So I'm home again now, but I haven't been blogging at all. Jet lag is just terrible once you're back home again. I used to go to bed early and wake up early. Now I can't fall asleep at all until after midnight, I don't sleep well, and then I don't wake up until my emergency alarm goes off. I say emergency, because it's the one I set obscenely late, just in case I don't wake up. Then I forgot on Fridays that I have to go in an hour early, so I need to set my alarm an hour earlier. Did I remember that part? Nope. Thank goodness I wasn't late.

So I'm going to keep on bloggin about my trip until you're all nice and caught up. Then I'll do a couple commentary-type posts. Here's the rest of the day after we saw Gyeongbok Palace.

We left the palace and got back on the subway. A couple stops later we got off at Chung Lo. This was the only place I really saw a lot of street vendors. I wanted to try some, but Hisung said, "no junk food." hahaha! Ok, so I just looked at the delicious looking fried and slathered yummies, and took a couple pics as we walked along.We walked around there for a while, trying to get pictures while walking, and without being too annoying. It would have been better if I had a longer zoom, so I wouldn't have to get up in people's faces to take pictures. That will be the next lens I buy for sure. Also, we were walking walking walking, and it's hard to get good pictures without stopping. So many of my pictures on the trip were taken in a hurry, because we had so many places to go and things to see. I think if I go back, I will have more time to stop and enjoy things without having such a whirlwind. Maybe then I'll get better pictures. I still have yet to edit these pictures, but I don't feel like it at the moment, being so exhausted and all.

So anyway! After Chung Lo, we went to this nice little stream that runs through the city called Cheong Gye Cheon. It was really pretty, and it was filled with couples! This couple was so cute, and I got a couple shots of them bein' all adorable.

They were the cute, unmarried, and totally in love couple. The couple that makes other couples sick with an overdose of adorableness. He was so sweet. He helped her down, helped her across, helped her up. Took adoring photos of her. They were just too too cute! Then there was this couple going across, with their shopping bags. Older, and married, probably on their way home from work, not so cute, and not so adorable. This is where that other couple will be in 10 years, if they're still together in 10 years. Did he help her up or down? Nope. Just made sure she could get up ok by herself. But hey, at least he's carrying the bags, right? Still a good man. lol!So then it was our turn to cross the rocks. Hisung helped me down and took pictures as we hopped along. I guess we're still in that adorableness stage...hahaha!
So we looked around some more on the other side and decided to cross again, but in a different spot. This is where things got tricky. You see, one of the rocks was very small, half of it was in the water, and was very slippery. Only one foot would fit on that rock. The jump between the rocks was also not that little. Why oh why did we have to choose this path across? I stood there and stood there, wondering what it would be like to fall in the water in front of oodles of strangers who are already transfixed on the giant white foreigner. Hisung couldn't resist, and took a picture of this couple watching to see what was going to happen to the poor foreigner in the slippery flip flops. Just look at them. The guy looks concerned for me, aww, how sweet....but the girl, she's just enjoying the show. hahaha!
I couldn't move for a long time. I just couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if I fell. It's not just falling in in front of dozens of staring strangers, it's being wet, for a long time, and walking around the city, all wet and embarrassed. What would happen once I got on the subway? Oh boy......I didn't even want to imagine. I finally decided, it was just time to do it. Time to take the leap and pray I could keep my inner clutz at bay. Just do it! 1...2........3........ok 3 and a half........GO! In the air I went, and down on the rock I landed...and wobbled...panic! But I caught myself, and all was well. phew! Trauma averted. Time to get out of there before I had another chance to make a fool of myself.

We walked down to Myeongdong, and there was this pretty little water feature and some nice grass.

Do you see that sign in the back? Tous Les Jous? They have the best vegetable croquettes on the planet, I am sure. Don't know what that is? I didn't either, but mmmm....It's like a doughnut, but not...It's slightly sweet, and crunchy on the outside, and inside is all doughy and like, really tiny vegetables all chopped up in like....creamy cheese or something. I have no idea...but they are so good, and I can't get them here....so sad...

Anyway! This guy was giving a little concert, which was pretty cool.

Myeongdong has a lot of restaurants, and a lot of people. Not too many cars around, which is nice. It's a cool place to go for a stroll and people watch. We decided to grab some dinner before heading up to Seoul Tower again. Hisung orderd Sulungtang. It's like a light beef broth soup with thinly sliced beef and scallions in it. You put your rice in and eat it that way. You can also stick some radish kimchi in it to give it an extra lil kick. I had some of this later and took some pics for you all to see. It's delicious. But that night, I saw mandu on the menu, and I had never had mandu like these before, so I ordered up, and holy cow... They were HUGE! And yummy.....oh so yummy.
After dinner we headed up to Nam Mountain again, and we locked up our locks, and had some awesome Coldstone ice cream. That's right, Seoul Tower, has Coldstone. mmmm...... Since I've already posted all about Seoul Tower, including the locks, I'll just put up one pic, and close this bad boy.

I still have so much to catch you all up on. Hopefully I will be able to knock it all out soon, before I totally forget all those little details about it. :)

Ok, so picking up where I left off......again. Pictures of the palace! Easily the most beautiful thing in the whole enormous city. Ready? Here we go!

One of the many buildings inside the labrynth of the palace. You can get lost in this place for sure. I think this might have been one of the quarters for some of the lady's in waiting. Apparently each night there were over 700 people ready and waiting to serve the king and queen if they were requested. Over 600 ladies in waiting and over 100 eunuchs.

One of the many doors in the walls. Most of the hallways and building walls have doors like these ones.
This is Kyeonghoe-ru, the largest pavillion in the country and a ballroom of sorts. This is where the king would entertain foreign guests. It's just gorgeous.

Here's a view from the side, looking in.

And here's a close up of one of the sculptures on the walkway.

Here are a couple pics of me and of Hisung in front of it, enjoying the shade from the hot hot sun.
We also went into the king's resting room. Actually I forget what it's called, but it's where he spent most of the day. It's relaxing and quiet, and even in the hot still weather, somehow a lovely breeze floats through the room. It was easily the coldest place in the whole palace. We got to walk inside if we took our shoes off. It was really neat! The ceiling was amazing.

They also had a small couch set up and a place setting where the king would have eaten. Here's a couple pics of the room.

Here's a couple shots of the walkway. There's so much detail all over the place, I couldn't help but take some closeups.

I don't know how on Earth I got a shot of this walk empty. It's the path to the king and queen's rooms as well as the way back out, so it's always full of people. This was towards the end of the day, so I guess a lot of them cleared out by then. Another one of the beautiful buildings.

And another underside of a roof, I couldn't get enough of these.

A look down one of the corridors.

And one last image for you all.

Now I have to get ready and go eat breakfast with one of Hisung's cousins who's on leave from the army. More later peeps!

Ok, so a ton of time has passed since I last blogged. It couldn't be helped though. Last week I came down with....the sickness, oh the sickness. I haven't been so sick in a long time. It started Friday, but I didn't know it then. I was very tired all day, and felt just...off. Then Saturday morning I woke up feeling pretty bad. I thought I was just tired at first, but as the day went on I felt worse and worse. Before I knew it, my throat was really sore and swollen, my muscles ached, I was exhausted, and I had a fever. We were out in the city and it was too late to see a doctor, but Hisung's mom works for a medical clinic and she was able to bring me home 2 days worth of antibiotics. Thank goodness!

The palace was beautiful. Huge, and beautiful. All the buildings have this type of design under the roof. They're so gorgeous and full of detail. It's breathtaking.

Once we entered we joined a tour group led by a woman wearing a light cotton hanbok (a traditional Korean dress) who was very knowledgeable and quite funny! She told us how the walkway is separated in three parts, and that the middle part is only for the king to walk. If anyone even accidentally stepped on the king's path, they were spanked with a wooden instrument about 180 times. She said that now we're here as tourists, and we can walk on the king's path all we want, and no one will spank us. hahahaha!
This palace, along with other sites in the city, are really interesting to see. They're so old, unchanged by time (except for the renovations and such). They're quiet, save for the tourists, full of green scenery, and very still. Outside is a modern bustling concrete metropolis, noisy, and ever changing. It's so different to my western eyes, but very interesting.

I seriously took an obscene amount of pictures in this place. I could never hope to show you many of them here. It takes several minutes for each picture to upload on the blog. Plus, I took some panoramas, but I will have to wait until I get home to stitch them together. So I'll just show you a bunch of them, with only very small explanations, if any.

Here's the king's throne.

Ok, I'm sorry, I have to cut this post off prematurely. My pictures have stopped uploading to blogger for some reason. It's taking ten minutes for each one, and I've tried the same picture 4 times now and it still won't upload. I can't waste my day waiting for these babies. I'm sorry. I'll have to update more later. :( More is coming though, I promise!

Right next to the tower there are some stairs and a place where they have a light show and music. The little kids play and dance in them and have a good time. I got this shot of a cutey little boy running around in them.

They also have a few of these wire sculptures that hang about 20 feet up. They’re very cool and look like they’re flying. I don’t know what they represent exactly, but they’re beautiful. There’s one in the lights of the laser show.

There’s also a tradition at the tower, for couples. Couples write love notes, their names, the date, whatever they want, on padlocks and lock them to the fence, then they throw the keys over the side of the tower. Locking them up and throwing away the key means they’ll always be together. Of course, now there are signs that say not to throw your keys, but I’m sure people still do it.
There must be thousands of locks there, tens of thousands, if not more.

We were there at night, so some of these shots I will have to tweak in Photoshop when I get home. Like this one, but I still like it.


While we were up there we took some pictures together. Here’s one of Hisung with his mom and dad.
And one with me and his parents.

The place was closing for the night, and you have to make the last cable car if you have any hope of getting down the mountain without an ENORMOUS walk. They don’t care if people are still on the top, the last car is the last car. So we raced down all the wooden steps back to the cable car station and caught one of the last cars down.

Hisung and I of course, needed to come back. A trip to Nam Mountain needs to include couple locks. So the next day, after a very long afternoon out (which I’ll write about later), we went back up the mountain top. We got locks, sharpie pens, and a little heart we could write messages on.


It was dark and the locks went out at a weird angle, so it was hard to take a picture of. But there they are! Forever stuck to the fence at Seoul Tower. I just know you’re all wondering, did you throw away the keys? No way. I gotta keep something as a momento. So we wrote our names and the date on the keys and we’re keeping them. :)

Here’s a shot of part of the city when you look over the side. Obviously it needs some tune up work in photoshop, but you get the idea. This is only a little piece too. The city is enormous.

And here’s a pic of Hisung in front of part of the fence. See how packed in those babies are?

We got some ice cream at the Coldstone on the mountain top and headed back down the mountain for home and sleep. Glorious glorious sleep.

Now it’s time to get ready to go out for the day. So I’ll write more later. I think the next post will be about Gyungbok palace, and the rest of that day, most likely. :)

Can I jam two days into one post? Who knows, but I will try.

Even in the rain, there were still so many people. I snapped a pic of this group of Chinese school kids as they shot a video. Their leader was hilarious! Look at him go!

So we start over to the National Museum, which is right next door, and guess what....closed on Mondays! Sad..... Well, we were meeting up with his friend Sungmin in the evening, and we'd already forgotten his present. I was so hot and sticky and wet and miserable I wanted to go back home anway. So off we went, and that's when I got into my little skirt dress and took out my braids. With my wavy hair and a nice airy dress I felt ten million times better.

So then off we went again and I'm still kicking myself that I didn't take pictures that whole night. We were supposed to see Sungmin again tonight, but he can't come. So hopefully sometime I'll have some pics of them together before we leave. We went way out to see him and they talked like they'd never been apart. He's definitely Hisung's best friend. He was a professional soccer player here for a while and now he's getting ready to go study sports marketing in the states. Even though I'm happy for him, I'm kind of sad, because he doesn't speak English quite as well as Hisung I think, but he has a good TOEFL score and got into the University he wants to attend. Here they have academies that specifically teach you skills for how to pass these tests, whereas Hisung's classes in the states don't teach too much honestly.

Anyway! So we walked and walked and walked to this restaurant, and we finally arrived around the time I thought my feet were going to fall right off and roll into the nearest gutter. It was totally worth the walk though. We had Samgyehtang. It's a chicken and ginseng soup served in a stone bowl. When you get it, it's broth with chopped scallions in it, and a tiny boiled chicken, whole, right in the bowl. When you pick up the pieces with your chopsticks, it falls right apart....soo good. You're supposed to put the chicken on a plate and eat it out of the bowl as you go, and put the bones in a little metal can. I just couldn't do that though....I totally deboned my chicken, then put all the pieces back into my soup and ate it that way. Also! The coolest part, is that the chicken is stuffed with rice, a date, and ginseng. It looks like a big nut cut in half kind of. So when you open it, all the goodies come out and voila! Chicken and rice soup! It was amazing. Wow....Even Sungmin was impressed with how much I ate.

He was a funny guy. He's my favorite of Hisung's friends so far, although I know I've only met too. But he's very entertaining and you know that a night out with him won't be boring for sure. And Hisung gets a lot more fun when he's around Sungmin. He brings out a really funny side to him that I haven't seen as much. It's really great to see him with good friends. So after dinner we took a cab back to the subway station, since I was about to die of exhaustion. This time it was after 9, but my body says SLEEEEEP!!!! at about 8:30. So a cab ride and 45 minutes of subway and what felt like about 600 more stairs we were home, and I totally crashed. I couldn't even get into pj's. I just slept in my leggings and my tank top, but it was a great day.

The next day we went over to Lotte World. We walked around the department stores, ate some Japanese lunch, and took some pics by the ice rink.

Then we headed over to the folk museum that's inside on the top floor. It was really cool, because there's all this information about the history of the country, as well as replicas of all these important artifacts from around the country. So if you can't see them all (especially the ones in North Korea) you can see exact replicas there. They have some authentic things as well. They had some activities here and there and cute things you can do. Probably for the kids, but we had fun doing them too. Here's Hisung trying on a traditional kind of open backpack of sorts called a Jiggeh.

They also had a bunch of displays depicting life in Korea. Everything from ordinary homes and life, to temples, to royalty. Here's one of my favorites of the royalty.

And here's a replica of a Buddhist temple.

Then they had this room with tons of replicas buildings complete with little miniature figurines that were absolutely adorable. The buildings were on a miniature scale, but were still pretty big and full of details.


And the figurines.....well, here's a peak at how expressive they were.

So then on the way out, the coolest thing happened. There was this man who was doing some traditional painting and he let me take some pictures of him. I was really interested in everything he was doing, and so he offered to do a little something for me for free. Then he did another, then he did another. We got three free paintings when they're normally $15 each. The first was a painting where he told me to write my name next to his work. I thought for sure I'd mess it up and make it look terrible. It was ok though. Then the next two were pictures, but they were letters too. So one spells out I love you, and the other spells out my name. I couldn't take pics of those, because my camera for some reason just gave out on me all of a sudden and wouldn't let me take pictures. I thought my battery died, but that wasn't it. It was fine a while later though. Maybe I overheated it or something. But anyway, here's they guy painting and stamping the art. The stamping is apparently a big deal too. It's all official now.

Oh, and also! I almost forgot the coolest thing! He's basically been named a national treasure by the government because of his traditional painting. And in this drama called The Painter of the Wind, it was his hand that did the actual painting. I think that's pretty cool. :)

Ok, well we did some more stuff in the evening, but I have to stop for now. I have been at this for a long time now. We spent the day relaxing for the most part. Yesterday was too busy, and we needed a break today. We're going to get ready and meet Hisung's cousin Harin and a friend who's teaching English here for dinner and a norebang. Fun fun! Ok I'll write more later!