I had an awesome Saturday and one that shows how completely random Korea can be. My friend Madigan (who has only been in Korea for three weeks) and I set out to visit Changdeok Palace and Biwon Gardens. At this palace you are required to take a guided tour, so we purchased our tickets for the next English speaking tour, bought some coffee and waited for our tour to begin.
In the meantime a guy from the Netherlands came up to us and asked if we knew where the tour began. He ended up waiting with us and we started chatting it up. We took the tour together. More on this later.
The palace was interesting because it contained a secret garden and this was the first tour I took that was guided so I got a better understanding of why the palace is designed in certain ways. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous. They had lots of trees and ponds. It was amazing to see so much green in the city.
We finished up the tour and decided to head to Insadong to get some food and check out the stuff people had for sale. The Dutch guy came along with us. As we were trying to figure out how to get there, an American guy stopped us and asked us how to get to Insadong. We told him to join our group. We tried to go to a vegetarian restaurant but went in the wrong door and ended up at an awesome tea house. It was literally a hole in the wall place you had to duck in order to walk through it. We tried some amazing tea and ate the traditional Korean rice cakes.
We then sat out to find the doll for the Dutch guy's grandma. While we were walking to the market, I mentioned that I needed to get back to the baseball stadium to buy some gear for my Grandpa and told the guy how amazing Korean baseball is. He asked if there was a game and turns out there was one that was about to start in 30 minutes. (As with most Europeans, he loves soccer and was disappointed there wasn't a soccer match and he decided he wanted to see some sort of club sport in Korea.) We all jumped in a cab and headed to the baseball game.
We decided to cheer for the travelling team and the game turned out to be amazing. All the newbies loved the game and we had Koreans stopping and asking if they could take their picture with us. It's still so funny that they think we're something special.
Our team lost in the 9th inning after leading 2-0 throughout the game. We stayed behind for a while talking and had trouble leaving the stadium. It was a strange feeling knowing that we might be locked in the big stadium for the night. We finally found an open exit and decided to head to Gangnam to get some dinner.
The night before I had been to a Czechoslovakian bar (shout out to Uncle Larry!) and I decided I should take them back there. They brew their own beer and site and it is far superior to the light beer that is standard here. We order the meter of beer which is 10 beers that the Dutch guy told us really is a meter. (I still have know idea about the metric system!)
The Dutch guy and I moved on to another bar and discussed U.S. politics and how he feels the US is viewed right now in Europe and throughout the world. I was very happy to hear that he had a bad image of Americans and told us that the 3 of us changed his mind.
It was pretty awesome to meet such intellectually stimulating people in such a random way. We had some pretty deep conversations that you usually don't have until you've known someone for a while. I'm glad we stumbled across these people and it showed me that I should put myself out there more in more non-bar and club related places and I can meet some more awesome people!
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