After teaching for just one week and one day, we were told the school was having summer vacation and we would have to take it, even though we just got here. Its one of our longest vacations (6 days) we will have while we are so it kinda stinks it was so early on, but we were excited about getting out of Gwangju and seeing somewhere else. Our school currently has our passports in order to get us alien cards so staying in the country was our only choice. After much debate we decided on Korea's capital, Seoul. Although I would have loved to travel outside of the country just because, I will not even pretend that I didn't really enjoy our trip to Seoul. It was sooooo much fun and definitely a good choice for our first time off.
But before leaving for Seoul, we spent our first day off hanging out with our Korean best friends and doing laundry. Both interesting experiences. Ok, so to backtrack, our Korean best friends are two Korean guys our age that we randomly met on the streets walking home from work one day. They stopped us and talked to us for a bit and proceeded to say that they wanted American best friends and that they could be our Korean best friends. Caroline and I both laughed, but decided that it might not be such a bad idea to have someone who can speak the language and help us figure out Korea a little more, around sometimes. Anyways, so we emailed back and forth for days before they got a little too anxious (We are pretty sure they want more than best friends and instead girlfriends) and finally we agreed to have lunch with them. One guy can barely speak English and the other guy is a little better but there is still definitely a language barrier. This just made for an interesting and funny lunch. They ensured us "We study English this week" so the next time we can have an even better conversation. None the less, we talked about all sorts of things at lunch and had a good time. As they dropped us off at our door they told us to have fun in Seoul and that "We wait for you". whatever that means. hehe. We have already since arranged to have dinner tomorrow with them. Apparently its going to be takeout and we are having it at our house. I'll let you know how that goes. Anyways, so after lunch with our friends, we did laundry. This was quite the experience as we have not been told how to work our washer and it is definitely all written in Korean. It has about a million buttons and setting you can push, so we pushed several buttons before getting it to turn on. It worked for about 7 minutes before draining all of the water and turning off. We are guessing this is the prewash setting or something. who knows. Finally, after pushing more buttons we got the washer to stay on and wash our clothes. At the end, the water drained from the washer and on to our floor. I thought for sure we were going to flood our house but apparently the reason our laundry room is so big and has a drain is so that this can happen. The water eventually went through the drain on the floor and left us with just a damp room. Weird. Anyways, it worked and we began hanging our clothes outside on our laundry rack to dry. Apparently it takes more than half a day and a night to dry clothes this way so we each picked a couple things we wanted to take with us to Seoul and used our fans in our room and my hairdryer to finish drying them. We packed and then left our house to catch a taxi that would take us to the bus station that would take us there.
All went well until we got off the bus in Seoul and headed to the streets to find our hostel. All we had was an address and name of the place. We got on a metro and found a stop that we guessed would get us there. Lets just say after we got off the metro, we walked around for a bit before deciding we had no clue where this place was and we would never find it without help. This reminded me of my Europe travels and I immediately decided that we should go somewhere where people might speak English and be able to help us. We found a Starbucks. The people who worked there passed around our sheet of paper with the hostel name and address before a girl walked in and ordered a coffee. Apparently, the guy behind the counter found out she spoke English and handed the paper to her for her to help us. She took us to her boyfriend who helped us look up the address again and google map the place. We got a general idea and the couple walked us up and down the streets for probably 15 minutes in search of the place. Here they thought they would sit down and enjoy their coffee but instead they were sent roaming around the city with us. They were both so nice and so helpful. They spoke perfect English and come to find out this was because of their schooling. The boy was a physics major at University of Illinois and the girl had just graduated from Berkley. We were impressed. Finally after lots of walking and searching with no luck, the girl found the building. Everything was written in Korean and there was no way Caroline and I would have found it on our own. They walked us up to the door of the building and when we knocked, a Korean guy answered it and it definitely just looked like his apartment. We walked in and there were 3 sets of bunk beds and a computer and that's it. No reception, no common room, and looked nothing like any hostel we stayed at in Europe. This was straight up a Korean guys house that he put bunk beds in and called a hostel. There was one other couple there which made it less sketchy and helped us to feel better about the situation. It turned out to be a fine place and we stayed there 2 nights. We even spent the next day with 2 guys that "checked in" right after us and had a great time with them.
So the first night after "checking in" (by that I mean putting our stuff on the bed to claim them) we went out to explore. We walked around Sinchon, which is name of the area where we were staying. There was lots of shopping and fun stuff to look at. We mainly just window shopped, except for I did get a knock off brand of Converse All Stars for only $12. So that was sweet.
The next day we went on a city bus tour with our new friends from the hostel. We didn't end up riding he bus long because you could not see anything from it, so instead we got off around the fifth stop and walked on our own around the city for some sightseeing. We spent most of the day at this one Korean Palace that was divided into 12 sections and is the biggest palace in Korea. It was soooooo sweet. I got soooo many good pictures, all with beautiful mountains in the background or other awesome views. Those pictures will be up on facebook shortly. After that we ate some good Korean lunch and then did some more walking and sightseeing. Late that night Caroline and I made our way to the Seoul Tower and rode a cable car up to it. The cable ride itself was a lot of fun but when we got to the top of the mountain that has the tower, we bought tickets and went up the tower itself to see the view of Seoul at night. It was so amazing!!! Caroline and I took several pictures but they do not do it justice. It was beautiful! We spent a couple hours there and then made our way back to the hostel to pass out. It was a good day.
The next day our friends took a tour to the DMZ, North Korean border, which was something we both wanted to do but because our school still has our passports we weren't able to do that. :( Instead, we went shopping in Itaewon. This is a super cheap area of town with lots of stuff to buy. Caroline and I both did well and ended up with our names in Korean on a necklace and some other random souvenirs. After shopping, we went to Yongson Army base so I could relive my childhood experience here. I took a million pictures and surprisingly enough a lot of what I remembered was pretty accurate. However, a lot of it seemed so new to me as well and so different than I ever pictured it. It was a lot of fun getting to see my old school, home, friends homes, and everything else. After exploring for awhile, Caroline and I eventually made our way to the commissary in hopes of buying America food that we cant buy here in Gwangju. We had no such luck as Korea now requires that everyone have a rations card in order to get in and buy stuff. So we left empty handed and disappointed. It was still a good day though. That night we stayed at Caroline's friends apartment in Seoul. It was really tiny, a one room studio apartment but it was nice of her to let us stay there.
The next day we went to the national Museum of Korea. This museum was kinda neat, but would have been a lot nicer if we could read Korean. There was an explanation under every piece of art, statue, artifact, etc but it was written in detail in Korean with just a very very tiny description in English. It was still cool though. Later that day we headed back home. The bus ride took about 5 hours due to traffic and such but it wasn't too bad.
Yesterday was spent grocery shopping, getting ourselves prepared for work today and just kinda hanging out. It was a relaxing day and good end to our vacation. Today it was back to work. It was a good day at school.
Sorry this post is EXTREMELY long! I need to start updating more often.
I miss everyone soooooo much but am so glad for skype and facebook so I can keep up with everyone. I love you all lot and lots. Skype when you get the chance, it makes my day!!! :)
I love and miss you!!!!!
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