Part Five: The Steph and Alison Odyssey

We returned from Busan late Thursday night. On Friday we decided to go downtown and then head out to Seoul. This meant a stop to take more funny sticker pictures and more frozen yogurt (of course). We also introduced the girls to shabu shabu at lunchtime. Shabu shabu is basically a three part meal. First you start with a big pot of boiling soup (filled with various vegetables- a little spicy but not too bad) and you get a plate of paper thin meat. You actually dip the meat in the soup and swish it back and forth and then eat it. It cooks in a matter of seconds and is really delicious. After you've eaten the meat you add thick noodles to the soup and eat soup with noodles. Last they make the most amazing fried rice. Excellent meal and the girls really liked it.
The next part of the plan was to have dinner somewhere and then catch a show of some kind. WE decided against dinner since we were still stuffed from lunch. Then we mulled over which show to see and eventually settled on B-Boy Korea.


The show was really cute. The plot didn't make a lot of sense but that's Korea for you. The cheesiness just made the show more fun and the dancing and drumming were fantastic!


It was cool that they let us take pictures during the show (just no flash) and afterwards we got to pose with some of the cast.
After the B-Boy show we headed closer to home and had a late night mandu snack (Korean dumplings) and then went to noraebang. Hahah.

On Saturday we were all pretty exhausted and just didn't feel like going into Seoul. The weather was pretty dreary and it actually rained for part of the day. It sucked because it was the girls' last full day in Korea and there were still so many places we could have taken them. Instead we went downtown and decided to go bowling.
It was their first time ten pin bowling so it was interesting. We bowled two games and split into teams: Steph and Matt vs. Alison and I. Of course Alison and I blew the competition away.

Another thing that Steph and Alison were sort of obsessed with were all the bakeries around here. You can find at least 2 bakeries on every block, if not more and all of them have free samples. The cakes here are also really elaborate and gorgeous (although they taste a bit different- more spongy) and they had been admiring them for the entire trip. So we decided to watch movies and eat cake for the evening. We watched The Descent (which Matt and I had already saw but really liked) and then most of The Zodiac but then we all crapped out and fell asleep since it was so late.
Let them eat cake!
Before we started watching the movies we went outside and pulled some party poppers that we had in the house. We actually made a really goofy and hilarious video but Alison has that on her camcorder so perhaps she'll upload and send me a link sometime.

So there you have it- the next day we just hung out, helped the girls pack, took them to the airport and said goodbye. If you want to see all the pictures we took (there are a lot!) you can go here. I really had a wonderful time with them and am so grateful and glad that they took the time to come and visit us. I'm hoping that more people will be able to make it out next year when we're back in Korea. It's really worth the trip! Trust me!