Downtown Daegu

Since we only had a half day on Friday, (all the kiddos go back home!) we decided to get off campus and do something fun! At first we were going to go to Costco because Mary wanted to buy a camera, but then we decided she could find a camera elsewhere and that we should go into Daegu. First we took the shuttle bus to Yeungjin college, the parent school of the Daegu English Village and from there we took a taxi into the downtown area.

Downtown Daegu is huge! It just goes on and on and on and there are stores and bars and restaurants all up and down the streets and up and down the buildings...most of the buildings have around five floors. The Koreans just take shopping to a whole new level. The stores are all pretty small and are completely jam packed with stuff. They certainly don't waste any space. The department stores of course are all huge and spread out a little more but the prices are also higher and so we didn't spend much time there. We shopped around for a while just looking at everything. The food stands were interesting. We saw a fish tank with these things in it....had no clue what they were. Will take a picture next time, I didn't take one. There were all kinds of sea foods that seemed just a little scary. 

Earney is great, he gets along with everyone and can make anyone laugh. These guys stopped him on the street and asked him to donate money to throw water balloons. He gave them 1000 won and they wanted 2000 won. He gave them 2000 won (about 2 bucks) and they wanted 4000 won. So he paid 2000 won to throw two water balloons at this guy's face...he says its the best two bucks he's ever spent. 

This is Gwen, Earney and I in the middle of one of the many shopping boulevards. Mary had run off to a store somewhere. We went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner because a couple of us were a little wary of going to a random restaurant. We had the manager serve us because nobody else spoke English! Next time we go downtown we will be going with some people who know where to eat and I'm excited to try the Korean BBQ that everyone has been raving about! 

Then after dinner we really started to drag but we still had some time to kill before the shuttle bus would be at the college. We were walking down a random road and we saw this cute little place called 5 Floor with wine bottles all around and Norah Jones playing. We decided to stop and relax for a little bit with some wine. The owner, James Bond, was very nice and spoke fantastic English and we talked with him for a while. Then he invited us up to see the terrace even though there was a private party up there. He wanted to show us how beautiful it was. We all took pictures together and as we were leaving he came down to the street and helped us get a taxi to the college. It was so much fun! We are going to try to go back and see him again. More pics of Daegu and new ones of around the school are up on Flickr...http://www.flickr.com/photos/njohnson87/

 (L to R) Mary, Me, James Bond, Gwen, and Earney