Burgers & Dong Exploration

What a week! For both of us! The weekend couldn't come soon enough. We took full advantage of enjoying ourselves & relaxing.

These are so delicious!

Our week started off great with Nicole getting some bacon & surprising John with awesome BLTs for dinner! First time we've had bacon since we left the U.S.A... We're surprised we lasted so long. We're getting better acquainted with all of the stores around us & what food we can get the best price for at each place. It's truly a science. We have 4-5 different grocery stores to choose from.

An enjoyable, yet childish, fun-fact: Nicole saw a tour bus the other day called, "Dong Bang Tour". Funny enough? Nicole was bummed she didn't have her phone or camera to take a picture! We assume it's a tour of the different neighborhoods in Daejeon. In Korea, people don't know a place by what street it is on, but by what neighborhood it's in. We've mentioned this before. A neighborhood is called a "dong". Our neighborhood is Mannyeon-dong. Nicole's school is in Doryyong-dong. John's school is in Galma-dong. And so on.

On Wednesday evening we ventured out to Time World (in Doonsan-dong) & went to a Mexican restaurant called Cantina for dinner. It was burger & fries night, though. We have been told by many people that they're pretty good & only $6. For a Mexican restaurant, those burgers were pretty good, but we can make better; the fries were fantastic though! The thing that threw us off the most about the restaurant... the fact that most people in there were speaking English! And the owner did too! We were like, "Oh! They can understand us!" Something we just aren't used to here. We do enjoy that most of the time we cannot be understood. The amount of times we've yelled with English curse words at Koreans not getting out of our way when we're riding our bikes (or for other random things they do that make us mad) is a lot. We already know it will be an issue for us when we come back to the states in a year.

Think we got enough stuff for the boys Nicole babysat in BR?

After a mid-week for both of us having some "work issues", Friday & the rest of the weekend were fantastic. John had a great workout at the park, while Nicole had cheesecake with her coworkers for lunch. It was one of her coworker's birthday so all of the foreign teachers went to Pascucci Cafe to celebrate with her. It was a lot of fun. About 5 minutes after singing 'Happy Birthday' (in English, French, & Spanish), one of the workers at Pascucci brought the birthday girl 2 coupons for free items! How amazing are they! So many Koreans are absolutely amazing when it comes to customer service!

During the day, John also bought tickets for us & all of Nicole's coworkers to see Iron Man 3 (with Korean subtitles)! We all enjoyed the movie a lot. Especially singing the song in the beginning. We had fun, as usual. We recommend the movie!

At Home Plus... enough said.

Saturday we explored some new territory & finally made it to a store called Home Plus. We went through a few parks as well & even discovered a skate park, with half pipes & several other ramps. It was awesome. We also found more tennis courts! Last week we said we just needed rackets to play, but truthfully, we need rackets & time to play too! Several flowers are starting to bloom & they look gorgeous. So beautiful riding by all the parks in Daejeon. Nicole took some pictures but mostly on her camera so those will have to come later & will probably show up on Facebook eventually.

Subway token

We went on another new adventure on Sunday... We took the subway! We wanted to find this burger place called House Grill in Yongmun-dong that everyone we've ever talked to here has recommended. It's a bit too far for us to ride our bikes so we decided to use the subway. The price is only $1 per person each way. Public transportation here is ridiculously awesome. We were so proud of ourselves for figuring out how to get tickets & where to go without anyone's help. After eating at House Grill (truly the best burgers in Daejeon), we went looking around in the Lotte Department Store. 10 floors & a basement full of every name brand of shoes & clothes you could ever think of. We've discovered in the last couple of days that if you linger too long looking at something you will be "attacked" by a worker pushing you to buy things. And by too long, we mean, maybe 1 full minute. When we reached the mens floor with suits, it was mostly empty & we were getting Korean stares that made us basically run up to the next level! The whole day we had perfect weather too! First time Nicole wore flip-flops since our arrival to Korea & we both wore short-sleeves. The most beautiful day today; glad we didn't waste it!

Beware of the Hades Cafe!

Waiting for the subway

Delicious Lemon Iced Tea at House Grill

These are up all along the main streets.
Buddha's birthday is coming

Random facts:
-You can take your own food into the movie theater without having to be sneaky.
-Traditional Korean breakfast is usually rice & kimchi.
-Koreans aren't familiar with/don't like baked fruit. You don't find pies here!
-Trash/recycle bins & restrooms are always difficult to find.
-Buddha's birthday is on May 17.
-We've noticed that most Koreans dress like hipsters. Especially the guys.