Andy Thomas--Part I

When people ask me, "How was Seoul?," the first thing I usually say is that it was huge- the city that is.  The size of the city was one of the first things that blew me away.  I have been fortunate enough to travel to some amazing places, including places in Europe and some other Asian cities, but Seoul was on a different level.  It went up, down, and out with people literally everywhere.  There was never really a point in time when I could get away from people, except may in my own bathroom.  Nearly 25 million people live in the metropolitan area--that is roughly 1/4 of the population of Korea!  It was pretty amazing.

For me, one of the most memorable experiences about visiting a new city overseas is the taxi rides, and Seoul was no different.  They have traffic laws, but it is more of an organized chaos.  If you ever want to get a feel for the pace of a city, just hop in a cab.  I find that riding in a taxi is one of the best ways to not only see a city, but also to find your way around.  However, in Asia, it is also one of the quickest ways to "see your life flash before your eyes."  One night, Jeff, Russ, and I had to take a cab back to the university because the metro had stopped running.  We flagged down this little old man in a taxi and hopped in.  After about 6 or 7 attempts of trying to explain to him where we needed to go he finally just took off--they never knew any English and our Korean was spotty at best.  I truly believe this old guy was crazy or he at least had a lot of fun pretending that he was.  He was driving through the center of Seoul at about 115 kph (that is about 70 mph).  I really believe at one point we were nearly on two wheels going around a curve in about 10 lanes of traffic.  It was truly ridiculous.  And, during the entire trip back, he was singing loudly along with the radio, laughing at us, and yelling in Korean for no particular reason.  The faster he went, the more fun he thought it was.  We were obviously freaked out, yelling, and laughing as well (however, it was one of those fearful OMG type laughs--what have we gotten ourselves into!).  So needless to say, it was a crazy experiences and one of the most memorable. It was something that you just cannot replicate, and probably something you would not want too.