My Walk to SLP

Thank you everyone who is reading and commenting on my blog. I have gotten a request for more pictures, so I decided in this blog I would write about my walk to school every day! It takes about 20-25 minutes, depending on how many red Walk signs I hit. Some of the streets with a red walk sign, I walk anyway, but some of them are on major 8 lane roads, and I normally don't run those! I start walking to school around 11:30am. I used to just eat breakfast while getting ready for work, and not eat lunch, but then I'd get really hungry around 4:00, and it's not really dinner time, and I'd still be working, so it was a problem. So now I eat breakfast, get some Kimbop to go on the walk to work, and then eat it around 12:45 while I'm at work getting ready for my classes, and then I eat dinner around 7:30 when I get home from work. (I only have done this one day and it worked well, so I am calling it my new routine.) So this is the restaurant where I get my kimbop.

It is on the first floor of my apartment building, so I just have to walk out and around the corner and I'm there! There are about 6 tables that you can eat at, and you can see into the tiny kitchen. At first it made me a little nervous that all of the stuff they put into the kimbop is just left out on the counter like that, but I've been eating it for a week and a half now and I haven't died yet! You can see two premade rolls of kimbop in the left bottom corner of the picture. I'm not sure what they are doing there, since I've never been given a premade roll.

The next thing I pass is Homever, which is literally the next building after mine. It is similar to a Walmart, but it sells name brand clothing, like Nike, and a bunch of other name brands that I don't recognize because they are Korean. You can tell they are name brand because they have their own little section of the store, but you can pay all together. They also have a full grocery store and a big food court. They they have a library, a hair saloon, what looks to be a travel agent, a photo shop, and just TONS of stuff. Everything is on a different floor, and since I can't read any of the signs, I get lost every time I go in! This is the side of Homever closest to me:

And this is the other side of Homever, and the main entrance:

After Homever, I cross this major intersection. When the walk light turns green, people run across and if you aren't quite to the intersection yet, you will see people sprinting to make the green walk light, since it takes a few minutes for it to turn green again. Also, I think there is a hospital right around this intersection because I see a ton of people in hospital gowns and PJs walking around. I guess they let them out of the hospital to shop or smoke, and they don't change their clothes first. It's weird. I've seen people walking with an IV bag in hospital PJs before. So this is the intersection:

Then I pass these parking garages that are the craziest thing I've ever seen. They don't have parking spaces, instead they are just lined up, maybe 15-20 cars deep. I don't know how they get cars out, but it must be a pain in the ass. There are like 3 floors of just lines of cars boxed in. It's hard to take a picture, but I tried:

There isn't a ton of interesting things on the majority of my walk, but there are random fruit and vegetable stands set up on almost every corner. I just took a picture of one of them for you.

The next part of my walk is where a man sets out these yellow boxes full of crap, I don't know how much it costs, and I've never actually walked directly past, I am usually on the other side of the road. He is there usually every few days, he probably has a few different locations that he sets up at. As I took this picture, I noticed a plant sale next to him! A man had a whole bunch of plants set up outside his truck. I crossed the road, and bought a cactus for 1000WON, or $1!

I pass about 10 parks on my walk to school. They have things for kids to play on, and also they have work out areas for adults. They have these things you stand on and twist, and a weight bench, and some other stuff. Here is one of the parks:

Here is a picture of a normal street of store fronts in Korea. You can't tell from the picture, but a lot of the signs are spinning and flashing. I don't know what any of the stores are, because obviously they are in Korean, but most of them are probably restaurants.

The last thing I see before I get to school is this store that sells fish out of tanks. I don't know who buys the fish, regular people or restaurants, but sometimes the fish are dead floating n there.

So that is my walk to work every day. You will have to wait to see my school, since that will be a whole blog just in itself! It's time to get ready for work now!