St. Patty's Day and the National Bank

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.