Journey to Korea - Day 2

We are on day 2 in Korea.  Or actually day 3 on our trip, but we lost half a day flying to Korea.  We start this day by going to find something to eat for breakfast.  Mistie and Gina walked to a local coffee store, Tom N Tom Coffee, for coffee.  It was Korea's version of Starbucks.  The coffee was too strong.  That's usually remedied with creamer, but we never found liquid creamer anywhere.  We headed to another coffee shop called Kona Beans across the street from the hotel.  It became one our favorite hangouts.

Kona Beans was great.  It was open all night.  They had great sitting areas.  You could walked up four stairs to two alcove sections with tables with four wicker chairs.  It had shelves filled with books on each side and two tables in each alcove.  I wanted to sit up there, so while my sisters and mom were ordering I walked up the stairs.  I was startled because at one of the tables were two ladies.  They were sleep.  They came prepared.  They had small pillows upon the table and their heads were on the pillow.  This wasn't the only time we would see people asleep in an business that was open all night.  

I quietly crept back down the stair and chose another table.  We all got our food and enjoyed our breakfast.  I didn't eat anything because I'm not really a breakfast person, so that's why there's no picture of our food.  The music they played was in English.  

After we ate breakfast, we went next door to the Family Mart, a small convenience store.  Gina and my mom wanted to make sure their credit cards would work.  They did, which was a relief.

We went back to our hotel to meet up with Jung Hwa. We took the subway to a local shopping market.

 

While we were walking around, we found a Seoul police station.  They had these cute little figures just outside the police station.  This was the only police station we saw the figures though. 

Jung Hwa went inside to ask a police officer if they would come out and take a picture with me.  He said, "Oh I am not handsome."  He wanted to comb his hair before he came out for a picture.  He was very sweet to accommodate me.

Oh yeah, while we were on the subway, I saw this funny picture.  The boy had freaky eyes, so I of course had to take a picture with him.  

Mistie saw these self breathing face masks.  They have them in the subway at random places just in case there is every an accident and they need them.  There's obviously not enough for everyone, so I guess if something were to happen to would be survival of the fittest.  

Jung Hwa took us to Namdaemun Market.  We also met up with Daniel.  This was our first experience in a marketplace.  It was very interesting.  There were little shops set up everywhere!  They sold all kinds of things.  There was food, toys, tissue/wrapping paper, clothes, souvenirs, accessories, and just about anything else you could want.  Some of the aisles were very hard to walk down with a backpack on your back.  We asked Jung Hwa if it was okay to go to these markets.  We had been told that we could negotiates at the open markets.  Jung Hwa told us it was "very dangerous".  I don't think she meant we would get hurt, but that we could get pick pocketed easily if we weren't paying attention.  The owners didn't really want to negotiate the prices so we purchase anything or stay there very long.

 

 

 

 

 

As we were leaving the market for find lunch, a lady inside a restaurant waved us into hers.  We ate our lunch there.  My mom had dumpling soup and Gina had bimbimbap.  It's a hot soup bowl with rice covered with vegetables and a raw egg.  You stir the raw egg into your hot bowl and it cooks the egg.  Mistie and I just had yaki mandoo and fried rice.  It was good.  I also took home this Korean Coke bottle.  It also got thrown away by the maid a couple of days later.

After lunch, we decided to get on the Seoul City Bus Tour because it was going to stop several places we wanted to go.

One of the first places we stopped was Deosku Palace.  It was so pretty.  They have several guard at the entrance.  The kind that never smile.  However, they were willing to take pictures with tourists. 

 The central path in the picture below is actually where Korean kings have walked.  It was reserved for only the king.  The cement things sticking out of the ground along the walkway marked the places with politicians would line up when the king walked in.  They were lined up by importance.  The palace is where the king would come to work.  It was very beautiful.

We were leaving the palace just in time to see the changing of the guard.  We didn't get to see the whole ceremony.  There was a lady who banged on a big drum.  The big drum was right outside the palace.  If you wanted to talk to the king, you would hit the drum.  Many guards marched around in front of the palace and rotated positions.

Earlier as we were walking to the palace, we noticed some men setting up a tent.  As we were leaving the palace, they were still setting up a tent.  Daniel told us they were setting up for a protest.  I never did quite understand why they were protesting.  However, I did get a good look at Korean policemen.  There was a bus load of them waiting for the protest to start.  One of the things I noticed immediately is that they wore nothing on their belts.  The officer wears, a gun, baton, pepper spray, handcuffs, and extra magazines on his duty belt.  These Korean officer wore nothing.  Daniel informed me that guns are illegal in Korea.  Most of the policemen do not carry them. Only the higher ups carry weapons. Every young man in Korea has to spend two years serving in the police department or military.  It seemed some of these police officers were very young.

We made our way to a traditional Korean village.  Of course, we couldn't pass up a photo opportunity.

 

When we walked into the place, there were some men putting on a preformance.  They were playing some large drums.  They were very good.  There was supposed to be a tae kwon do demonstration, but it was going to be at 4 p.m. and it was later than we were staying.  I would have loved to video some of that for my son.

 

We saw some of the household tools they would make by hand.  The picture below is an egg holder.  The man in white below was weaving more items.

We also came upon a tae kwon do class.  They were all white belts.  They were being taught by a 6th degree black belt.

We walked around the village.  The village demonstrated how an upper class Korean might have lived.  

 

kitchen

 

low doorways - watch your head  They weren't very tall! :)

 

This is a grinder.  They would put their grain on the end and step on the two ends to grind their grain.

 

Jung Hwa was our very brave soul to taste the water. 

 

bedroom

 

I can't remember what this was - it might have been a guest bedroom.

 

kimchi pots

 

living room area

 

Korean house

 

I just saw this lady walking around.  I am sure she was part of the program they were having but I didn't get to see her do anything.  I just thought she was pretty.

Through out the day we met up with some more of mom's international students.  Jung Hwa and Daniel spent the whole day with us.  Victoria (1st picture below) met up with us for just a very short while.  Sung Eun (2nd picture below) spent half the day with us.  She said she was excited to hang out with us because she was getting to see and do some things in Seoul she had never done before! :)  She and I bonded the very next day a lot! 

 

This is a group picture in the subway, I think.  Sung Eun, Daniel, Jung Hwa, me, Mistie, Gina, and Jong Chae (he only stayed a little bit too).

 

I really wanted to purchase a hanbok (a traditional Korean dress) for my daughter.  Daniel said his aunt owned a shop.  I took us a bit to find it.  However, we did get to walk along a great little river walk.  I loved how people were just hanging out down there. It was a beautiful day.

 

Daniel finally found his aunt's market place.  I can totally understand how it would be difficult to locate it if you haven't been to it much.  This was a much different market place than the Namdaemun Market.  It was inside.  As soon as we walked in, you just saw row of ladies who were cooking.  Each row of ladies appeared to be cooking the same thing.  You just grabbed a seat right up by their counter and ate.  I saw some interesting things - pig's snout, pig's feet, octopus, and squid to name just a few.  Take a look at the picture.  I was in awe!

 

This lady was frying something and it smelled so good.  All I know is it looked like a hashbrown and it had onions in it.  I was contemplating purchasing one, but I didn't know what was in it.  Also we were still on the hunt for Daniel's aunt's shop inside the marketplace.  Next thing I know, Sung Eun has purchased one.  She shared it with everyone.  She said it was a type of bean.  Let me tell you it tasted as good as it smelled.  It was delicious.  

 

We finally found the shop.  It was called Shiila's Hanboks.  At first, Daniel's aunt was not there.  A lady who worked there showed us three hanboks.  My favorite was the second one she showed me.  The skirt is dark pink with embroidered flowers.  The top is light pink with multi-colors.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Daniel's aunt then came in.  She started putting other things with the hanbok.  She put a pantaloons, a petticoat, a headband and a small drawstring purse with the hanbok.  Gina also choose a hanbok for her daughter.  Then Daniel's aunt said she wanted us to have them for free as a welcome to Korea gift.  It was such a sweet gift.  She would not accept money.  I will never forget her generosity.  Below is her picture.

my daughter in her hanbok

While we were waiting on the hanboks to be packaged up, a lady brought in some smoothies.  I am not sure if someone in our group purchased them or if she just gave them to us.  I tasted it.  It was a tomato smoothie.  Interesting.  Not what I had expected.  Looked like strawberry.  Very sweet gift, but not my favorite.  

After the hanbok store, we headed back via subway to the hotel.  We had a very short time before we had to meet up with another international student, H.D.  My mom and I had to call the air conditioning man to come show us how to use it again.  It would go off every day - not sure if it went off automatically or because the maids would turn it off, but we still did not understand how to turn it back on.  It was our second time have the man up to show us how to turn it on.  He did not speak English and we did not understand his Korean.  He turned it on for us though and that was good enough.  Mistie and Gina never had this problem.  I'm not sure what that says.

We took a taxi to an island, Yiodo.  Sung Eun, Mistie and I were in one taxi.  Daniel, my mom and Gina were in another.  We arrived first and met H.D.  He said we were in the "Wall Street" section of Seoul.  We were going to eat Italian food.  Italian food Korean style!  It was called Ole'.

I could immediately tell that H.D. knew English very well.  He knew slang terms and starting talking fast in English.  The other taxi arrived and we walked to Ole'.  We just told H.D. to please order at least one dish without seafood, but other than that whatever he wanted.  I noticed they were giving us water from bottles of water.  I think I drank three bottles myself.  This was the first time the water wasn't just poured from a pitcher.  H.D. ordered a salad, a soup, and three main dishes. Dinner was a lot of fun.  

The food started to come out.  The waiter brought out a pumpkin.  This was our soup.  The soup was in the pumpkin.  He ladled a small amount into our small bowls, and then scraped the sides of the pumpkin and dolloped it into our soup.  I really liked it. 

 

The salad was good too.  However, by the time H.D. had finished serving everyone some salad there was only a sprig left for him.  It's okay though because I think he got plenty of one of the main dishes.

 

The first main dish was a pasta dish with sausage and a marina sauce.  It was pretty good.  This picture makes the dishes look small, but they weren't.  There was food left over!

 

The next dish, and my favorite, was a pasta dish with vegetables and had a creamy white sauce.  It was very good.

 

The last dish was the most interesting.  It was a dish with risotto, spinach, shrimp, and broccoli with a squid ink sauce.  Yep, you read that right - squid ink sauce.  Yep, I tried it too.  I took a bit of broccoli and it had squid ink all over it.  Mistie actually took a picture of me eating it, but I won't show you that.  :)  Honestly, I didn't taste much besides the broccoli.  The sauce didn't have a lot of flavor.  It was just kind of hard to get over the black color and the fact that it was squid ink.  I think everyone at the table at least took one bit.  Daniel and H.D. really liked it.  Oh yeah the garlic bread was great too, but they didn't bring enough of it.  Ain't that always the case?

 

After we finished dinner, we needed to walk around a little bit.  We are starting to get used to walking after our meals and it's kind of nice.  H.D. said we could walk to a nearby park, stop for coffee, and see the Han River.  The park was great.  They had a large place to play basketball.  Almost like having three to four basketball courts together.  There were people riding bicycles on a track that went around the courts.  You could also rent roller blades.  They had some occupiers - they were protesting "big companies".  There was also a beautiful walking trail to the Han River with many beautiful flowers.

 

We went to the coffee shop.  I got my favorite, iced caramel latte.  Yummy!  As we were all sitting in the little coffee shop, we saw people eating boxes of fried chicken.  They didn't sell it in the coffee shop, so we had no idea where people were getting it.  I even saw a lady eating a fried chicken leg with chopsticks.  I admired her skills.  It wasn't until we left the coffee shop, that we noticed a little fried chicken stand attached to the coffee shop on the outside that we realized where they were getting it. 

 

H.D., Daniel, mom, Mistie, Gina, Sung Eun being squished by me.

 

After we finished our drinks, we walked down by the river.  There were many people out just enjoying the night.  It was really pretty because of the lights they had in the water.  Some people were even playing in the water.  Isn't it almost postcard perfect?

 

It was a great day, busy, but great.  It was great meeting all the students and site seeing with them.  They were all so gracious helping us out.  Whether it was to find out how much something costs, or telling us not to purchase something, telling us a bit of history, or interpreting for us, and showing us their city, they all did it without any complaining and with so much patience.  We would ask Daniel if he was tired because he had shopped with us so much and his answer would always be, "No, I'm strong!"  

Everyone escorted us back to our hotel.  Always the best host until the very end.  Everyone went to bed pretty quickly because it had been such a long busy day.  It didn't stop my mom from waking up in the middle of the night again though.  I think she only read for an hour.