광장시장에 갔어요~ (Adventures in Kwang Jang Market)

So this was my actual first planned adventure of the New Year. When I arrived back in Seoul, one of the Seoul Mates had asked me if I wanted to go thrift shopping with them on the 6th of the New Year. So I actually had a plan that required me to wake up before noon!!!

Like I said I woke up at 11 am and got ready to go out and then blogged/tumbled on Tumblr/ journal-ed/ ate lunch (normal break stuff) until 3:00 when I left the dorm to go met the others at the 이대 subway station. But the funny thing was that I was strutting down the street, like I am prone to do when I am jamming out to my ipod and pretending to film music videos in my head, when I saw a group of three girls in front of me. One especially stood out because of her died hair and really tall height. I knew then that I had met up with my group, so the ear buds came out and I sneaked up behind them at the crosswalk while they were waiting for the light to change.

Leah, June Young, Yu Jeong, and I then walked over to the station together and just chatted away getting caught up on what we were had done since we had last met right before the semester had ended. I even told June Young about my trip to Hong Kong and suggested somethings to her to do/eat since she is going to be going to "The Pearl of the Orient" for three days with friends in the upcoming weeks.

At the station, we met up with Dan, one of the other program students with me who has been staying with his mother's family here in Seoul while on break. Once we were all counted and accounted for, we hopped on the train and did what any other group of college aged friends seeing each other for the first time in a few months would do--we started talking about anything and everything, to the point that we missed our stop and had to find another transfer station...Yeah, we're cool like that!

Well we got out of the subway at at Jongno 5-ga and walked a little way to get to the market. On the way, Yu Jeong was helping me remember my  Korean speaking skills by asking me what I wanted to buy and then have me describe what I wanted (ie color and numbers). I was able to do it fairly well, the grammar was there, but the vocab needed to be help a little bit. But I was still able to communicate, which was great after speaking English for a while now.

The outside view of the market from where we entered. I had to use a picture from the Korean Tourist Board website, because my picture did not transfer to my computer cleanly.

We rounded the corner on the sidewalk, and I got to see my first sight of the market. When I found out that it was Kwang Jang Market, I was super excited because this was on my "Korea bucket list" of things that I wanted to do while here in Seoul for the year. This market is one of the oldest and largest in the city and a great place just to wander around if you are in the area. Walking in the open aired entrance was so exiting I was like a kid in a candy shop. I wanted to start taking pictures of everything, but had to restrain myself for fear of freaking out all the venders/shoppers and embarrassing my friends!

First views of the market

And this was just the beginning!

The first thing we did was go up stairs to the clothing area since that was the main reason that we had come to the market. The stalls were everywhere and it was literally a labyrinth of clothes that would be the dream of any thrift shopper.

There were boots and shoes of every color of the fashion universe as well as flannel out the wazoo! But the top sellers seemed to be the coats and sweaters. We wandered around and then got split up/lost multiple times walking around in circles. I actually found a black and white checked flannel that had a leather collar and sleeve cuffs that I wanted to get, but the price was 20000 won that was brought down to 15000 after some haggling, but I wanted to see if I could get it down lower to maybe 12-10000 won, but the shop owner would not get any lower.

Us girls hamming it up for the camera while Dan tries on shirts at the stall. If you see the black and white sleeve in my hand, that was the fated shirt! **Picture Credit to June Young 언니

I decided to walk away, but if the shirt is still there next time I go, I might just get it, only if though. I ended not getting any clothes, but had a blast just wandering the isles and having all the young sales guys and shoppers say hi to me in English shyly and try to get me to go into their shop. Lol, I almost did not respond when they spoke, because I was not able to comprehend that they were speaking English at first, but rather was trying to remember how to say that I was not interested in buying in Korean!

After finally finding the stairs again after wandering around in circles a few times (and saying hello to my new friends a few times) we made it back to the first level and then want to the food section of the market. Now this is what I was looking forward to! I had read about this part in all of the blogs and guide books that I had read before I came to Korea, way back last year.

Heading to the food area

There were so many cool things being sold; fresh and dried seafood being the main attraction for me, along with buckets upon buckets of fresh vegetables that were is various stages of being fermented and "kimchi-fied." There were also so many ajumas making 빈대떡 (bean sprout pancakes) and other fried street foods. It was heaven to the nose!

Fresh veggies anyone?

So good. These are the 빈대떡 that we had for lunch

an automatic grinder to turn the beans into a paste

Other fried foods for sale

Some rice cakes and other traditional snacks

Dried fish just hanging out

We were all getting a little hungry at the time, so we looked for a place to sit outside int he market area, but there were no seats to be found, so we when into a little side restaurant that was serving the same things outside and had to go up to the third floor to find a table big enough to fit us all. Once seated and situated, we ordered two of the 빈대떡, one seafood and the other normal, and also a bottle of 막걸리 ( rice wine) to share amongst all 5 of us. It was so good!!!

The menu

My bowl of 막덜리 and the 반찬 of fresh onions in a soy/sesame sauce that we also used to dip the pancake in

the normal bean pancake

Seafood pancake!

The crew! Leah 어니, me, Dan, June Young언니, and Yu Jeong 언니

 **Photo Credit to YuJeong

After our dinner/snack we went back down into the market and wandered around a little bit more until we came out the exit on the opposite side from where we entered. Dan needed to go to Sinchon to teach his class, so we all headed to the subway to head back towards campus, Dan to Sinchon and us girls to Hongdae (but of course we had to stumble into the underground shopping, not the subway and get turned around again!).

This time we made sure to get off at all the proper stops; Dan got off at Sinchon and us girls got off at Hongdae (thank goodness that is was not too crowded), exiting at exit 9 making our way to the center of the neighborhood. We really did not know what we wanted to do, because non of us really wanted to go clubbing but also did not want to have to go back to our homes either. But we did agree upon that we wanted something sweet and I took us all to Snow Spoon, a really good frozen yogurt place in Hongdae that I first went to when I went to the Trick Eye Museum with Kaitlyn last month. While we were eating, I asked them about the interviews that they conducted with the volunteers who had stopped by to see if they could be new Seoul Mates for this upcoming semester. My three 언니들 also wanted to know what I think the Seoul Mates should do with us program participants this upcoming semester and if I had any suggestions to what type of people they should allow in as New Seoul mates. June Young also promised to take me to a 짐질방 (a Korean sauna/steam bath place) another thing I wanted to do while here in Seoul!

My yummy froyo. Red wine, Blackberry, and Raspberry with cherries, peaches, and dark chocolate sauce!

The ice cream gang! ** Picture Credit to June Young 언니, even though Yu Jeong 언니 is taking the shot :)

 After froyo, we just wandered around and looked at all the shops. YuJeong and June Young took us all to the hipster part of Hongdae (if Hongdae was not hipster enough) and we went shopping there as well. I never knew this area existed! I think I may have been one of like 4 foreigners in the area and the crowds that you would expect from Hongdae were non-existent. Truthfully I have no idea how these businesses stay open, because there was not much foot traffic back in the alleyways that we were walking in. Maybe it was only a place for the locals to go, because there were these cute little coffee shops had boutiques that reminded me of the Avondale area of Jacksonville, Florida. There were also a whole bunch of little gourmet ice cream shops that we kept passing. We all agreed that we needed to go on an ice cream tour in the future where we could go from one ice cream parlor to another to try all the flavors!

Found my sorority letters in Hongdae!! Kappa Delta/ AOT <3

But there was this one funky store that they took us to that had clothes that were kind of my style, but also at the same time, made you scratch your head and wonder if anyone actually wore them other than those that were ahead of the fashion game. But I did find a really cute pair of long thing dangle earrings in the shape of crosses, which was great because I had really wanted to find a pair! We looked around the store some more, mostly in the makeup area, but no on e else bought anything, so we left and started walking down more hipster alleyways.

My new ring and earrings!

We passed by a lot of small boutiques and bars like I mentioned before and even found one that had a box of mismatched rings out front that we stopped at and looked at for a while; just trying them on and talking about random things. I found a crown ring that I just could not put down. I think the owner saw that I was attached to it, because when I asked how much it was he lowered the price form 7,000 won to 5,000 won for me! There was also a sign in the store that Leah, Yu Jeong, and June Young had seen and were laughing at, but when I tried to read it, Yun Jeong said I should not and block my view. All I caught out of it was "Hongdae people..." I guess they were trying to keep me from learning some bad words, that is if I was able to understand them, lol.

We ended the night there, walking back to the station to head home. On the way to the station we saw  motorized bar, pretty much an old VW van like bus that drives around and sells cocktails. It was really cool,  becasue non of us had seen one actually drive around!

All in all it was a really fun day that I would not mind repeating again in the future!