Royal Palace and Chopsticks

I got another stamp in my passport! South Korea allows americans to stay for 3 months when they immigrate. I could have stayed here until the end of my IQP if i wanted to. The transit tour was really interesting. I started it off by feeling sick. Fever, coughing, runny nose. I hope that doesnt become the common theme of my trip! The ride from Incheon International to Seoul took about an hour.

Our first stop on the tour was the Royal Palace from the Joeson dynasty era. The Joeson was the last dynasty to rule Korea before Japan took over the country in the early 1900's. The palace wasnt exactly what I would picture a palace to be. It was more of an estate. It had traditional looking asian buildings all over a huge amount of land. Living quarters, entertaining halls and huge court yards to have ceremonies in. Maybe I am just not familiar with what palaces are but I was surprised because all the buildings were connected. The palace has a pretty dramatic background of mountains. It makes it look that much more majestic.

After the palace we went to a museum that was right inside the palace grounds. It was all about Korean culture and life. Our tour guide gave us the brief tour but none the less it was still pretty interesting.

The city on the other hand is pretty westernized. I hope that globalization doesnt make all parts of the world look the same. Apart from the South Korean writting on signs, buildings and the layout of the city, it was pretty similar to that of a U.S. city. The layout seemed so disorganized but maybe its just the engineer in me. The buildings were facing all different angles on streets.

After our tour of the palace and museum our tour guide brought us to a road with a market on it. The road was called Insa-dong. Our tour guide Jane gave us "30 minutes and 30 minutes only on this road!" She was very funny speaking in english about the road. She said "You go straight, no left, no right, just straight down road! You understand? We meet at the 711!" She probably repeated that 5 times on the way there. Then she also told us that if we werent at the 711 by the end of the 30 minutes she would leave without us! She said that it is a very tight schedule and the tour is only supposed to go for 5 hours so we need to be back or she leaves without us.

I walked down the street with an Austrailian guy from Perth. We had talked throughout the tour and he was very nice. He is a mechanical engineer and is heading to Canada to get a job and live there. He had a watch which was the main reason I chose to walk with him. I certainly did not want to be left in the middle of Seoul with no Korean speaking abilities and have to find a way to get back to the airport. We walked in and out of many different shops. I saw some really interesting traditional masks from Korea but decided against them because they were so expensive. The masks i was looking at were about 150,000 won which is approximately 115 usd. We continued walking and my Austrailian friend picked out some paper with Korean prints on it to give to his girlfriend. He said she is the artsy type so those would make her really happy. I then wanted to get something to remember my little trip to South Korea by so I bought these two little wooden statues. They have the traditional mask type face on them (if you ask me they look like monsters). Those only cost me 15 usd which was definitely more in my budget. Then we were tempted. We knew our tour guide said dont go left of right just go straight but we didnt listen. We took a left down a little side street that had more stores and flashing lights. It looped around and went to an indoor market. There I bough some earrings for Andrea.

We then made our way back out to the road. I kept bugging my austrailian friend..what time is it? what time is it? I really didnt want to be left behind! We wondered into some more stores. He bought a silk tapestry sort of thing. His souveniers were a lot more artsy than mine for sure. Then we did another thing that you are typically not supposed to do. We indulged in some street food. He bought something at first. I dont remember exactly what it was. Again his peer pressure (not that he actualy said anything, it was just he did it first and it convinced me to also) led me to do something. The 711 store was insight so I felt okay stopping one last time. I went to a stand and bought this little pancake looking thing. It was really good and really warm. I was excited to get some hot food in me because it was about 32 degrees F out. I was walking around in just my new fleece from northface, which kept me pretty warm. The little pancake was a really sweet bread. It wasnt your typical pancake mix. Inside the pancake was a very sweet fruit/sugar mix. It was pretty thick like molasas but also had little fruit seeds in it. Overall I was very satisfied with my choice of street food! We will just have to see if my stomach is satisfied with that choice later..

From there we were taken to a korean resteraunt. We had two choices of food ( already paid for by the tour which only cost 25 usd) it was either a beef stew or vegtable stew. I ofcourse chose the beef stew. The funniest part about the vegtable stew was that our tour guide played it off as a vegitarian choice but then said "ohh but it has beef particles in it too"

Along with the stew there was a spicy cabbage, two different types of seaweed, and some sticky rice. We only had chopsticks to eat the food with and a spoon came later for the broth. So I dont know how to use chopsticks but i learned real fast. With our tour guide rushing us around all the time i wanted to make sure i got to eat my lunch. It was the first time i had eaten since about 3 am that morning. (it was about 2 pm in the afternoon) Drinks werent payed for and again i fell to peer pressure. After watching other people get coca colas and beer i decided i would buy a drink. The only problem is i didnt have any south korean won to spend because i didnt have time to exchange any at the airport. So i aksed if i could pay in usd and of course they accepted. Its in their favor. I gave them a 5 dollar bill and they accepted that for the bottle of beer. I am pretty sure it should have only cost 2 usd but i wasnt about to start asking them to make change in won. It wasnt a 12 ounce bottle but it wasnt as big as a liter either. Really interesting size. It was called "OB" and wasnt that much different from an American Light Ale. I am pretty sure OB stands for original beer. It said Original beer since 1933.

From there we headed back to the Airport. It was a really fun trip. There were about 20 people on the tour with me. I met people from France, Canada, Wales, Austrailia, Los Angeles, and Germany. They were all so friendly and it was definitely a good experience.