Moving On...

So I decided today that I'm gonna stop trying so gosh darn hard to "catch up" on this thing in order to make everything happen in chronological order. So, if there are any OCD friends of mine out there that might be annoyed by things not happening in the right order...well...you don't really know what order they happened in anyway, so it shouldn't matter to you! So, right now, I am going to talk about my trip last week across Korea. I start by saying that Julie and I are completely insane. Someone asked us "Who planned your trip for you?" and we were just kind of like "Uh...well...we just kind of looked stuff up online and wrote stuff down that people told us to see." So, that being said, last week actually went off without a hitch!
The trip started on Tuesday when we went to Seoul. I hadn't been to Seoul yet, so I was pretty excited just to see it. Also, I planned to meet up with a friend from college (Jamie Rehmer, now Greer) and meet her husband, so I was pretty excited about that. We started our little excursion, got to Seoul Station, and patiently awaited the arrival of Jamie and JD. While we were waiting, I saw SO many homeless guys outside the station, just laying all over the curbs and stuff. I really wanted to find a kimbop nearby and just go buy a bunch for all of them to share! But alas, I was on the lookout for Jamie, who doesn't have a phone yet. Once we met up with them, we ate some overpriced "Western" food at Bennigan's. Honestly, I'd rather live a year without "western" food than pay almost 15 dollars for a lunch that was so-so. After lunch, we parted ways with Jamie and JD and headed for Changdeok Palace. This palace is from the Joseon Dynasty. It began to be built in the 1400s, but after it was invaded by the Japanese, parts of it were rebuilt in the 1600s, 1800s and 1900s. Something interesting that I learned here was that back in the day, the Chinese language was considered to be a more intelligent language than Korean. So on all of the buildings and such of this palace, the titles were written in Chinese to show that there were well educated people living there. Our tour group was pretty cool because we were in the English group...English here is virtually everyone's common second language. So there were people in our group from France, Taiwan, Switzerland, Italy, the US, Canada, and many more places! It was pretty awesome! So after visiting the palace, we went to a shopping district called Insadong. This place sold a lot of antique-like and handmade things. It was awesome and the atmosphere there was very warm and friendly. After out time around Insadong, we were exhausted and wanted to find where we were staying that night. So we went to a travel information center, conveniently located at the front of the Insadong district. We spoke with a girl there that referred us to one of the jjimjilbangs on our printed off list that was near her house. Now, first, you might want to know what a jjimjilbang is. It's a public bath house that also has sleeping facilities. A teacher I work with told me that when her family traveled and wanted to save money, they'd stay at a jjimjilbang. So, Julie and I decided to try the Korean way. This place we went to ended up being WAY out of the main area of Seoul. We just might have been the ONLY foreigners to ever walk the streets of this neighborhood! So, after we ate at a KimBop, we headed for the jjimjilbang. The ladies at the front seemed very excited that we were there. As we tried to determine how long we were allowed to stay (since it was only about 8:30 at night), the lady told us "stay...long time!" When we asked "Overnight?" She said "Ok, ok" which in this case meant yes. Moving on, we left our stuff in a locker, took our little pepto bismol pink outfits that they gave us, and headed to the lockers where we're supposed to leave our clothes. As we were stripping down to change into our awesome new outfits (insert sarcasm), we hear this lady say "Oh my! What are you doing here??" We turn around only to see a Korean woman standing there. Queue confusion. As we soon found out, Rina was actually a Korean born here, but she moved to California about 20 years ago. She was in town visiting her family and decided to come relax at the bath house. The reason she was so shocked to see Americans was because of the area we were in of Seoul...like I said, we might have been the only foreigners to ever walk into those doors! Fortunately, Rina took the time to show us around a let us know where everything was and what it was for. This experience was actually really cool...until the sleeping part. We went upstairs and discovered a sleeping room that was dark, quiet and peaceful. As we debated where we might sleep, these young boys came in and said "Girls...no!" meaning girls aren't allowed in here. Awesome. So, we went downstairs to where the women sleep...in a cave. Literally, they were these arched cutouts in a wall that were just as long as my body and a little wider than a twin bed. So, you crawl in to the mat on the floor, lay your head down on the brick of a pillow, and squint your eyes at the awkward "peaceful" red light above your head. Awesome. So, sleeping situation at this particular jjimjilbang...not so good. Other than that, pretty awesome experience. The next day, we went back to Seoul Station, got some breakfast and headed out to Namsan Tower or N-Seoul Tower. This place kind of looks like the Seattle space needle thing. I guess there's a restaurant up in the top, but we didn't go inside. We could see SO much city from up there, it was crazy. Also up here, I could see the line where the pollution/smog met the fresh, clean sky. It was really gross, but kind of refreshing just to see actual sky. So I guess Namsan is totally the place that you go on dates...they've got these love benches there that are wooden benches designed to slant in toward the middle. Also, all along the fences, people have written love messages on locks and attached them to the fence. Call me cheesy, but it was actually kinda cute. While we were in the area of the tower, they had some soldiers that were dressed up in traditional garb doing some sort of ceremony. It was pretty cool to see that, and I even got my picture taken with one of them! I put up my Victory V just like any good Korean would do in a picture! Oh, if I haven't said anything about the Vs yet...here ya go. Whenever any here poses for a picture, they put up two fingers, like a peace sign. When we asked why, they said "It's a v for victory!" Haha...it's great. So whenever we're feeling especially Korean, we sport the Vs proudly. :) That afternoon, we met up with a teacher that sits next to me at school. Her and her son came to meet us, and then she just said "ka-ja" meaning "let's go." We had NO idea where we were going, but we just followed! She ended up taking us to this 63 story building that had an aquarium, an art gallery, a wax museum, and many other things in it. It was a cool building, and in the elevator, you get to actually look at the outside as you go up or down. It travels at a floor per second, so you're covering some serious height in a short amount of time! Julie got a little queasy on the way down...uh oh! Anyway, my teacher friend (her English name is Cathy) dropped us off at Itaewon where we were going to shop some. She was so sweet to take us around and show us part of Seoul! And her English is not great, but she's got a kind heart, and she really tries...so yeah. So Itaewon is the foreigner's district where there's supposedly great shopping for foreigners, great food, etc etc. Julie and I were both really disappointed by Itaewon...I think it was just hyped up to us WAY too much so we were expecting a lot. However, we did have some good Mexican food at a place called Los Amigos...I got guacamole with my food...it was wonderful! Our server was from Bali and the owner of the restaurant sounded like he was from Jamaica. The entertainment was some Korean guys singing American cover songs. It was definitely an experience! Oh, something interesting about Itaewon is this. Itaewon actually means "another womb" and was a district that came about after the war when a bunch of Korean women came back from being prisoners and were pregnant from the Japanese. These women were shunned out of the regular society and were sent to go live in this place for those with half Japanese kids in their womb. It's kind of ironic that today this district is where most of the foreigners in Seoul live.
Ok, so for now, I'm done. I will tell you all about our trip to Busan next time! I hope you're enjoying this and that I'm not just blabbering on and on for nothing. That's all!