Sorry, it's been a hectic couple of days since I moved into the dorms yesterday afternoon. Let me just say - I am loving Korea, but these dorms are pretty stupid. I thought I knew it wasn't going to be very nice, but they didn't give us much information and there's a lot we have to figure out on our own. Like "we have laundry facilities", but no signs as to where, or they have only wired Internet in the rooms, and if you're caught using a router you'll be kicked out - they were pretty clear about that. Just a lot of inconvenient stuff for students.
My roommate is a korean student who doesn't speak much English, so that's making for some fun times. She seems nice, but she left and said she sleeps in her friends room most nights. I don't know if she really does or if I scared her away or what.
So let me go back a little...on Friday morning I went on a tour of the Bukcheon Hanok Village, or a neighborhood of traditional korean houses. I was the only one to sign up again, so I had a 3 hour private walking tour with a grandpa who used to live in the area in the 50s. It was pretty much great.
There are several photo points that tell you where to stand to take really good pictures, so if you look it up on google images, you'll probably see a lot of the same shots. My guide said there were over twice as many hanoks here as there is now since a lot were torn down in redevelopment, and it's only in the last 15 or so years that they've started preserving and rebuilding some.
There were a lot of hills. My grandpa guide said he usually plays tennis every day, but he didn't that morning because he knew we were going to be walking so much. At the end, he and I were buddies, and he gave me his card, and to call him if I have time on a Sunday so he could take me on his other tour of the Korean War Museum/Memorial. Mind you, these walking tours are free, he's a volunteer, so I felt very complimented that he wanted to take me on another tour.
Steps carved out of a single stone
That evening I went to Cheonggyecheon (pronounced Chung-ki-chun), and I loved it! It's a stream that flows in the middle of Seoul, and they've only recently cleaned up the area and made it nicer to visit. This is the first thing you see before you go down into the stream. Is it a shell? A unicorn horn? Nobody knows.
Funny thing: just outside this shot were a couple musicians, so I stopped to hear the music. Then I looked around and saw a big crowd with signs and candles, so it looked like a protest of some sort. Then I turned around and saw several big groups of policemen with their shields up, ready in case the crowd did anything crazy. Even though it didn't seem that tense of a situation, I didn't want to take pictures just in case.
They have a few stepping stones and small bridges so you can cross over. You can see in this picture there are a few families, but mostly couples. This was a less crowded area even, but couples were EVERYWHERE, and I pretty much photobombed a lot of them because they were all taking pictures of themselves. Also, PDA is very much not common, so when a couple started kissing and saw me walking by, they sprung apart so fast! Sorry to kill that moment for you, guys. My bad.
It was also while I was there that I was hit on by a Korean guy who lived in America since his teens. He was in his late 30's, and thought I was much younger than I am - what were your plans with someone you thought was 15 years younger than you, my friend? I don't think he had ill intentions, but there were a lot of things that weirded me out a bit. He also said he wanted to introduce me to his mom within 20 min of meeting me, that I was like a "trophy wife" for a Korean guy, because I was educated and so beautiful - he seriously told me that 20 times, and I felt weird every time - and that he would like to give me a Korean name, and let's go out to dinner or a cafe, and let him show me Insadong neighborhood, and his friend can get us in to see a taping of a Korean show at the tv station...etc., etc., etc. It all sounds nice, but jumbled like that together, I was sufficiently weirded out, so I lied about my phone number. It was the only thing i could do after trying to get rid of him for 1 1/2 hours. Then when I went back to my hotel, the I was chatting with the guy at the front desk who helped me out the other day and he said we should go get drinks sometime. He was really nice, and I think he mainly wanted to improve his English, and didn't look at me strange when I said I don't drink alcohol, so I felt better about that one. However, all in all, I think I'd much rather go out to eat with my grandpa guide from earlier.
Saturday morning I went to the English session at the temple in Seoul:
I was going to meet up with a couple from Alabama who are teaching English in Busan (a city on southeast corner of Korea), but they weren't able to make it up to Seoul, so I went by myself. It is a small temple, so they could only fit about 40-50 people in a session by using extra chairs. It was wonderful, and they even had a temple dress that fit me (mostly - my sleeves were riding high, but that happens in the US too).
After that, I checked into my dorm and met a few other students. We went shopping for some essentials, walked until my feet were tired, and then I went to a charity event at a cafe to meet a Canadian couple who blog about living in Korea, www.eatyourkimchi.com. I've been watching their videos for a couple of years now, and they make videos about their perspective of Korean culture, food, Korean pop music, etc., and they just seem so likable, friendly, and funny - which they were EXACTLY the same in real life. I went with a girl I met in the dorms, Alejandra, who happens to watch their videos too, and when we got there at 9pm, there was a crazy long line. We were one of the last ones to get pictures at 10pm, so the couple had been meeting people and taking pictures for 3 hours, and they were still as happy and gracious with us as they'd been to the first group. We got pictures (they had a guy there taking pictures of everyone like we were in a photo booth), but we won't get them for several days, so I'll post them later.
Sorry for the long post! It was a lot to catch up on.
4 comments:
Should have scared of the Korean "letcher" with a pass-along card! Bet he would have taken off then. Think that I'd stick with the "grandpa guide" if I was you too.
Dorthy-I'm so glad you are having so much fun.I'm sorry about your dorm situation. I hope that gets better. Those houses look really cool. And how cool is the grass in front of the temple-or hills or whatever that is. That is a cool river and unicorn horn -or if you're thinking like me or you a ginormous soft serve without the cone! So you have already got 2 Korean Boo's-How funny-but a little creepy about the first guy-good move with the wrong phone number!I'm so glad you got to go see the Canandian couple that you love-that's awesome! We've seen the other posts but just hadn't commented yet-we had pretty crazy weather the night after the 4th of July! Will comment from now on! I'll show the kids your new post! Hope you are doing so good-
We love you!
I forgot-Mack also said-Wow-a waterfall that glows! No-with blue lasers-AAAAH! Actually that's lightning!
Yay! Tell Mack I want you all to come here too! There is a baskin robbins to the right of the ice cream cone sculpture, so maybe you guys are right. That stuff in front of the temple are bushes with the design cut into it. It looks seriously cool. I love you guys, I hope you're having a great summer!
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