Day 2 in Seoul

Sunday morning we went to McDonald's for breakfast. There was one right next to our hotel. We found out they have great pancakes. We don't get fast food breakfast very often so it was nice.

After breakfast we packed up our stuff a little. We had to make a plan because our train didn't leave until 6:45pm. We asked if we could leave our suitcases there after we checked out. We had a bit of a difficult time explaining that to the people at the front desk, but finally they understood and said that would be fine.

We set off for an hour to finish shopping. We were meeting my former boss' daughter and her fiance' for lunch at 12. I was feeling a bit frantic trying to make final decisions on gift buying, but we finally got it all figured out. It was fun looking at all of the neat tradition Korean trinkets in Insadong. We finished almost all of our gift buying and picked up a few things ourselves. I tended to find more treasures than Cameron, but I am the shopper and the nostalgic person. I kept telling him he had to buy something. He said he wanted to wait and save for that one special item. He is much better at that than I am. I did find a doll for my foreign doll collection. I will have to take a picture of it.

After we finished shopping we ran back and checked out. We found we were not the only people to ask about leaving our bags. There were two other piles. The hotel was prepared with nets to put over them. We were happy to not have to drag our bags around. I was worried that we would have to take them back to the train station, which would have wasted so much time.

We headed to Starbucks in Insadong to meet Brittany and Alex. The Starbucks in Insadong is said to be the only Starbucks written in a native language.

Here is a picture of us in front of it.

We had lunch near Starbucks at a Korean restaurant. It was a nice lunch. They were teaching in Seoul. We got our inspiration for coming here initially from them.

After lunch we went to Changdeokgung Palace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changdeokgung

It was very close to Insadong. We got tickets and waited for the English tour. It was a bit confusing at first. We didn't know if we were supposed to get in line or what. Finally we met a couple other foreigners waiting for that tour. We were all a bit confused. We saw some other foreigners head toward the gate. We figured we might as well follow. Sure enough there was a group waiting to go for the tour. There were about 50 of us on the tour. Our guide spoke English very well. She told us all kinds of interesting stories about the palace. The last emperor lived there until his death in 1926. There were others of the royal family that lived there until the 1980's.

Our guide wearing a traditional hanbuk.

The main hall - where the king sat on the throne. Us in front of the gate to the king's quarters. The roof of the king's office. The only building with a blue roof. Inside the secret garden - this is the royal library where scholars would go to study.

The tour was very interesting. Many parts of the palace were built to Confucianism specifications. Everything had to bring "balance." More picture and details will be on our photo site. We learned a lot about the culture.

After we finished with the tour we went back to pick up our bags. Then we went to get our to go supper from Subway. We got a taxi and headed to the train station. The train station was huge. We didn't have time to investigate the mall that was attached - maybe next time.

I ended up with a bad headache and Cameron had to go hunting for a pharmacy. Thankfully he was able to find some Tylenol. By then our train was boarding. We took the KTX back.

A picture from the train.

That was amazing. We were going 290 KM per hour (181 MPH) at one point. It took us 45 min. to get to Daejeon which takes 2 hours by bus from Seoul. The first part was the quickest. There was only one stop right outside of Seoul then Daejeon. After Daejeon we had 4 or 5 stops before Naju. It took 2 hours from Daejeon. I watched a movie on Cameron's PSP and Cameron watched saved TV on his iPod.

We were tired when we got back, but we still had one more day of our long weekend. We always like to save one day to rest. We spent the next day relaxing.

Day 1 in Seoul.

I thought I would take advantage of having a computer in our hotel room.
We left Naju at 7:44 this morning on the Mugungwha train. Our trip was pleasant. We enjoyed sleeping, listening to music and watching movies, although I ended up with a slight headache. Thankfully, acetaminophen took care of it. We arrived in Seoul at 12:44pm. We ended up getting on the wrong Metro train and had to turn around, thankfully only after the first stop. Unfortunately our bumble took us around an hour to fix. We were quite exhausted and ready for lunch.
We finally got on the right train and found out what a city of 12 million feels like. It was full, although we hear that Tokyo, Japan has a subway where they literally pack people in, we were glad it wasn't like that. Balancing was fun, we had to stand in the middle with people around us and nothing to hang onto.
We got to our subway stop and found our way out to the street. Thankfully, there was a taxi stand. We ended up giving him the phone number to our hotel so that he could call and get directions. It was the easiest way.
We are staying at the Sun Bee Hotel. It's quite nice. The room is comfortable. We rested for a couple of hours. We ended up watching a documentary about the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra going to North Korea on CNN. We had been CNN deprived, our only link to the outside world besides the internet.
Finally we headed out for lunch at Burger King and to the North Seoul Tower. We are so thankful for taxi drivers that know a small bit of English. We had to take a cable car or walk up to the tower. It's on a small mountain called Namsan Mountain. We chose the cable car. We wait around 45 minutes to get on the cable car. It was a short ride up, but after seeing the stairs, it was worth it.
The tower is in a huge park. No cars are allowed in the park. It is really beautiful and green. There is nice decking with stairs to walk up to the tower itself. I really need to start doing the Tae Bo DVDs I got. Walking up bunches of steps really showed me how out of shape I am. We tried to walk quickly because they had boiled silk worms and they stink. They smell like wet dog and zoo or something nasty like that. I almost gagged.
There were lots of people. There were food vendors, photographers, and a few artists. We glanced around and then headed for the tower entrance. We bought tickets and got on the elevator. The view was amazing! Almost every window had a city from around the world and the distance from the tower. After seeing the 12th largest city in the world I wonder how big the largest city is. This one is huge. All I can say is the pictures will have to help explain that. We took our time looking around at the city. We bought a magnet for our places collection and headed back down.
We enjoyed a cup of ice cream similar to Dip 'n' Dots. It was yummy! We were thankful that the line for the cable car wasn't nearly as long as the first one. We had to find a taxi to get back downtown. That was a bit of a challenge, but we finally found one after walking a bit. The traffic was a bit heavy, but it didn't take long to get back to where we knew our way around. We were excited to find out that our hotel is pretty much in the middle of everything we were planning to do.
We decided to walk back to our hotel to find out exactly where Insadong was. It's the best place to shop for Korean souvenirs and gifts. Can't go into details about that and spoil the surprises. After finding a few of the things we were looking for we walked to Subway for sandwiches - aah, just like home.
We are now in our hotel room chilling and ready to call it a night. We did a lot in one day. Tomorrow we are going to shop a bit more and then meet my former boss' (SC) daughter for lunch. It will be nice to connect with someone from SC. We are hoping to also visit a palace. We had wanted to do it today, but ran out of time.
Signing off after our first day in Seoul.
Love and Blessings!

My first published article - outside my high school newspaper.

I am published! I got to write a review for the tour we went on:

http://altair.chonnam.ac.kr/~gshin/gic/May%202008.pdf

I'm so excited! This magazine is for the city we live near. It's not a huge magazine, but they send it all over the world. This is my first step towards writing for a magazine. My dream.

Going to Seoul

We are going to Seoul this weekend. We have another 3 day weekend. Its kind of nice having 2 4 day weeks in a row. We are taking the train. I love the train. I'm not able to read or watch movies on the bus, but I can on the train. People might think we are crazy taking the train instead of the bus. The bus is faster and in some cases cheaper. Saturday we are taking the slow train which will take 5 hours and Sunday we will take the KTX a little over 3 hours.
I think it will be fun. We hope to visit a palace and Seoul Tower. Our main reason for going is to buy gifts and souvenirs. We will be staying in the area most known for traditional Korean items. They are cheaper in Seoul than in Gwangju.
It should be fun! I will of course take tons of pictures!

Life goes on.

Hey everyone,
I figured I would put in a quick update before I get ready for work. I'm avoiding grading tests.
We are on the 9 month mark. Only 3 months left. 12 weeks to be exact.
We are excited about our trip home. We will be going to Michigan, taking a quick trip to SC, having a little fun in Orlando, visiting Brazil for a month, then back to Michigan. There are a few other trips in there. You don't know how much you miss friends and family until you are on the other side of the world.
Our lives have pretty much been "same old, same old." Once in a while our classes might change, but we have been in the groove of how things work for a while. We might have an exciting or stressful moment once in a while, but life has been fairly regular. Spring came, the flowers bloomed and it was beautiful. There are still a few trees, bushes, and flowers blooming. Hopefully some color will continue through. We have a rain here and there. The weather has gotten quite warm. The last couple of weeks have shown us low and high 80s. Not something we were expecting so "early." Thankfully the last few days have been cooler - in the high 70s.
Last weekend was a 3 day weekend for Children's Day. This is the main gift giving day for the kids here. It is the cultural replacement for Christmas. I think most of the older children get money. We relaxed Saturday, went to church Sunday and hung out with some friends after church. It was nice. The rain caught us without umbrellas. We have found that if we bring our umbrellas it doesn't rain and if we don't take our umbrellas it rains. At least that was the case this weekend. I now have 3 umbrellas. I had a fourth that I bought in Busan, but it broke while we were in Busan. Monday we also just relaxed.
We keep telling ourselves we will get up and take a walk around the lake, but so far it hasn't happened. I would like to take one more walk up the mountain before we leave. It would be nice to go at night and see what its like. There are lights on the trail. Since we haven't been motivated to get out of the house for excercise, besides our normal walks to work, I ordered some Tae Bo dvds. Those will hopefully be arriving in our next and last package from home. My Mom and Dad have been so helpful in getting items for us!
We hope everyone is having a great year! We have found out how fast time flies. I keep looking back on the months and wondering where they went.