Korean people due to the cultural differences - but we all got along just fine. (Both of our co-workers are near-fluent in English.) The restaurant itself was very beautifully designed, and the servers were wearing some cool traditional Vietnamese garb.

During dinner, they asked us if we had ever been to a tea house in Korea yet, and we replied no, even though we wanted to while we were in Seoul. So after dinner, we went to the tea house. It was in a small pocket tucked away from downtown, and it seemed to be pretty traditional. On the exterior were stone steps and various plants that gave it a rather ambient vibe. Inside, we sat on the floor around low tables where we could sit and have our tea. Again, we sat and talked together for so long - I think about two hours or so - that we decided to skip out on salsa class. And for those of you who know Kait, that means we were having a pretty good time. Although we didn't have a camera, we know where it is so we can take pictures to put on our photo page.