Korea: Part 1

It's Fall Break right now and so me and 3 of my friends came to Korea together. Mike, one of our friends, left for Seoul on Saturday and Julia, Martin and I followed on Monday. Before coming here, I spent the weekend in Kyoto going to the Toji flea market and seeing HARRY POTTER #7 (!!).

On Monday we traveled from Kyoto to Osaka by train and then took a plane to Seoul. It's a lot colder here in Korea so when we got here we were freezing. We met up with Mike who showed us the way to our Hostel: Seoulwise Guesthouse. The place is really nice. Here's a pic of us being roommies :


The first night we arrived, We went to Seoul Tower. I've only ever been to Kyoto Tower, and Seoul Tower was a lot better. We took a scary bus ride up the side of a mountain where the tower was built. You can see all of Seoul (the city is HUGE) from up there.


Tuesday, my friends and I met up with my friend Ben who's studying abroad in Korea for the semester. He agreed to show us around some parts of the city and it was also helpful that he knows some Korean. The first thing we did when we met up was go to a palace near City Hall. Ben says that once you see one Korean palace, you've seen them all :


After the palace, we looked around for a place to get food. For me it was SUPER SPICY but also it was cheap and delicious :


Because he had class, Ben left for school after lunch, and so the four of us AKPers took a hike up "Mystical Mountain." Obviously that's not the real name. Martin may have just made it up. Anyways, it was super mystical and slightly confusing. We didn't understand the directions about how to get there and so we ended up walking through this huge apartment complex and then up this hill. Eventually, we reached a Buddhist-like complex place that may or may not have been people's private residences (?). At one point we tried to walk into this gate towards a building when a dog started to bark at us so that we got freaked out and turned around.

After that, we kept climbing up and up. There were about 2934723749 stairs and they went on forever. Eventually the stairs ended at this rock that supposedly makes you pregnant if you pray to it. Here's a view of the rock from farther away. You can see Seoul Tower in the distance :

Eventually we reached this rock that we could climb up. There were tiny slits in the side of the rock face for us to climb but besides that there were no stairs or path or anything. There was a super-stellar view of Seoul from the top.

That night we met back up with Ben and three of his friends who are also studying abroad on his program. Everybody was really nice and we went shopping downtown. That's when we found out that North Korea had bombed South Korea. People weren't really making a big deal out of it though. Later on, the 8 of us went for dinner at a Korean BBQ place that was really inexpensive but yummy. You cook the meat by yourself on a grill set in the table :

That night I decided that we needed some roommate-friendship-bonding and so we stopped by the drug store on the way home and got face masks:

Becoming Beautiful

Wednesday was Mike's last full day in Korea because he planned to spend the rest of break in Tokyo. Every day we've been doing a cultural activity. Since Tuesday we went to a palace, we decided that for Wednesday's activity we would go to The Village, which has traditional Korean houses and games you can try.

When we got to the place where The Village was supposed to be, all we saw was a sort of park and a big hole and tunnels where Seoul buried a time capsule in 1994. We were a bit confused and couldn't find The Village, but we did find a cafe. The cafe had this thing where you could dress up in traditional outfits and drink tea and even though that sounds like the most super-lamest-touristy thing ever, we decided to do it:

BEST DECISION OF OUR LIVES. The whole dressing-up thing turned out to be amazingly fun and funny. We also looked great.

Eventually we ended up finding The Village (it was right next door to the cafe), but it was kind of lame and we didn't stay long. Dressing up was 324793847x awesomer.

Later that night we went shopping for omiyage (souvenirs) to bring back for our host families. We browsed around and I bought about a billion pairs of $1 socks and some scarves. There's a TON of street shopping in Seoul, and the funny thing is that all the booths sell the same thing. There's also a lot of really neat street food and these things called "Beer Tents," where you can go in and order food and drinks. The ice cream they sell on the street are about 10 inches tall :


Around 8:30PM, when we got tired of shopping, the four of us hit up this Western-style hair salon. Before then, nobody had gotten their hair cut for the three months we've been in Japan. It was a bit of a problem. We were lucky that the people at the salon knew a bit of English and they were really nice. They gave us Korean Hairstyles.

Korean Hairstyles: (For Girls) The salon people cut our hair dry and then spent 1/2 an hour styling it really nicely for us. (For Guys) The salon people cut their hair into faux-hawks, washed it, and then spend 1/2 an hour styling it. Dudes in Korea take really good care of their hair and always have it looking perfect. To be honest, it took the guys longer to get their hair cut than it took us.

Finally, on our way back to Hon-dae, the area where our hostel is, we passed by all these pretty lights and Christmas decorations. Korea's a really Christian place and so right now everything looks so festive. We decided to show off our new hair with celebratory pictures :



Once back in Hon-dae we celebrated Mike's last night in Korea at a bar. We ordered way too much food and shared it all. The platter that I chose was a bit spicy and had some seafood in it including squid. It also had something called "sundae" which--I found out later--is actually made of noodles and pig intestines and pig's blood. When I was eating it I had a feeling that it was something that would gross me out.