Children's Grand Park & other odds and ends

 

So this week was amazing! On Monday we had a field trip with our preschoolers.  We took them to Children's Grand Park.  This park was not so grand.  In fact this park was quite depressing.  We did not go on any of the rides or other attractions so I can not be the judge of that part of the park but the other part is what they would like to call a zoo, which was the depressing part.  There were elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys, birds and a few other animals.  All the animals had VERY small enclosures and looked a little rough.  I felt very bad for all these animals and found it hard to even look at them.  

On Wednesday I had the day off from work because it was Memorial day.  I decided I would make the most of the day since it was beautiful outside.  I walked to the Han River and laid on a mat overlooking the river for the day reading and listening to music.  On my way back I stopped in at Olympic Park to walk around and take some pictures.  Friday I had my first meeting with Jaewon, a friend of a friend, for our first language exchange meeting.  He wants to practice his English conversation skills and I want to learn survival Korean so we were set up by a friend for a language exchange.  We went to Lotte World, which is a mall/amusement park/ice skating rink and sat at a coffee shop for about three hours and just talked.  I was a little disappointed that I did not have my camera with me, but I didn't realize we were meeting at such a cool place.  He taught me directions for a taxi, money/counting system, greetings and a few other random phrases.  I really enjoyed learning some of my survival Korean and I even got myself home in a taxi by myself without having to use the piece of paper that has my address written on it.  I was pretty impressed with myself.  We will be meeting once a week so I am excited to see what else I will learn throughout the year. 

 

Girls day in Seoul

 
Yesterday was by far the best day I have had in Seoul thus far.  It started by meeting Ara and Molly to go to Gyeongbok palace.  This palace was created in 1395.  It was only $3.00 to get in and well worth every penny.  The palace has beautiful mountains in the background and has a pond and many beautiful buildings throughout.  Ara gave us mini history lessons throughout our tour.  This palace was nearly destroyed by the Japanese government but has been built back up throughout the years.  All the buildings have such intricate  paintings on the walls and ceilings.  I don't even know how else to describe this place besides beautiful.  The pictures just don't do it justice!  After walking the palace grounds for a few hours we crossed the street and walked through Insadong.  Insadong is known as the artsy area of Seoul.  There are many boutiques and stores that sell antiques, jewlery and other various souvenirs.  One of the stores we went in was a sugar craft store.  There were many cakes, flowers, and other pieces of art made out of sugar.  There was even a dress made out of sugar.  This store blew my mind with the things they created out of sugar.  After Insadong we met up with 2 more friends in Samcheong-dong to continue our girls day.  Katie took us to a beautiful rooftop coffee shop that overlooked all the streets and had an amazing mountainous view.  We then went back to Insadong for dinner and some shopping in the boutiques.  After Insadong we then walked back to Gyeongbok Palace to look at it when it was all lit up at night.  After many photo opps we moved onward on our adventure to the Cheonggyecheon Stream.  This stream is set below the busy highway, but by the looks of it you would never guess there is a highway above you.  There were a few waterfalls, and most of the stream was lit up by neon lights.  There was even a laser light show on the river as we were walking by.  It is listed as one of the top 10 things to do in Seoul. As beautiful as it was I dont think I would rank it top ten, but still worth the visit.  We then went to Dongdaemun for some night shopping.  Night time is the most popular time to do your shopping in this area.  It is most crowded between the hours of 12:00am -2:00 am, but the shopping malls stay open until 4:30 am.  This night shopping experience was not for me.  I was not a big fan of all the crowds and was a little overwhelmed by the size of the shopping malls and the endless amount of tents that all sell the same thing.  During night hours bargaining is very common, which I am also not good at so I didn't buy too much stuff on this outting.  By 12:30 I was ready to crash from our long day of adventures so this ended our girl's day!  There will be many more to come though!

Birthday weekend in Busan

 

 

 I'm not going to lie and say it was easy to spend my birthday away from home, but I did have a great birthday weekend thanks to great friends.  Me and Molly's birthday is 2 days apart and we got a day off of school for Buddha's birthday so we decided to make the best of it and go to Busan for our birthday weekend.  Busan is about a 3 hour train ride south and has many beautiful beaches.  My friend Tyler acted as our tour guide for the weekend since he had taught there before and knows the area well.  Sunday we went to Haeundae beach, which is one of the most popular beaches.  Since it was a holiday weekend it was very crowded.  It also had a beautiful beach.  I have never been to a beach that you can see beach, mountains and city all in one picture.  On Monday we went to Gwangalli Beach, which is another popular beach, but not nearly as crowded.  This beach offered a similar view of beach, mountains and city.  This area was beautiful and if I end up coming back from a year, this might just be the place I spend it.  All in all it was a great birthday weekend and I was very excited to escape the city life for a long relaxing weekend at the beach!

Korean Baseball Game

I had heard from many people that  Korean Baseball would be both an amazing and humorous experience, and it was definitely both of those to say the least.  We went to Jamsil Sports Stadium, which is home to both the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins.  All the baseball teams here are owned by major companies.  We were lucky enough to take part in a huge rivalry game of both the Bears and the Twins at their home field.  I was first surprised at the size of the field.  It seemed a lot smaller than Braves games, but maybe I just have not been to a game in awhile.  The whole outfield is first come first serve seating and only cost $8.00, which is nice if you get their early enough to claim seats.  I was also surprised at the fan support.  The field is divided in two and fans rarely sit on the opponents side.  Each fan also has a set of thunder sticks that are used the entire game.  I am used to the music turning off when it comes time for the batter to hit, but not here.  The fans have several chants for the team and also ones for individual players.  There are also cheerleaders.  We were not close enough for me to get their picture, but they also have chants and dances for the players.  Molly and I decided we would be Twins fans, although we were sitting in the Bears' section.  The game was quite humorous with all the chants and also the errors.  Some of the errors I saw would definitely not fly in American baseball, such as 2 men running for the ball and not calling each other off so the ball drops between the 2 of them.  I understand errors happen but they are quite frequent here.  We did however see 2 home runs in the game.  The Twins won the game 4-0, so we definitely picked the right team to cheer for.  This is something I will definitely do again because the experience was so enjoyable.  Next time I will definitely sit in the Twins section so I can learn some of their chants and I will also getter a closer seat to the cheer leaders.

China Town

 

 

Well my famous opening line... Sorry it has been awhile since I have undated my blog.  With going home for Lauren's wedding and celebrating my birthday weekend, I have been pretty busy.  I will start with my experience at China Town.  I have a friend here that was going to be leaving soon so she really wanted to go visit Korea's China Town.  It was about an hour and a half subway ride all the way to the other side of Seoul.  It was well worth the long ride though.  The first thing we did once getting to China Town was eat lunch.  We ate authentic Chinese cuisine that was delicious.  With our lunch we had some sort of seafood/noodle soup and there were many critters in there that I did not recognize as your standard seafood, but once again I do not ask questions here and just eat it anyway.  We followed lunch with a little shopping and browsing.  I was quite proud of myself because I only bought a fan to go with the Hanbok that I bought the previous night.  For those of you that don't know a Hanbok is the traditional Korean dress.  They usually wear it for special events such as weddings, and Chuseok (which is the equivalent of Thanksgiving).  I probably will never wear mine, but it was just a souvenir that I could not pass up.  Anyway back to China Town... We then just walked around China town for a few hours.  Surprisingly there were beautiful flowers and a lot of walking paths through wooded areas.  This kind of beautiful scenery doesn't come to mind when I think of China town, but I was so glad my perceptions were off.