Visit to Haengju San Seong (mountain fortress) and a booking club

One day me my uncle and I were discussing family history and he brought up Kwon Yul(1537-1599) who we are said to be descended from. To quote wikipedia, "Kwon Yul was a Korean Army General and Field Marshal during the Joseon Dynasty, who led his forces in the Battle of Haengju during Hideyoshi's Invasions of Korea against Japan." My uncle had asked if I had ever been to his monument, which was originally erected in 1602, but destroyed during the Korean War. The Korean government however did make another memorial on the same spot. Since I had never visited, my uncle decided to take me there along with my grandfather.

The monument is outside of Seoul on a small mountain. Some parts of the monument you could get a really good view of Seoul. It was already a cold day, but the when we got to the top of the mountain it was ungodly. My ear drums ached and my face was red as hell. I got to watch a brief movie on the battle that occurred on the mountain fortress ... after we woke up the employee napping on the job that is. It was pretty funny cuz he was in this little booth inside of the theater area, and my uncle was knocking and he wouldn't wake up, so my uncle opened the door to the booth and woke him up. The guy was so confused.

After we battled the cold and walked all the way back down I saw a lady with a dog. I was wondering why she would bring her dog out for a walk when it was so damn cold. However I quickly realized the dog wasn't hers, but a stray dog. After getting a good look, the white dog was a bit dirty and probably been lost for awhile. The dog started walking towards us with a look of "please take me with you." Poor dog, I wish I could have helped it and it made me sad as we drove off and the dog was still where we were just parked probably wondering "now what?" I wonder what happened to the dog still, hopefully someone out there got him out of the cold.

Temperature wise, that day was about 12 degrees F. I'm not sure if I've ever been in colder weather, and if I have I sure the hell don't remember.

So on this fine Wednesday night we went to 종로(Jongno) district. One of my cousins works at a book club, a booking club (or night club) basically works like this:
-Guys and girls enter and sit at their own respective tables.
-The waiter then brings girls to your table. Girls enter the club knowing this will happen.

It's basically like any other club, except you don't have to put in the effort to meet women, the business pretty much does that for you. If a girl isn't really feeling it, she'll lie and say she has to use the bathroom. So to make this less confusing, I came with two of my older cousins and one of his buddies, my other cousin who works there is about the same age as me. One of my older cousins wanted to spend extra money and get a special room where you can do karaoke and have better conversations since the outside music is blaring in your ears. This was my second time being at one of these booking clubs, the no effort is pretty nice. The disappointment was the girls that night weren't that great looking. Believe me when I say I don't go to these kind of clubs to find me a girlfriend, these girls who wear short ass skirts with freezer burned panties from freezing temperatures and stay out until 5 in the morning can't possibly be good souls. Especially in a country full of conservative women and girls with strict parents. Smell me? God knows how these girls are getting away with it as most of them don't have their own place. Oh yeah I forgot to mention I saw some dude passed out on the floor for like 3 hours and somehow he was never kicked out, I couldn't help but take a picture of him.

On the 17th, one of my other cousins(I have 15!) came back from NY after being there for one year. She's one year older than me and one of my favorites, so it was good to see her again. I also finally got my own cell phone, the only thing that sucks is the phone plans are nothing like they are back home. For example when people call you, the call is free. There are no free nights and weekends either, and for whatever weird reason no one uses voice mail here!!!