LET THE

ADVENTURING BEGIN!

 

 

It has been sooooo long since I last posted, and I apologize profusely for that. I've just been caught up in life these past weeks and blogging has managed to escape my to do list. But the good news is...I've been on a few awesome adventures (now that I have money in the bank and more friends in Korea, those will hopefully be happening on a more regular basis)!!!

 

My first adventure: Gyeongbokgung Palace

 

Yes, I took many photos :) However, I am not included in most because I'm just not the kind of person to take lots of photos of me. I prefer to capture the cool things going on around me rather than boring ol' me (although I did include a couple just to prove it was me who was actually there and that I'm not stealing images off the internet and claiming I went on awesome adventures I actually didn't go on—like I would ever do that). But now I'm rambling, so moving on!

 

I met up with a girl I had met the first couple weeks I was here, and I must say we are becoming fast friends :) Her name is Stori and she is awesome! She came here to teach English, just like me, so we have a lot to talk about. She is also a photographer (she was the one who took the photos of me, btw). The other guy we went with, I actually didn't know before we met up. The only thing I knew about him was that he served his mission in Hawaii (so of course I had to get to know him better so I could reminisce about Hawaii with someone who fully understands the awesomeness that is Hawaii). Needless to say, we hit it off too. We three spent a good three hours walking around the palace (it was ginormous!!!). There was so much to see, and we didn't even get to all of it. But here's what we did get to:

 

The gates to Gyeongbokgung Palace

The ceiling paintings were so colorful and intricate!

One of the many doorways that led to even more of the palace
(I swear this place is never ending).

Mini door :)

A reading room (my kind of place)

This shot was just so cool with all the layers!!!

 

Me!

 

They had a couple pretty gardens.

This place was surrounded by water
(I'm not exactly sure what "this place" is...)

These are pots are used to ferment things like wine and soybeans.

 

Me by a garden

 

Just a cool shot of the palace

A cool little pagoda in the middle of a water lilly strewn pond

Giant pagoda!!!!

 

They had all twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac out
by the museum, so naturally I had to take a picture with
my animal (the rabbit, if you couldn't tell).

 

We were literally walking out to meet our friends when
we stumbled upon the changing of the guard

Aren't the costumes awesome?!

 

 

And here's the video (hopefullly this works)!!!

 

 

After the palace, we met up with a couple other friends for lunch and decided to check out the lantern festival that was going on downtown. There was some cool stuff (pictures to prove it!). After a bit of exploring, we found a place to sit down to watch the parade that was to follow all the festivities. While there were some awesome parts (I'm going to attempt to upload the videos—I guess you'll see whether it worked or not in a sec), but overall it was quite somber. Turns out the festival is normally a lot more fun and exciting, but Korea was still mourning the ferry incident (you can look up details online if you're curious—I may decide to dedicate a post to it in the future, but not now). So here are photos from the festival/parade!!!

 

I have no clue who this giant metal man is, but he looked cool...
Thus a picture!

So many colors!

Lanterns everywhere!

I loved the tree disappearing into the sea of lanterns!

They had a lot of these light up floats

Elephant!

Lion!

And here's another video (by far the coolest part of the parade!!!!).

 

My second adventure: sleepover with one of my favorite people ever, my former college roomie, Sharon :)

 

We had a long four day weekend (Korea was celebrating Children's Day and Buddha's birthday). We went to her place right after church, then decided to meet up with one of her friends for pie at a cute little bakery that specializes in pie, and oh was that pie to die for!!! Paradise pie, oh my!

The little pie shop :)

Our pies!!! I was sooooo excited for this!

Wild Berry

Apple

Paradise Pie (and oh is that an accurate description!!!)

 

On Monday, we met up with a couple friends for some shopping. This shopping experience has only gone to prove that I cannot haggle worth a...I don't know what...but I can't haggle to save my life. I actually only ended up buying one thing. But we went to go see the new Spiderman movie afterwards and we got some delicious shaved ice desserts so it was all good. And Sharon showed me this awesome place that has rice burgers (I was so excited to eat it I forgot to get a picture :( but I found one close to my house, so I'll upload a photo sometime). Can I just say how epic this "burger" was?! It was rice with a mixture of nori (the seaweed that asians are so fond of) and some other spices as the "buns" with tuna and kimchi as the "burger." You might think it sounds weird, and, yes, kimchi is an acquired taste, but oh my goodness, you should try it (though a note of caution, it is a bit on the spicy side—but I could handle it which means it wasn't too spicy).

 

And my last adventure (though some might debate whether it's an adventure or not): I'm starting a Korean class!!!

 

The first class will be this coming week, but I'm already all signed up and they've made the materials available so we can start preparing (it's an online class which is nice and convenient). The first couple lessons will basically be review for me (going over the korean alphabet), but there were some nice tips on how to properly pronounce certain characters which I'd been struggling with, so that was nice. I'll probably still be butchering the language for months to come, but at least I'll be getting somewhere. Maybe in a few months I'll finally be able to understand what the ladies at the checkout counter at the grocery store are trying to tell me...I'm hoping to be somewhat conversational in 4-6ish months. Let me tell you how much of a help that will be in surviving Korea. Though I am somewhat worried what I might hear people saying once I start understanding more Korean. I'll know if people are talking about me--the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes ignorance is bliss...