July 21st

Hi,

Today is the first time I saw Hangang river (Well actually third, if you count seeing it from the window of a train). I went for a bike ride with a friend from couchsurfing (http://www.couchsurfing.org/, which is a site filled with people who want to learn more about other cultures.) at hangang river, which was really nice. It was so peaceful there and the summer breeze felt so good. The weather was less bad than normal, so it was a nice bike ride. I had nice company too btw ^^. Since this site deals with culture exchange instead of language exchange, she could speak English pretty well (Thank god for that), so I was quite happy about that. Actually it's a bit ironic, I was thinking about living in Korea, while a lot of Koreans I meet really don't like to live in Seoul there entire live. I guess a lot of people these days aren't happy about the place they live. The more I talk to people about this, I start to wonder if we will ever be truly happy about the place we live at, since she will always have her korean in her and I will always stay european at some levels, which would make it quite difficult to really immigrate and get completely accepted here. She replied with a big and happy 'YES' ^^, but I'm not too sure about me though, but we'll see.

Anyway, we had a nice chat about korean life, belgian life, it's difference, it's similarities, ..., which was quite funny and interesting. Now I'm curious, since she said, I was the first Western guy to really like it, so I'm gonna ask the question to you. What do you think about couple things? Would you consider them or not? Like for example couple tshirts? For those who don't know what it is, couple things are basically things you wear as a couple, which are really alike, but have different color usually, like you would dress your twins or something. For example both wearing the same tshirt, but just different color, wearing the same hat, having the same cellphone decoration on your cellphone, having the same pyjamas, etc... Just use your imagination and it will probably exist and if it doesn't, you probably found a whole in its market ^^. Anyway, would you consider it? She thinks it's ridiculous, but a lot of couples do this. I don't know if you knew this, but in Korea they usually celebrate your 100th day, because in the old days children didn't survive much passed the 100th day, so they celebrated it and I think they still do? Not too sure,l they did 21 years ago at least ;), but I think they still do. So couples go through the same ritual. If you survive your 100th day together they usually buy couple rings, which are basically 2 rings who look alike and they both wear it. Well I've heard about this a lot and I think they do, but I can't seem to remember much boys with rings around their fingers, but I haven't met much korean boys yet.

Btw hangang river is really a good place to come and rest. You can have nice bike rides, nice walks, play games (I always see older people play the boardgame with the 5 sticks, but I haven't been able to play it :( ), fitness (We rode passed 2 fitness areas, which had a lot of equipment, but again, outside and free. Every time someone says to me that Korean people ONLY think about money, I'm not believing it anymore, since I saw so many free or cheap things around here. In Europe I would have been broke already.), ride small pedalboats (Well boats which have pedals to go forward, I'm not sure about the English name), ride a bigger boat, with a view of Seoul (Apparently this is really beautiful at night, because you can see the whole city lit at night), play badminton (I saw a few badminton fields, but I don't know how you get the plum and racket. You probably have to bring some), watch the sunset/sunrise, have a beer with chicken at night (I just heard about this today, but I so wanna do this), ... Again, be creative ^^.

Afterwards we went for drinking, but I'm gonna divide another post on this one. To update the drinking games I learn, maybe you could teach me some more;)

Ow. My exams went quite well today too ;)