Day Eighteen

Today was our last day of classes, which was sad. Coincidentally, it turned into let's everyone get together and take class pictures day. It wasn't by my doing either, but it worked out well because now I have some pictures of my class.






Also, reading was painful today. We have the class around lunch time and today's topic was Korean food. Thus, we listed of Korean foods that we liked and read a paragraph explanation about these two people and what type of Korean food is at the restaurant that they frequent. On the plus side, I feel like my pronunciation for this section when I had to read the stuff was pretty spot-on.

Anyway, sad the class is coming to an end and sad that I'm missing the epic norebang party that they're planning for after the final. I really liked all the people in my class. They were a fun group.

Our last hour at school today (or more like 40 minutes because we bailed early) was some flea market thing. I don't know. We were supposed to bring something and sell it. I brought this wallet-like thing that Umma got us at Insadong. Ended up trying to hawk a pen instead. Wasn't successful because everyone there had significantly cooler pens than I did. Mia ended up selling her item to her teacher/my reading teacher. Lol. We also gave gifts to our teachers and goodbyes.

But bad 200 won Yonsei Coffee, I think I'll miss you most of all.



We left pretty early and waited for an eternity for our bus. We got on at some point and while the bus was super crowded wehn we started the ride, it took like four stops for it to all clear out. Thus, we had a very awkward bus ride where we were the only passengers. Good times.

We got back to start packing for tomorrow. Apparently, though, Halmony did a lot of it. We still got some stuff done and by now we're down to a lot of the little things.

At around 5, we took Halmony out for her birthday dinner for real this time. Went to the same restaurant from the first night, but we got some kalbi this time. Yum. We were very full. On the way back, we realized that we almost left one of the cell phones behind...Yeah that would have been bad.





Also, I finally gave into peer pressure and I watched the first episode of Boys Before Flowers. It's pretty entertaining so far. Other than that it was a pretty relaxing day. We were supposed to go out to go to the lamography store that Mia was super excited to see this whole trip. Also, we wanted to get those lego shirts that everyone wears here. Yeah that didn't happen. I blame it on Mia watching Boys Before Flowers all day. And sleeping.

Anyway, so hopefully this will be my last post about things. I might add a couple more random posts afterwards, but this is going to hopefully be my wrap up. It has been a fun trip. A lot more hectic than the last time it feels like and I feel like we got a lot done in the three weeks that we were here. No time to do everything as usual. Hopefully we're going to make it back to Korea in a couple of years.

Also, I'm hoping to maybe keep true to what I wanted to do last time and continue learning the language. Maybe be halfway decent at it by the next time I come back. Good goal?

And I end this post with something that I know I'll miss the moment I step into SFO. I initially wanted to do a giant pic spam, but thought that this would be more fun. Unfortunately, in the process of translating this from a powerpoint to a video, the quality crapped out.

Day Seventeen

I'm supposed to be packing right now. We're playing a very careful game of suitcase and luggage tetris right now. Actually, right now I'm blogging, Mia's sleeping and Halmony's doing something that's not packing. That's okay though. Our family is physically incapable of packing until the last minute.

Until then, I'm going to try to finally catch up on blog entries.

I also just found out that I have no idea to undo the background that I put on our rental phone. As in the background of James and Mia watching something on Mia's iPod. Might be a surprise for the next person who gets the phone. Or I'll wait for Mia to wake up and have her sort it out.

Anyway, class was the same as usual. We barely woke up on time, so we kind of ran out with a piece of Gyeongju bread to get to the bus. That was fun. We also all wished Halmony a happy birthday and later found out that it wasn't her birthday on Wednesday. Another fun moment.

After class, we had to go to Insadong. James decided the day before they left that he wanted one of those rubber band guns that I'm pretty sure we had asked him about a thousand times if he wanted. We'd seen these guns everywhere up until this week. Halmony also sent us off to get some other things in Insadong. The bus ride was fun. We were going to play a game of wing the bus trip again, but our beloved 470 bus showed up in the nick of time, so we were able to take it out to the general Insadong area.

We got there and found the things that Halmony wanted, but it turns out that one of the bags was bigger than the one she wanted. I think she was okay with that though. We sadly looked over at the little honey candy store for the last time this trip. We could not, however, find a stand that sold James's gun. This saddened us and we started leaving Insadong with feelings of defeat. A far cry from our trip to Myeong dong the day before. On the way out, however, we found one stand that sold the guns. Although it took about ten minutes for us to find the owner of the stand, we accomplished another one of our last minute missions.

On the subway from Insadong, Mia had a fun little exchange with a little old lady. She got Mia's attention and kept on pointing at her vest and giggling. Mia eventually realized that she had completely misbuttoned her vest. They both exchanged a hearty laugh and then she gave Mia a thumbs up when she fixed it. I think some of the humor of that moment got lost in the storytelling though. Either that or you had to be there to enjoy it.

Our next stop for the day was the Dongdaemun Market. We weren't going to do it, but we also decided that we wanted to prove to Umma that we were hard core enough to brave the market. Not many people are. Now, Dongdaemun is an enormous market that puts many other markets to shame. In fact, I just read on that wikipedia link that it's the biggest market in South Korea. It's kind of big deal.



(The market, of course, gets its name from being located next to Dongdaemun, or the East Gate)

I took Gianni and Andrew there last time, but we didn't get too into it. I think we also got lost and ended up in an area where there were very depressing looking pet stores. Mia and I found the areas that it's more known for (such as its clothes stands). Dongdaemun is one of those places that's more fun at night, but because we were under the impression at the time that it was Halmony's birthday, we didn't want to stay out that late. A lot of the stores were closed at the time (probably for that reason) and most of the clothes seemed to be directed towards an older demographic. They did have this giant display of super hipster sweaters like the stuff Taylor Momsen has been seen wearing. Mia almost bought it, but decided she didn't want to be a caricature of herself. I'm sure she also feels weird copying Cindy Lou Who's fashion.

Being with Mia this time also meant that I was able to delve deeper into the Dongdaemun area, meaning that we saw slightly cooler things. Unfortunately, however, in the giant hall of shoe stores, we were unable to locate a pair of Bilkensticks. It will be my life goal to find this mystical pair of shoes.

Anyway, we did a lot of circling around the market and then went back to the subway station and headed back to DMC Ville. On the way back, we even pointed some American tourists in the direction of Myeong dong. Good times.

Oh and on the bus ride back, we sat on extremely awkward seats on the bus.



We got back and vegged around for a long time. I caught up on blogging and Mia watched Boys Before Flowers. At some point, we decided to get some dinner, so we just went downstairs and ordered chicken. Good stuff. They deliver it up to your room too.

That was about it for Wednesday. A pretty low-key day.

Day Sixteen

I decided that I am going to try to crank out another entry. It's not like I have to start packing or anything....

...yeah.

At least I haven't been watching Boys Before Flowers all day.

Anyway, we woke up late on Tuesday and missed the free breakfast. This is okay because at the beginning of the trip we bought a box of cereal that we like never ate until now, so we've been working on finishing that off.

We said our goodbyes to Umma and a sleeping James and went to school.

Nothing much to say about school except that I got a lot wrong on my quiz. Oh, also Tuesday was the first time I had deji bolkogi this trip. They had it for 3000 won in the cafeteria. Win.

Our plan for today was to do some mild sight seeing and shopping. I wanted to take Mia to the Seoul Museum of Art because I remember them having some fun exhibits there last time we were here. Also it was like free last time we were here. We like museums like that. Anyway, we were too lazy to walk down to the Sinchon subway station, so we decided to try to take a bus to wherever we wanted to go. Some girl was blocking the list of buses and their stops, so we decided to wing it, jump on a bus, see what subway station it took us to and go from there. It seemed like it spelled out an interesting adventure anyway.

It wasn't too bad either because we ended up at the Seoul Station, which is like a stop or two away from City Hall. All is good in the world. I also finally took a picture of Mia under a sign for her subway stop:



Anyway, we made it to City Hall in time for some king's procession and/or changing of the guard at Deoksogung Palace. You could also dress up in traditional clothes and take pictures, but considering the fact that I almost got stuck in a hanbok at the folk museum, we thought this would end badly and continued on the way.

There was some pretty intense protest going on on the way to the museum. We're not really sure what it was for though. Just thought I'd mention it.

I'd also like to show you this statue that they have outside of the museum. It literally gives me a headache to look at because my eyes want to adjust to squish everything else around it. It's upsetting.



Anyway, back to the museum. We got there and had some trouble figuring out the tickets. They have a big Renoir exhibit going on there and I know we ran into the same problem last time when Andrew wanted to see an exhibit and accidentally had to pay 10k won to see a Monet exhibit that he thought was lame. We figured it out eventually and it turned out that we only had to pay 700 won to get in. Pretty legit. We wandered around the gift shop for a while, took goofy pictures, put our backpacks in a locker, and then entered the one exhibit that we were able to find that we could get into.



Anyway the exhibit we saw was called Dissonant Visions and the basic theme was "monsters." Just like monsters everywhere. The exhibit was broken down into three themes: apocalytpical images and dystopia, monsters as rejections of society's conventions, and monsters within humanity.

The first part was really cool. There were some really interesting paintings, including one where a bowl of dolsot bibimbap was made into a face. Also, there were a lot of giant animals made out of tires, which were not so much as monstrous as they were really cool and made us jealous of whoever could make them.

I think it was the next section of the museum that scarred us for life. The images in the second section probably were kind of gruesome by themselves. For example, there were paintings of people with skin falling off. I'm sure that has something to do with plastic surgery or something. There were two statues of pigs with human heads called Equalizing Inequality (or something like that). I couldn't read the description in Korean, but I felt like it had something to do with eating meat. I think another one was a tatooed organ.

Believe it or not, it was after this where things got weird.

First, there was the "P Tree." We didn't know what it was when we first saw it. It was actually kind of pretty. There was a giant tree with a bunch of bowls of yellow liquids of varying shades. One of them was connected to a petri dish with a plant growing out of it. It was pretty. Then, we looked at the title and it said P Tree. I was hoping it was Engrish or something, but some young couple reading the description started saying "pee" in Korean, giggled and then walked away. So, I guess that was exactly what it sounded like.

The next exhibit was titled "Goodbye Chris." Because Mia and I go to great lengths to annoy Chris this amused us a lot and we ran into the little dark room giggling and saying "Goodbye Crash." At this point, we still didn't know. Inside, the walls are black and there is a glass case with a soccer ball inside. The wall has something about saying goodbye to Chris and how the artist will miss Chris. We weren't quite sure what this meant and how it was supposed to be monstrous, so we left to examine the P Tree a little more. Somewhere along the way, Mia overheard someone saying something about dead someone or something at the soccer ball exhibit. This kept on bugging her, so we had to go back to look at it. We tried to read the description, but all we got was something being dead. We strained our limited Korean and eavesdropping skills to listen to some mom tell her daughter that the soccer ball was made from a dead cat. We did some miming at the them to confirm that yes, this was a soccer ball made from a dead cat. As in, someone's cat died, the artist skinned the cat, turned it into a soccer ball and then painted little gold octagons on it to make it look soccer ball-esque. As in we were absoltely mortified and suddenly the P Tree was normal.

The next exhibit after that might have been gross had we not been absolutely traumatized by the last exhibit. It was a film that had a lazy Susan spinning around displaying all of these nice things (jewelry, money, Vodka, designer purse, etc.). Mixed into the images, however, is a dead bird with maggots eating it. After the last exhibit, that one really did nothing. At that point we might as well have been looking at Sleeping Beauty's castle. That's how much we were unaffected at that point.

Umma called us while we were at the third part of the exhibit. Apparently there was some big problem with security and the splashy balls that James bought for his friends. They couldn't take them onto the plane because of the whole liquid thing. They couldn't check them in without removing the liquid from them (which defeats the point of the balls). Eventually, the security people took the balls to some back room and came back with them a couple minutes later saying they could pack them on. We're all pretty they spent that time playing with the balls, but whatever.

Anyway, back to the museum. After the soccer ball, nothing else phased us. The third part of the museum would have probably seemed a lot darker otherwise. There was this really big wall drawing done from pencil that we really liked. There was also a chandelier that we are pretty sure was just stolen from Tim Burton's house or something. We spent a long time at this one piece that was just a statue of Hitler in a glass box looking like he is trying to get out. We weren't sure what it meant exactly, but we imagine it has something to do with evil inside of everyone trying to get out? I don't know. It would have helped to be able to understand the Korean explanations.

Maybe if we did we'd find out that whole cat thing was a hoax and it was made out of whatever soccer balls are made from. What are they made from anyway?

Our next stop was Myeong Dong. We had some last minute shopping that we had to get done and were hoping that Myeong Dong would solve our problems. Otherwise, we'd hit Namdaemun.

We ended up in this really cute stationary store underground that Umma probably would have loved had we accidentally stumbled upon it when she was there and not sitting around Incheon airport. The stuff was super cute (albeit way over priced) and they had a lot of music and dramas for sale. They also had some toy that looked exactly like Bruce. We would have bought it had it not been so expensive and part of one of those sets where you get randomized toys.



As we soon learned, but probably should have guessed, Myeong Dong is not nearly as exciting during the day/late afternoon as it is at night. Most of the stands were closed or not set up yet. We still gave it a shot, which strangely worked in our favor. We found this little hipster aisle that was even set with its own American Apparel (that's how hipster it was). Mia had been looking for this super hipster shirt that she had seen people wearing and we actually found it across the alley from American Apparel. We also found a purse that Mia was looking for for her friend.

More impressive was our next find. So, on Friday I found this stand selling Birkenstocks. I'm quite content with my grungy Rainbows, but I probably should invest in something that doesn't look and smell absolutely foul to wear as well. Anyway, the Birkenstocks at the stand were 15,000 won, but we got whisked away from the stand so I couldn't buy it. I was sad and was even more sad when I found out that the stand was not where we found it on Friday when we went back on Tuesday. However, as we were making our way towards the subway station, we ran into the stand again. Now, in Korea, I tend to have a presumption towards things being counterfit. I don't know why this didn't apply to the Birkenstocks...or shall I say Birkensticks. This was super disheartening, but in retrospect I think it would have been pretty fun to own a pair of Birkensticks. If I find a pair of Bilkensticks in the next day, it might be epic enough to have to buy. At least that was resolved.

I'm pretty sure we resolved a couple more of the issues that we had at Myeong Dong. It was a very good trip out there. It was 4:30 by the time we got to the subway, though, and we told Halmony we'd be back between 4 and 5.

We made our way back and got back. Spent the rest of the day veging around while Mia napped. Got some blogging done. Got excited about swimming until my sister kindly pointed out that the pool is closed on Tuesdays. Kim Dae-jung, a former Korean president passed away yesterday, so that was all over the news all day. Watched that coverage for quite some time.

At around 8 ish the three of us went out to eat and ended up eating at the place that we had dinner the first night that we were here. Had bolkogi, thinking it was the stuff that Umma got that night. It wasn't but it was good anyway.

That was about it. The rest of the night was homework, blogging, and watching some bizarre horror drama on TV.

Almost caught up!

I'll end with a couple of ads that we saw around the city yesterday that we liked:

Day Fifteen

I was supposed to come back and blog after I finished homework, but then Mia and I spent a long time trying to figure out what the horror film/drama that we were watching was because it was interesting and intriguing. We eventually found the name so we might check it out on my soju. I don't know. I don't even think Mia's started her homework because she's been hooked on Boys Before Flowers ALL DAY.

Classes were the same as usual. One of my classmates left the program early because she got into medical school. Kind of a legit reason for leaving, but it was sad because she's cool. There's always facebook. We also had our quiz, which I didn't do too well on, but I also spent the last day in Gyeongju and am failing the class anyway, so I guess that's okay. I tried to not care at all about it, but that didn't work.

We got home and ate some kimbap and ramen for lunch. Then we waited a while for Umma who was out at lunch and saying her goodbyes to Auntie Maureen. We eventually met her at Yongsan. Didn't go there for electronics, oddly enough, but the stationary store. The stuff there was cheaper than the stuff at some of the other stationary stores that we've been too. Also, Asians do stationary so much better than anyone else in the world, so we need to get our fill in while we're here.

We were also on a pretty tight schedule because we were supposed to meet Imo Halmony and Haraboji across the river for dinner.

First, we needed to make our trip to Insadong. Got more purses and Umma and Halmony went back to the store that they always go back to. We also got more candy from our favorite stand and said good bye to them.



MVI_9694.AVI

We'll miss these guys. Check them out if you're ever in Insadong. They're about halfway down the street. None of the other similar vendors have quite the energy or charisma that these guys have.

This distraction also meant that we were running late for dinner, so we had to run over to the subway station and rush over to where we were eating.

Dinner was really good. We went to this place famous for its nengmyun (which was very good despite the fact that I've gotten more nengmyun in this trip that one could ever ask for). Also, the bolkogi was super good. The place was kind of nice though, so I was afraid of taking pictures. Oh, also they made this sweet potato salad that Umma and I loved. Anything else? I dont' know. Because my Korean comprehension is not that great, I was stuck listening to Mia and James argue over PC v. Mac (Picture one of the Apple commercials except where PC and Mac want to kill each other rather than engage in fun banter) instead of the pretty interesting story about how Halmony and Imo Halmony lost contact for a really long time and then reconnected by chance. You see I don't even know the details of the story because all I can remember is the heated PC v. Mac argument. Other than that, dinner was good and we said our goodbyes afterwards.

We browsed some of the shops in the little subway station after dinner. James also took an adorable picture. I think this should be his new facebook picture.



The subway ride back turned out to be a little more complicated than we thought it would be. Apparently the train we were on shut off at some random station. Then we had to find a different platform to take the same line. I don't know. It was weird and we were confused for a while and carrying large bags of purses and two giant boxes of dried smelly anchovies. That was fun.

We eventually made it home and the rest of the night was spent doing homework, blogging, and helping Umma run around and do last minute packing.

And I end with Insadong angst.

Day Fourteen

I'm hoping to finally catch up with blogging. I think Sunday is the last super day, so it's going to be a little easier after this.

But, first, I have to get through the Gyeongju post, which I am sure will be relatively long.

Waking up at 3:30-ish to take a taxi to the Seoul Station wasn't as deadly as I thought it might be. Not that it is a fun thing to do at all. Because it was pretty late, the roads were actually relatively clear, so we ended up getting to the Seoul Station a lot earlier than our 5:30 train. Because we had so much time, we decided that we should eat something, so we got noodles from some restaurant. James decided not to order any food until our food arrived though.

Then we tried to look for the train. We initially went to the wrong platform for whatever reason. There was like one train waiting in the station at the time, so I don't know why we didn't go to that one. It turned out it was the train, Lol. On the first portion of the trip, we took the bullet train and then had to change trains to get to Gyeongju.

This was our first time on a bullet train. I wish I could tell you more about what it was like, but being that it was a 5:30 train, we weren't really awake for much of it.





The transfer went smoothly. Actually, the small local train had more comfortable seats than the other one. They went back pretty far. I think this was what contributed to our next great family story.

We slept through our stop.

This is something that I was terrified of doing throughout the entire Europe backpacking trip. I thought that maybe having survived that Europe experience without having done it would have meant that I was done with having to be concerned with this. Apparently not.

In fact, the only reason that we woke up at all was because some family boarded the train at Gyeongju and kicked us out of our seats (which were now theirs). Granted, it would have helped if, instead of telling us we were in the wrong seats, the woman who worked on the train told us that our ticket went to Gyeongju and we had just left the station. We didn't discover that we missed our stop until someone else told us while we started the trek towards what we thought were our real seats. We got to stand in between cars next to a smelly bathroom until we got to the next stop that dropped us off in the middle of the Korean countryside. We probably should have been charged for that extra stop, but they felt bad for us.



After reorienting ourselves for a while, we hopped on a bus that took us to Gyeongju. Actually, by some cute coincidence, the stop that we did get off on was the stop to get to the big temple that we wanted to go to that day.

We eventaully did get to the Gyeongju train station, but had to wait there for an hour to be picked up by the bus that was doing the Gyeongju city tour. Umma gave us two options during the wait: wander around the markets in Gyeongju or eat the kimbap that we bought from 711 earlier that morning. Because we're a piggy family, I think you can guess which one we chose. Halmony also bought some of this bread that Gyeongju is apparently famous for, so we got to try that.

The bus came to pick us up around 11 for the tour. It was all in Korean, so we really didn't get much of going on. That was okay. They would play little DVD clips in English about the various locations we went to. We also had cute little Gyeongju books.

Gyeongju is a big tourist spot here in Korea. It was also the capital of the Silla Dynasty. That's some history for you. The city has a lot of tombs, Buddhist statues, and other well preserved sites, so the city is often called a museum without walls.

Our first stop on the tour was the Poseokjeong site, which was where hte royal family had religious events and banquets. The only thing that's left at the site is some stone structure that is shaped like abalone.



The next stop on our tour was the Tomb Cheomachong, or the "heavenly horse tomb." It was so named because of some picture of a white horse on a saddle flap that was excavated from the tomb. These tombs are kind of a big deal in this area and they're kind of epic. This one is a famous one because its' the only one that's open to the public. There's also a pretty epic big gold crown in there.

Anyway, the tombs are pretty big in this area. You see them along the side of the road (see: museum with out walls) and they were saying on the tour that apparently before they realized they were tombs, a lot of people would go out and have picnics on them. They're kind of pretty, so I guess that makes sense.







Oh, also, when the tour guide was telling us aboutt the tombs, I saw the most epicly terrifying spider that I've ever seen in nature. It was enormous and probably could kill you if it looked at you. Fortunately, I don't think it saw me.



Next on the tour was the Cheomseongdae Observatory, which is the oldest standing observatory in Asia. It was built during the reign of Queen Seondeok. I think the tour guide essentially said that this was her way of proving to the naysayers that she was as hard core as any king might be. Pretty impressive. It was a pretty cool thing to see and was connected to a forest and a pretty field of flowers, but for whatever reason it smelled like what I imagine the Bog of Eternal Stench smells like.





The next stop was an important one: lunch. This one was buffet style, but the food wasn't that good. We ate and loaded the bus for our next stop. This next stop was a 40 minute bus drive away and I'm pretty sure our whole group fell asleep on the trip up. I think it was better that way. While not as terrifying as the ascent we made during the DMZ trip, it was still a drive high into a mountain on a thin and windy road. Those are never really pleasant.

At the top, however, is the Seokguram Grotto, which is quite an epic site. For one, you've got a gorgeous view. The temple itself is beautiful. Also, it houses a huge statue of Buddha that one can really only describe as epic. We were unable to take pictures of the Buddha statue, but don't worry because I took a picture of a miniature replica at the Lotte Folk Museum.



if you enlarge that by like a gazillion, you get the picture. The Seokguram Grotto is one of the things I actually do remember going to when we went to Korea when we were little. Very pretty.







(believe it or not, it was actually a little cold)





(this is a fountain of special spring water you're supposed to drink while you're up there)



On the way out, we bought roasted chestnuts from this little old lady. It made up for the time Oppa took us to Rome and then refused to buy us roasted chestnuts. It also made us late and some kid pointed at us as we were the last to load the bus and said something to the affect of "the Americans were late."



Our last stop on the trip was the Bulguksa Temple, which is another pretty cool sight to see. Basically is a big temple built in the Silla dynasty. It's huge. A lot of climbing and a lot of big Buddhas. They were doing reconstruction on the pagoda in the temple, but there were stairs that let you go look down to see it. It was kind of cool.



















At some point, I got separated from the rest of our group and made it to this little area of the temple where there were a ton of stacks of little rocks. I wanted to contribute, but I felt like if I got anywhere near the rocks to do anything but take a quick picture, I might knock down a lot of hard work and effort. I figured it wasn't worth it. Also, I'm not sure if I was supposed to be stacking the rocks in the first place.



We also had our daily ice cream on the way out.

At this point, we kind of did some bus shuffling. The tour was over, so the bus drivers had to drop us off at various spots in Gyeongju. We stopped at a lot of hotels before we eventually got to the Gyeongju Station. We had about an hour before our train came, so we walked around the market for a while and bought more Gyeongju bread. Because of our fiasco on the way out, we all were determined not to sleep on that first train. I'm happy to say that we made that connection. Once we got onto the Seoul train (see what I did there?), we all passed out. Thus, we still cannot tell you much of what it is like to ride a bullet train other than the fact that you can sleep on it when you are incredibly tired.

Once we got back to Seoul, we kind of split up. Umma wanted to stop by Insadong to get more purses from the little shop that we liked. She took the subway there while the rest of us taxied back to DMC Ville. I'd like to note that when we gave the taxi driver our location, he stuck it in his GPS and got us there no problem. I think we would have been too tired to circle around World Cup Stadium anyway. The rest of the night was spent blogging, kind of studying for the vocab quiz that I didn't study much for and doing other random things. Umma eventually came back after having gotten off at the wrong subway stop and giving up and catching a bus back home.

Now, that I have finished my Gyeongju post, I am going to take a break from blogging, do my homework and maybe get back to the blogging thing after.

Day Thirteen

In preparation for our 3 am wake up call, Saturday was a day of rest. And by day of rest, I mean that we got to sleep in a couple of hours and didn't do anything for half of the day.

As I mentioned before, it was also Korean Independence Day, so there were a lot of Korean flags around.

James and I got our hair cut around 10 that morning. This was an interesting experience. Apparently my hair caused them a lot of stress because of all the curls. I guess they're not used to cutting curly hair or something. I don't know. I am happy with the hair cut though. No more hair falling in my face. James's hair also came out very well. They made fun of him for the way he dweebily keeps his hair, though.

Look at that nice haircut:



After the haircut, we ordered Mr. Pizza and had it delivered while Umma tried to pack up some stuff for their trip back home. The pizza eventually came. We also ordered kimchi spaghetti, kimchi risotto. I think James got spaghetti and meatballs because it's something you can't find at all in the States or something.

Mia and I let our food digest (while I did my homework). We went to swim after a while. Finally got to put those swim caps to use. Speaking of which, I was planning to put the swim cap to use now that we aren't going to be out all the time. I forgot that the pool is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. We have to pack our stuff on Thursday, so I don't think we can swim then. We leave on Friday. Sad face. We'll have to wear those swim caps on the plane or something.

Anyway, we left the apartment around 2:45 to go see a matinee of Nanta. The performance we got tickets to was in the Apgujeong area, so it was on the other side of the river. This area of Seoul is kind of like the super ritzy area. They've even got a Rodeo Drive where all the stars hang out. We spotted some woman in hot pants who a bunch of people were taking pictures of. We imagine that was a Korean celebrity of some sort. I don't know.



Because we got to the area with what we thought was time to spare, we decided to go to Burger King to get beansu for Halmony. It's pretty cool that Burger King has that stuff, but as you may imagine, it wasn't the best beansu out there. It was good though. We also had ice cream. We eat ice cream like all the time here in Korea.

Anyway, while we were at Burger King, we found out that we were actually no where near the Nanta Theater. After failing at catching a bus to the right area and struggling to find taxis that would take us there, we finally made it to the theater. There, we had to stand in an extremely long line to get the tickets. Surprisingly after all of that, we made it in the theater with quite some time to spare.

Nanta is a very fun show. Basically, if you combine Blue Man Group, Stomp, Samulnori and Iron Chef, you get this show. We saw this with our program two years ago. It was just as entertaining the second time around. I will admit that it wasn't the same without Andrew being used as a volunteer for the show, but it was still a lot of fun to watch and I think everyone enjoyed it. At some point in the show, they throw balls out into the audience. The balls are of the McDonalds Play place variety. Normal people either throw the balls back to the stage or they return it at the end of the show. Not our family. James went through the seats afterwards and collected any remaining balls that he saw. I think we might have enough at this point to start our own ball pit. If we do, we will send our thanks to Nanta for contributing to our endeavors. Seeing as I saw the one ball that I snuck back for James two years ago lying around the house doing nothing recently, I'm pretty sure I can think of no other use for them.



After the show, Umma had to rush off in a taxi to Namsan Tower. She was filming part of some limo documentary that's going to air on TV here on Friday after we all leave. Judging by her pictures, I think she had some interesting adventures that night.





Meanwhile, we took a taxi to the Bampo Bridge. This is a bridge along the Han River that has water shows several times a day. Water sprays out of the sides of the bridge and music plays. We got there thirty minutes before the scheduled performance, so we had to hang around for a while. It was pretty crowded and there were a lot of people watching Mamma Mia on a big outdoors movie screen (Umma would have been happy if she had been there).

The water show itself was pretty cool to see, but it lasted a bit long. I was kind of over it after five minutes. It was very pretty though. It's been super smoggy here in Seoul lately, so I imagine that it would have been prettier had there been less smog. Pollution = bad.









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We left before the show was over because everyone was kind of over it. We also needed to eat something. Apparently, the area that we were in wasn't a big area to go find a restaurant, but we did find some Korean restaurant somewhere. It was okay. I had bibimnengmyun, but I think I am getting nengmyun-ed out. Either that or I pulled a James and put way too much gochuchang in there.

More interesting, however, was our trip back. We decided to take a taxi back to DMC because it's easier for Halmony and Umma told us to (which is generally a trump card for anything). Normally, when we take a taxi back, we tell them that we want to go to Sangam High School because it's easier to find in a GPS and it's across the street from the apartment complex. We get into the taxi and ask the guy to take us there and he's like "yeah I have no idea where that is." So we try to read the address, but there really isn't much of an address on the business card that we have. Also, the little map that's drawn on our DMC Ville business cards were too small for him to see. He takes off anyway, and we head in the direction of World Cup Stadium. Now, at the time, we were wondering why it was that he had no idea where this place was, but wasn't using the GPS that he had in his taxi, but apparently that has something to do with the government making taxi drivers put GPS devices into their cars and not everyone wanting to use it. Whatever.

We make it to World Cup Stadium. There's a pretty big soccer game going on. We know this because Mia and I wanted to go see it. We also know it because it's crowded, the lights are on, and people are cheering. He gets us to the stadium from an angle that we had never seen before, so we weren't sure which direction he should have been going at that point. So, he starts asking people walking around the stadium where Sangam High School is.

This was problematic because 1) It was a big soccer game and 2) on Korea's Independence Day, so therefore, not everyone walking around the stadium was from that area. We finally found some older woman who pointed us in the right direction. At this point, he's lecturing us about a better POI we should be telling taxi drivers (even though this had not been a problem before). We eventually did make it back. It was an entertaining experience.

We weren't up much longer. I think I got the rest of my homework done and went to bed. Had an early wake up call and all.

I end with Hair Model Angst