Day 3 in Seoul

Well, we made our daily stop for breakfast at the Dunkin Donuts this morning! For all of you who said we would come back so skinny.... think again! This is what we ate this morning!

After breakfast we headed over to the subway, which happens to have it's own little shopping area that I always get suckered into looking at. I ended up buying something and the man running the store offered me coffee. I don't drink coffee, but I didn't want to refuse, so I said "Nay, kamsamnida" which means "yes, thank you!" I waited for about 3 minutes for the water to boil, and ended up giving the coffee to Kevin, who never refuses a cup of it!

We then headed over to see the famous Bongeunsa Buddist Temple, which was built in 794! It currently has over 200,000 lay members and numerous monks. We walked the grounds and even went into the prayer room. It was huge inside, with tall ceilings, beautiful intricately painted walls and ceilings, old wood floors, gold statues, candles everywhere, and hundreds of flowers! We grabbed a red mat and sat in the back, taking in the experience. There were about 40 men and women in there, praying, and reading the Buddhist scriptures on their individual mats. It was refreshingly calm and quiet.... until we left! Leave it to me to close the door behind me and have one of the handles slam against the door, making an embarrassingly loud "bang!" That was not one of my proudest moments!!




After the Temple we headed over to COAX mall, the largest underground shopping mall in the world! They weren't messing around when they built this thing! It's the size of 2 South Coast Plaza's or 2 Scottsdale Fashion Squares! We walked around, gawking at the shoppers and their amazing fashion... and when I say gawking, I mean literally gawking! I felt like I was in an episode of GOSSIP GIRL! While we were walking through the mall, we stumbled across a map of the mall, which happened to be a "touch screen, digital map!" You could legitimately touch the screen to find the store you were looking for. The technology is incredible!

While walking around Korea, we randomly see things that are written in English, but are just a tad bit off! They are so funny!


One of my favorite things I've learned about Korean culture is that boyfriends and husbands carry their girlfriend and wife's purses for them! I took this picture today to prove it!

Kevin, being the wonderful husband that he is, actually held my purse for a little bit in the COAX mall! I think he felt really funny, be he is all about doing as the natives do, which of course was in my favor this time!!! As a little side note story. We stopped in one of the restaurants in the mall, to buy me a diet coke, since I'm addicted! When the lady handed me the coke, she also handed me 4 packages of ketchup. How funny is that?! After we had enough of COAX, we headed over to Dongdaemun Market, a gigantic outdoor market, which is a mix between the OC Swap meet and the garment district in LA! If I didn't have to pack everything to go over to PUSAN, I would have bought everything I saw! I did get some adorable brown leather boots! I haggled my way down from 150,000 WON to 45,000 WON! I'm an expert, what can I say!

I'm currently sitting on my bed in the hostel typing away while Kevin is playing pool downstairs in the hostel bar! We were planning on going out tonight, but it's freezing and I just downloaded last night's episode of The Bachelor on ITUNES and can't wait to see it! Looks like it's P.J. time!

Anyakeysayo!

Jill

Day 2 in Seoul

February 16th,
Today it was freezing! It was approximately 18 degrees. Kev and I went to the Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, our usual, and decided to part ways for the day. I just wasn’t brave enough to bare the cold for an entire day, and he wanted to see the city, so I went back to the hostel and he walked around and saw the town!


I spent the first hour playing on the computer and sitting next to the heater in our room. Soon after, the hostel-mates started congregating in the main living space outside my room. I had my door open, so I was listening to them laugh and talk. One of them said, “Hey we’re going to lunch if you want to come with us.” I said, “sure,” and off we went!

We ended up at a traditional Korean restaurant where we sat on the ground on little pillows and grilled our food in a small grill in the middle of the table! There were 6 of us all together: 2 Koreans: MiJeoung, and Mr Bong (the owner of the hostel), 1 Chinese guy from Australian named Young, and 2 French guys. Thibault and Julien. We had a blast all getting to know each other and ate a communal meal of duck! Yep, duck! And believe it or not, I feasted on it like it was the only thing I had eaten in weeks! It was actually very good! I asked Mr Bong how to say “More water please” and he told me. I waited patiently for the server to come back over to the table and Mr. Bong said, “raise your hand and say, Yokiya!” So, I did. He quickly laughed at me and said, “you have to yell it!” I looked at him like he was crazy and he said, “Really, yell it.” So, I did! It was such a funny experience to yell for a server in a really nice restaurant!

We went back to the hostel and played some pool in the downstairs bar. Kevin finally got back and we spent some time with our French and Korean hostel mates! Kevin mostly talked music with the French guy, Julien, while I uploaded pictures and talked to MiJeoung about Korea.

At about 7pm, the 5 of us headed out to see the Seoul Tower! It's basically a tower on the top of a mountain that overlooks the entire city! Mind you, Seoul is the 2nd largest city in the world, so you can imagine how amazing the view was!


When we got up there, we walked along the fence and noticed pad locks were hanging from the entire fence. After looking closer, we realized that Korean couples had come up to the Seoul Tower and locked 2 locks together, written a note and attached it, and then threw the key! Apparently it is a valentine's tradition here. I LOVED IT! MiJeoung, our Korean friend, translated one of the notes for us. It was a very sweet note, but it began with "Dear pig," which apparently is an endearing term in Korea. Go figure, huh?!


After the Seoul Tower we took the subway and then walked the town and found a great hole in the wall restaurant for some good old fashioned Korean food! mmmm.
Just got back to the hostel and cranked up the heater! I'm off to lala land. Sweet dreams!

Anyehaseo!

Jill

Our first day in Seoul!

Yesterday was wonderful! (February 15, 2009) I'm sure I won't be able to remember everything, but I'll give a quick run down. We went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, walked around the town, walked along a beautiful man made river that runs within the city, saw a waterfall, ate lunch, went to a Korean Palace (Deoksu Palace), took a picture with one of the guards...figured out how to navigate the subway, walked through a Korean Forever 21, Nike, and Reebok store, went to see a movie (She's Just Not That Into You) which was on the 10th floor of a building and the only way to get there was in a glass elevator!!!!... and then went back to our hostel and fell asleep! Yep, I fell asleep at 3:30pm and woke up the next day at 6am in the morning!! I'm obviously not used to the time change yet. I'll get there!

We made it... with all 300 lbs of crap!

I'm in Korea and loving it!  

We met some awesome people on the plane to Incheon!  2 guys and 1 girl who are all our age and from Seoul.  They were staying in San Francisco for 3 weeks doing a language exchange program.  They were so nice and helped us figure out how to use the subway, write Korean characters, buy a bus ticket, etc...  They even gave me a traditional Korean gift!  The girl, who's American name is Lucy, wrapped it for me on the place with traditional korean paper!  I gave her my US weekly magazine in return!  She LOVED IT!  And since you're all probably wondering, we asked them about Korean's eating monkey brains, which we had read about, and they said, "NO, no!  The Chinese eat those!"  At that point, I realized we  had made a good choice in going to Korea! haha

The airport in Korea basically had everything written in Korean characters AND English, so it made it  very easy to find out way around.  Plus, we had our own personal your guides (friends from the flight) who stuck by our side and made sure we made it to where we needed to go.  Customs only took us about 5 minutes, which is unheard of!  After customs, we went to collect our baggage.  By the way, the carts to carry luggage are FREE in Korea, so luckily we didn't have to maneuver our unbelievable large amount of crap everywhere by bungying them together!  (Which was our original plan.)  

We jumped on the bus, which was very nice.  It had footrests, leather seats, and huge windows!   We were luckily able to sleep some more.  When we woke up, we started talking to the guy in front of us, who happened to be getting off at the same bus stop.  He told us he would help us find our hostel, which THANK GOODNESS he was around... We would have never found it!!  He carried his own luggage around the city until he found our hostel!  What an angel!

We finally got to our hostel, which is a small little place with bunk beds resembling prison beds, but we don't care!  We are just so excited to be here!  There are quite a few Australians staying here.  We haven't met them yet, but hope to soon.  They are all in the common room watching a movie right now. :)  Kevin just went to take a shower and then we'll be off to have our Valentine's dinner!  It will probably be midnight before we sit down somewhere, but regardless, we're here on Valentine's day and we're determined to go on a date, no matter what!

1st official funny story of the trip!  Kevin just went downstairs to ask the hostel employees for a towel for the shower and was handed a towel the size of a hand towel!  He brought it in the room to show me, and we were both doubled over laughing!  

I leave tomorrow!

It's funny to be sitting here on a comfortable couch, watching Oprah and petting my parent-in-laws' dog, while in approximately 35 hours, I will be in South Korea!  I have been told that I have no idea what I'm getting myself into, which typically would scare me to death, but I feel a sense of comfort and excitement in this adventure!  I hope I still feel that way tomorrow! :)