according to local experts (wikipedia), chuseok is a major harvest festival celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. whatever that means. to the uninformed and barely interested american, chuseok is more or less the south korean version of thanksgiving. families return to their hometowns to share large, traditional meals (with plenty of songpyeon!) and pay respect to their ancestors. to foreigners living in south korea, chuseok is primarily recognized as free time to do whatever we want. or in other words, awesome.
so with nearly an entire week off of school, a handful of us daegu teachers decided to book a trip with adventure korea, an outfit based out of seoul that organizes trips for foreigners all around the country. our trip would start on wednesday when we would take the ktx express train up to seoul. after staying in seoul for two days, we would take a bus to seoraksan (sorak mountain) for three days of hiking and/or beach bumming. at night we would stay at a spa resort and have the option of saunas and hot baths. does it sound amazing? uh, yeah. and, aside from some minor complaints about adventure korea, it was.
i'm breaking it down into two parts just because there's too many pictures for one post. so this first part is just seoul. we (max, chelsea, nancy, gemma and myself) left for seoul around 11am on wednesday morning (my first express train ride by the way). the ktx takes around 2 hours to get from daegu to seoul so we arrived in seoul shortly after 1pm. i plan on uploading a video i took on the train but the file size is too big. that's what updates are for!
not having any real plans, we decided to set off to see gyeongbok palace. built in 1394, it was the largest of the five grand palaces built during the joseon dynasty (i had to look that up). being a holiday, there were hundreds of people there, ruining my photo ops...again. i should probably touch up these photos when i get a chance. they look dark and sinister.
these little girls are dressed in traditional korean dresses, called hanbok.
basking in the palace's royal splendor worked up our appetites so we hopped on the subway and tried to find something delicioius. actually, from the moment we arrived in seoul i feel like i was constantly eating. its like i had a tape worm. or a family of tape worms. i ate seven meals a day with dessert making up at least 3 of them. i have no regrets (note to kailey/connie: which is not to say i never have regrets).
compared to daegu, seoul is big. but daegu is big, so what is seoul? seoul is huge. for every one thing daegu has, seoul has an entire area of town devoted to it. seoul has bridges that shoot out water shows. seoul has one of the world's largest subway lines. seoul has mexican food.
seoul has garfield the cat.
we ended the first night by meeting one of the epik class leaders from orientation named nicholas (that's his "english" name, i don't know his korean name). i didn't know him from orientation but i guess he's kind of awesome. he's tri-lingual (korean, english and french), super friendly and taught us some korean drinking games that, wouldn't you know it, got everyone pretty wasted. after hitting up some bars we landed in a luxury noraebang where we stayed until about 5 in the morning. korea!
the next day we went for a walk.
this is a little outdoor workout space they have hiding under a bridge. there were all sorts of old people here doing crazy exercises on crazier machines. they have places like these all over, not only in seoul but in daegu, too.
later that evening we decided to go to seoul tower to watch the sunset over the city. it's an impressive view. they also had these mesh figures hanging all over the place. they looked pretty cool floating against the sky. i want to make a comment about the ethereal quality of their mesh transparency as compared to the vacuous quality of the space/sky, but this isn't livejournal, so i'll just leave it at that thought.
yeah lets put the little kid up on the railing that looks out over a huge drop on the hill top. way to pull a mj (michael jackson).
after we hiked down the huge hill leading up to the tower we were, of course, hungry. so we hopped in a cab and tried our luck at finding food. it was the sign below that won us over. surely this would be greatest meal of our lives!
it was a mistake! bland, tasteless noodles in a bland, tasteless sauce with dokk (rice cake), egg and the worst mandu i've ever had. so i got a corn dog from a street vendor afterwards. no regrets!
i'm not entirely sure what was going on here but i think it was some sort of dance contest. most of the dancers would go about 2 minutes before giggling and covering their faces. i'm not sure who won.
that night we decided to call it early, because afterall, we had to wake up at 6 the next morning to catch the 7:30am bus. somewhere along the way those plans fell apart. we met up with other people who were in seoul. we went to a club. we lost track of time. we went to bed at 4am. yes, 4am. when did we need to wake up again? oh yes, 6am. brilliant. and what were we supposed to be doing the next day? going on a massive hike. right. awesome.
on the next installment: did our brave reporter meet his end on the cliffs of seorak mountain, or did he live to blog another day?! perhaps the fact that you are reading this question is a clue. stay tuned!
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