Korea Special 01 - Friends

This is the first pic that I took with Eunvy when we met on the plane~

Her name is Eunvy and I met her in a very interesting way...............we met at the plane!! She was sitting next to me in my flight to Seoul. She start asking me if I am Korean and we started talking. One thing lead to another, we exchanged details and she kindly offered to show me around Seoul City and of coz she did.

We went to the Han River and spend the whole afternoon there. The main reason I want to visit this river so much is because of the movie the host, its one of my favourite korean movie about this mutated monster which was hiding in this river and starts capturing and eating people!! 

Anyway, I dont want to off topic too much~ she is very nice and kind and I thank her for showing me the city and came to my screening with her bf~

This young man....i cant even remember his name....he show us where the train station is when we finished having a walk at the han river. He reminded me of Luigi when he was young~....all so fat and cute.

Now, he is really the main main in my trip!! Junni is the guy that has been showing me and arranging all my hospitality needs and he has done a really great job!! He was assigned by the film festival to show me around and at first when I am communicating with him I thought he was Korean and I was worried that I can't communicate with him properly....but when I first see and talk to him at the airport.....all my doubts are gone as he is actually british. He was originally from Manchester~ I basically talk more english than most of my days in HK...which is great!!

His background was very interesting. His father is korean and he decided to come over to Seoul and studied Korean language for two years. Now, he speaks fluent korean and got himself a very nice korean gf...how cool was that!!

This again supports my theory is that to learn a language proper, date one of the girls that talks that language.

During the 8 days we spend together, we chat a lot....from korean history to customs and from his dreams to desires. He also show me how to order food which is very important in Korea as most of the restaurants there do not have english descriptions and of coz the people who work there can hardly speak any engish, so it is really hard for tourist who dont understand korean to order the food that they really want. But Junni show me this restaurant which is just right across the street from the cinema and its like 5 minutes away from my hotel and this restaurant soon became my canteen of this trip! 
This is Boek Heun Oh, he is a projectionist for the film festival and he asks questions in every screening! We became friends after the closing ceremony as we both drank a lot. And he keep buying me drinks and dont let me pay as he says it's "korean tradition" to treat tourists this way....i like this custom a lot haha! He is really friendly and he also agrees to have an adventure with me in Seoul. We ended up walking up the Seoul Tower and he tells me a story about the film industry in Korea.

Chloe is a volunteer at the film festival and she is very shy to me at the closing ceremony dinner and we started chatting. I ended up calling her on my last night in Seoul and take her to dinner~

I met a lot of local people in this trip and I am very proud of it. As I think it is terribly hard to meet local people when you join a tour or you are in a very tight schedule. But for me, I got the film festival as a base for me to meet new people and of coz the film festival is very kind enough to allow me to stay back for 5 days even after the film festival is a very generous gesture to me and this allow me to relax and chill out and feel Seoul like no other trip that I have ever experienced in my life. Understanding one's culture is always a very interesting subject to me and I really look forward to my next long holiday........I wonder where should I go next? Well...I got plenty of time to think about it.