This Sunday, I woke up really early to get to Seoul on time for Palm Sunday Mass. One thing on interest: the palms were Juniper branches.
Empty subway station early Sunday morning
My juniper branch
After a lunch of street food, I met SAPA, the photography club, at Lotte World, the largest indoor amusement park in all of Korea, and the largest indoor amusement park I'd ever been to. There was an event called the Festival of Masks going on, complete with a parade and annoyingly repetitive music playing at full blast. There were many floats and dancers in costume, most of them caucasian. It made me wonder how the park had hired them, from overseas, or domestically, though a visa is required to live here. Who knows?
A "gargle" dispenser at the Lotte department store
My group
The huge indoor area
Kids waiting for the parade to start
Hooray! It's a masked cruise
Poor kids probably had to wave until their hands felt like falling off
Mask princess
Two ladies leaping
Creepy masked lady
Giraffe!
Riding an elephant
Pinocchio themed group
The little kids got to dance too
Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan pirates. I didn't get any pictures of the Alice in Wonderland group :(
The little girl was so cute!
After the parade, my group set off on a picture scavenger hunt. We only got to one item before getting distracted by rides but picked up several others on the way.
The lines were predictably long, but we had fun anyway.
Scrat and his female version
The first photo spot
There was an advisory to stretch before the roller coaster It wasn't even that bad
Kiddie Ferris wheel
The enclosed part of the park
Another view of the castle
A scavenger hunt item
I also went on an indoor roller coaster that was almost more fun than the outdoor one. They had the photo spot like most US ones do. Mine turned out posed perfectly, not even on purpose. One other thing: most of the rides had a 190 cm height limit. There's no way they could get away with that in the states.
Today I got to play soccer with Le Foot, the soccer club I have been trying to join for several weeks now. I had to leave for class before they really got going, but all the members seem really nice so far. They did after all put up with my rusty passing skills without complaining.
Last week, I went to the first official meeting of SAPA, the Sungkyunkwan Academic Photography Association, and learned a bit about cameras, though not much I didn't already know. Then on Sunday, after doing homework for most of Saturday, I went with my fellow SAPA members to the Seoul Grand Park for a picture-taking adventure. Both the Seoul and Suwon chapters were there, and I met many new people. There were so many of us that we split into two groups. My group was the "global" group. In all, we knew nine languages including Russian, Swedish, Japanese, and Vietnamese.
The Seoul Grand Park includes a zoo and an amusement park, but we only had time to see the zoo. To give you some idea of how large it was, we stayed for three hours and didn't even see half of the exhibits.
Most of the animals had decent enclosures and were in good shape except for the prairie dogs. They were all balding and missing patches of fur. However, they were very lively and even approached the sides of the enclosure seemingly to beg for food from the zoo visitors.
Scruffy prairie dog
Adorable fennec foxes
There were two baboon enclosures, chimps, orangutans, and a lonely gorilla. The ring-tailed lemurs were gamboling about with babies latched onto their stomachs, but the glass was too dirty for any pictures.
Baboons
A baby climbing around
Stoic orangutan chewing away
The greenhouse had more orchids than I'd ever seen before which were quite beautiful. One thing that struck me as unusual was the large styrofoam statues erected in every room. There was a pegasus, a deer, a giraffe, and several others. I couldn't quite decide if they added to or detracted from the beauty of the vegetation.
My "global" group heading up to the greenhouse
Flowering cactus
Spiny flower bush
A backlit grove of orchids, one of many
A cute decorative basket
An exhibit was in place that featured artworks made entirely from dried flowers. Many looked exactly like paintings until you took a closer look.
The triple yin yang symbol of korea
A waterfall of seed down
My favorite part of the trip was the feeding of the lions. A zookeeper tossed whole chickens and large chunks of beef to seven or so male lions. I managed to take a video(sorry for the awful quality and sideways-ness).
Some hungry lions
A mask exhibition offered some relief from the cold while we waited for the other groups at the entrance.
Traditional Korean mask
I think this one was Native American
Spanish golden masks
Leather masks from somewhere in Africa?
Venetian Carnival mask
An acapella group was performing songs from the Lion King and others. They were one of the best I had ever heard. When they sang The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Petra(another exchange student) and I sang along rather loudly. :)
An unknown Korean song
The first half of Jason Mraz' I'm Yours
When all the groups had arrived, we went to Sadang Station for Budaejiggae, army stew. They put all the ingredients in a wok and simmer it right on the table.
With kimchi, rice cakes, ramyeon, and the obligatory hot dog
And as a bonus, some pictures of the sun peeking through clouds and smog.
Which do you like better? This one or the next one?
Leave a comment.
I went to Seoul twice this weekend. Once for St. Patrick's Day and once for mass and shopping!
The 12th annual St. Patrick's Day celebration was held on Saturday at the D-Cube, a giant shopping complex. I saw more white people there than I had seen in Korea thus far.
It was quite a crowd
They were serving Irish bread, scones, and stew for donations. I only tried a scone (a bit dry) and the bread, which was delicious.
It must have taken forever to bake all those
They had live entertainment as well. A few groups played what I take to be traditional Irish music. There was also a U2 tribute band and Irish dancers. The interesting thing was that most of the groups, including the dancers, were comprised of ethnic Koreans.
The U2 tribute band was very good
A Korean Irish folk group
There was face painting and Tshirts for sale in the tents
At one point, an announcer called people down to the floor to dance. The people who already knew how to do the dance went first, and then others got to join in on the second round, me included. It was tons of fun, and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I ended up partners with a random lady who thankfully already knew how to do it, and jigged my way through two songs before they moved on to other aspects of the entertainment.
After a while, I wandered of to the shopping mall. It was a lot fancier than most malls I've seen in the US, which seems to be the general trend here. It had an open center with waterfalls dripping from floor to floor and a pool that doubled as the ceiling of the floor below.
Hanging flowers and clouds
One of the numerous waterfalls
The next day I went back for 9 o'clock mass at the Myeongdong Cathedral and was almost late! I missed the first transfer point that would have been fifteen minutes faster than the later one.
After mass, I wandered around Myeongdong and stumbled upon the Korean National Bank which doubles as a museum. It was a lot more interesting than the Federal Branch Bank in Colorado.
There was a hall for the currencies of pretty much every country in the world, a children's area, a vault replica, and exhibits of gifts from other nations.
Game station
They make benches out of their old money
Romanian currency
Chandelier
To me the most interesting thing was what the Koreans do with their damaged bills; they turn them into construction materials!
There was a fountain with nude statues, something I never thought I'd see here
The bank sandwiched between a skyscraper and a busy street
I then found my way back to Myeongdong and ate lunch at a tiny restaurant in one of the alleys. I ate samgyetang or ginseng chicken soup, with an entire cornish hen in it. Let me tell you, it was very hard to eat with just chopsticks and a spoon even though the flesh was falling off the bones.
The walls were covered in photographs
Mmm
A tiny wishbone
The leftovers
After stuffing my face, I wandered around Myeongdong and actually felt like shopping for once. I went into several stores and bought a few miscellaneous items: lipgloss, green nail polish, a stapler, a plant in a bag, and a foldable shopping bag. I could have gone crazy in Forever21, but I'll save that for another weekend.
So...
Life in Korea is somewhat falling into a pattern: have fun and do stuff on the weekends, class and homework during the week. Keep in mind that since I don't have class on Friday, every weekend is three days long.
This week I joined a photography club. Evidently they go out on Saturdays and take pictures of random, possibly famous places in Korea. It seems like a good way to meet new people and see more of Korea.
I also went out with the guys from UT and a few SKKU engineering students. After meeting at the "Bridge of Dorms", aptly named by the exchange student liason for the ECE school, we went to eat Samgyeopsal, fried porkbelly. 'Twas delicious.
Part of our group. We had to sit on the floor. My hips protested.
Waitress adding a special sauce to our onions
Raw porkbelly
Waiter placing the charcoal in the table
We cooked the meat ourselves. This was the end result.
When the meat was cooked through, we either ate it with the onions or wrapped it in lettuce with other banchan. You had to be careful not to make your wrap too big. You're supposed to eat it in one bit since otherwise the juice gets everywhere.
Afterward, we went to a bar specializing in Makkeoli, a Korean rice wine. 'Twas also delicious.
At the Makkeoli bar. I forgot to turn on the flash, so it's a bit blurry.
Jeon, a kind of pancake with seaweed?, eggs, and other ingredients
I also learned a few Korean drinking games:
1. Baskin Robbins 31- Everyone counts up to three numbers and the person who has to say 31 loses.
2. 3-6-9 - You start counting, but for every number that has a 3, 6, or 9 in it you have to clap. It gets tough in the 30s. The one to mess up loses.
3. Lucky Guess - After a chant, everyone points at someone else in the group randomly. The first person says a number, and you follow the pointed hands for the designated number of times. The last person suffers the dire consequences.
The next day, I met with my modern optics group, sort of. Only one other person showed up. We had a good time though and talked a lot about the differences between Korea and America.
AND I FINALLY GOT A SIM CHIP!!!
I went with Justin and Matthias to the KT store. We got there just before closing time but managed to get SIM chips. The phones should be activated on Monday, so I'll know then if it's really going to work.
I must have spent 6 hours in various phone shops before they gave me what I asked for
I also got my student ID card. It has a chip in it and everything.
