Another Random Saturday in Seoul

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!

Cultural Day

On Sunday, we ventured to Gyeongbokgung Palace. I had been here before but it's by far the most "grand" of the palaces and it's the easiest one to find. When the name is translated into English it means "Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven." The Palace was oringailly built in the 1300's but was completely destroyed by the Japanese during their last occupation of Korea. They are working on restoring everything back to its original state.

We checked out the National Folk Museum. They had an exhibit on the "Multicultral Families" of Korea. They must not of had a native English speaker read their information before they published it because it said there are 890 million foreigners living in Korea. Considering the whole country only has around 50 million, I somehow think they got it wrong. The other intersting thing was they only showed multicultural familes from other Asian countries, Russia, and a middle eastern country I couldn't remember the name of. The exhibit did not mention anything about the western influence on Korea or mention anything about the numerous westerners that have married Koreans and had children. Once again, interesting.

There was a multicultural fair that was taking place and was connected to the "Hi Seoul Festival." There was a stage where people from other countries performed their traditional dances or entertainment. There was a pretty awesome dragon dance, some twirling yo-yo looking things, and a girl that could twirl tables, other humans and pots with her legs. It was absolutely amazing. The girl probably weighed 100 pounds and she was throwing the table around like it was nothing. When she twirled her two assistants on a long pole with her feet I almost fell over. Now that's some talent!

We then wandered into Insadong which is very touristy and has lots of stuff to buy. We found Starbucks and bought a few trinkets. We also had lunch and ate some delicious pork. At the table next to us were some Americans that were here working on some project for the US government. They had ordered fried baby octopus and were mesmerized by it. It was fun to watch them try to eat with chopsticks and freak out about eating a whole baby octopus. I'm kind of amazed how this eating and seeing weird stuff doesn't even phase me too much any more. Oh and may I add, I'm pretty killer at chopsticks now!

We came back to my neighborhood and went bowling with my Korean friends. The bowling alley is a straight throwback to the late 80's. It still beats the old Yuma bowling alley though because it keeps score for you. The bowling alley is super close to my house and it is also cheap (appx $1.50 to rent shoes and $3.00 a game). I came out the victorious winner as I had some mad skills and opened the game with two strikes.

We then went to see the new X-Men movie which I hated and thought was a big waste of time. Anyway, the night ended by us not being able to find our way out of the movie theatre as it is on the 15th floor of the department store next to my house. Since the department store was closed when the movie was over, there wasn't access to the escalators and the elevator wasn't stopping on certain floors. We ended up getting into the underground parking garage and hiking our way out through the in-ramp. Oops!

Stayed tuned. There's definitely more stories to be told!

And always, you can check out all of my photos on my Picasa web album here...http://picasaweb.google.com/christinestroup