...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:
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