Namsam, Parks, and Palaces

                Ok, so when I last left off I had visited the US Public Library that was run by the public relations branch of the US embassy here in Seoul.  The following day, on the 22^nd, CIEE took us outside of Seoul and brought us to tour the LG headquarters and factory. OMG, I want to get everything that LG has to offer. They took us back in to the vault, yes I said vault (like retina scanning and everything), to show us all the merchandise and technology that they sell not only in Asia, but also in North and South America.  For example, they showed us the new smart phones that are designed to compete against Samsung galaxy and also a completely waterproof smart and flip phone that is only sold in Japan. There were TVs that changed the screen to 3HD and 3D, some that were voice activates and one that was thinner than my pinkey finer (like seriously, it was about the size of a piece of paper!)

After they made all of us with the feeling of needing to keep up with the Jones, we were taken back into the testing labs where they are in the process of testing new designs and quality testing products that are about to be released onto the market. I wish I had some picture to show you from the tours, but photography was not allowed because in both of the rooms, there were products that had not been released or patented yet, so unfortunately my camera had to stay off.

For lunch we went out to a “Chinese” restaurant or more like it a Korean Chinese restaurant. I ordered the jjajangmyun for my main dish. 

Jjajangmyun is a noodle dish that has a black bean and pork sauce that is mixed in. This version was pretty good, but I was told by the other people at my table that there were better versions back in the city, mainly from the “Chinese” delivery places.  The lunch also came out with sweet and spicy pork that was super delicious and made with honey, not sugar.  All in all I stuffed my face and enjoyed the meal!

After lunch we drove back to Seoul and visited Namsam tower. Namsam is located on one of the tallest mountains in the Seoul area and has a panoramic view of the whole city.

It was really fun going up to the observation tower platform and seeing all of Seoul. I tried to find Yonsei, but I could not figure out which direction was what. Unfortunately it was pretty overcast that day, so I could not really see the mountains, but I really want to go back at night to see all of the city lights from up on the platform. But I think the coolest thing was at the base of the observation tower.

                Namsam is also a very popular dating spot for couples here in Seoul so there is something pretty cool that I have only saw in Paris when I was last there, but not on this scale at all. There is a myth that if you leave a lock with the name of your significant other and a short message with your name at the end, your love will last as long as the lock is still attached.

So these locks were EVERYWHERE! It was fun to go through the message and looks at the different handwriting styles, because I could not read the Korean, but some of my friends who could read Korean said the notes were really cute and adorable. What I found really fun was the in some cases, the people left cell phone cases or even laminated posters with couple pictures!

Then on the 23^rd, the CIEE Seoulmates (local students who are interning with CIEE) took all of us out to Hangan (The Han River) were we had a picnic of different types of chicken bites and pickled radishes.  After lunch we went out bike riding and just enjoyed being out in the sun and feeling the breeze for the first time that we had arrived. While I was riding my bike, I saw a small “waterpark” which was more like two wading pools and lots of space to lie out in the middle of the park. I had never seen that many people in a pool at once. But being the lifeguard that I am, I really only saw that the lifeguards there were not carrying any tubes or any tool kits that I am used to carrying when I am on stand. They were just standing by the pool sides in red shirts looking kind of awkward. Truthfully they would have blended into the crowd if not for their really tan skin and the red shirts that they were wearing. 

The water park that I was talking about

Another interesting thing that I saw at the parks was that people rented tents to have shade, but theses tents were everywhere and in mass quantities. There was also a man made granite stream that ran along the side of the park for people to swim and wade in that lead to a huge wading pool that people were playing in. Man, the parks back in the states need to step it up!

 

When we were heading back to the dorms that evening my friend Corey and my first roommate Shy and I were approached by a student here at Yonsei. He was a graduate student here at the medical college and came up to use when he heard that we were speaking English. His name is David and he was really glad to have someone to talk to in English. He had not talked to anyone in English in about two years so he really wanted to talk to us. Well we all really hit it off and ended up just chatting for about an hour. But the coolest thing was that he knew about Sewanee. Since he grew up in ATL, he was looking at a whole bunch of school, and even thought about applying to Sewanee at one point. He was the first person that I had met here that knew about Sewanee! 

On the 25^th CIEE gave us a free day, so I had signed up to do a Palace tour with Yonsei Global the international group here on campus that connects domestic students with the international and exchange students. We were put into groups of eight with two Yonsei students as our group leaders. Mine were a fellow ’93 liner who was studying English Language and Literature named Songki and a fellow five semester junior who is studying business administration named Jeseop. Anyway, the palace was really cool. According to our guide (who was 16 and had studied the palace for a year and a half and spoke really good English), the palace was designed after the Forbidden Palace in Beijing but is more colorful and detailed when compared to its Chinese counterpart. But it was beautiful and I am constantly in awe of all the colors that I have been seeing in the Korean architecture here around the city and in the historical places that I have visited so far. We saw the changing of the guards and also the back gardens and then a few of us from the group with our two leaders went out for Naengmyeon or cold spicy noodles for lunch.

roof of the main gate

 After we ate, we then went out for Patbingsu, pretty much heaven on earth. Patbingsu is a very popular dish here in Seoul, esp in the summer. It is soft serve ice cream with pieces of fruit (which is great because fruit is CRAZY expensive here in the city), sweet pieces of ttok or chewy rice cakes, and red bean all on a bed of shaved ice.

It was so good, but because we had a larger group the lady at the register said that we would need to order two large king sizes. Well one would have been fine, but we had two HUGE bowls of Patbingsu; and we tried, tried very hard to finish them both, but in the end we were defeated by the bowls.

When we were done with lunch, a few people in the group needed to pick up some things for the dorm, so I offered to take them to Daiso, which is the Korean Dollar Store. I freaking love Daiso, everything there is very cheap (like 1K to 5K won = 1-5 $) so I lead them all to the store. I felt great being able to lead them through Sinchon and to show them what I knew of the surrounding area. Really glad that I got in two weeks before the other internationals so I already knew the ropes and was more familiar with the flow of the neighborhood.  I had also helped a few of them with using chopsticks, how to eat the slippery noodles, and also how to use the cups of broth to cut the heat form the chili sauce on the food. I felt like I finally was in control here in Korea and more sure of myself here in this foreign country. 

That night, I met up with Corey and Shy and we all went to David’s orchestra concert that he invited us to when we parted ways on the 23^rd. The way that he talked about it, I was imagining a few students who would be like, for lack of any other comparison, a high school orchestra group. Well I was dead wrong, they were AMAZING. Now I am not a huge classical music buff, but they were really impressive. David played the clarinet, so he was towards the back, but I found my eyes following the violins up front more. Maybe is it because my sister plays violin, but I kept thinking of her during the performance and thinking that she would really love to be there watching the performance with me.   

After the performance, we waited for David to come out in the sea of people. It was really hard to find him with all the Koreans everywhere; we even had to go part ways up the stairs so that we could see over the heads. Well he found us first; I think the fact that we were the only foreigners there may have helped a little bit! I wanted to invite him out to dinner with us, but he was pretty busy with saying hi to his family that had come out to watch him and cleaning up the hall and then going out with his friends afterwards, so we just congratulated him and then promised to meet up later. We exchange Kakao IDs so we could keep in contact later.  For those of you that have no idea what Kakao Talk is, it is an app that has free messaging and calling that EVERYONE here in Korea has, the best was to describe it would be like the app Viber back in the states.

So until next post!