I'm home from my mini-vacation. I actually got home a week ago, but considering it took me a MONTH to write about getting home from Korea, I think I'm doing pretty good. Ages and ages ago, back when I was still in Rocky Mount, rageprufrock told me that if I ever wanted to visit New York, I could crash on her couch. I always meant to take her up on the offer, but first I was working, then unemployed and broke and then I moved to Korea, which effectively ruled out weekend trips to New York, but I'm back in the US and after living at home for a month, I was ready for an adventure on my own.


Train tracks through Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I took this picture a year and a half ago when I lived there.
I spent the first half of the trip in Washington DC. I took Amtrak from High Point (with a quick stop in Winston Salem to see my brother which, because it was my family, ended with him caressing his ass in front of a Baptist minister from my mother's family's home town, OMG my life). The train wound its way east, stopping in little towns as it went, including Rocky Mount. Every time I was in downtown Rocky Mount (which, admittedly, wasn't often) I would go down to the train station and wish like hell I was on the next train out of town, so there was something fitting about finally leaving town on a train, albeit over a year after I moved away. Also, I was able to see the library and the YMCA, the two places I went most often. The train also past by Halifax and I looked up from my book long enough to make a rude gesture as we barreled past. I also read a book and a half on the train ride alone. Sure, I'd read the books before and I read fast, but that's still 600 pages in one sitting. And that, my friends, is why I always run out of books on vacation, no matter how many I take with me. It's also the reason I've read the 1,000 page Lonely Planet Southeast Asia On A Shoestring travel guide cover to cover.

I love Washington DC, mostly because of the Smithsonian Institute. A lot of people say they like museums, to which I always respond, "No, I *really* like museums." I spent almost my entire four days in Washington at various museums, part because I'm a GIANT NERD and part nostalgia from working in museums for a year. I was staying in a hostel near the Mall and every morning I would walk past the Natural History Museum and duck in because hey, what the hell, I might as well take in the Hall of Paleobiology since I'm in the area. And then hours would past and I would stumble down the steps and realize I'd just waste four hours in the Natural History Museum. AGAIN!

I did, however, take time out of my busy schedule of attempting to visit the entire Smithsonian in four days and accidentally went on a date with a married man AND got kicked out of my hostel. See, I'm not completely lame. In my defense, I didn't know he was married until the middle of the date. I met the guy at my hostel one morning and he invited me to lunch later that day. We met that afternoon and while we were walking to the restaurant, he asked if I was married. I thought it was a strange question, but I told him no and, casting about for something to say, asked if he was married. He responded, "Yes, but my wife is back home in India," and suggested we eat at a restaurant that was so fancy they probably wouldn't have let my jean-clad self in the front door. He continued to court me for the rest of my stay, mostly trying to get me drunk in the evenings, despite my increasingly strong refusals.

Married Dude: Tonight I will take you to a club. Do you like to drink?
Me: Go away.
Married Dude: Don't worry, I will pay for your drinks.
Me: I find you creepy and unattractive.
Married Dude: I will pick you up at 9:00.
Me: GO AWAY!

I also had a chance to meet up with cinnamingirl while I was in Washington. Siobhain is one of my closest friends from Korea and I hadn't seen her since September. We met for lunch, ended up spending three hours at a burrito joint catching up and then went in search of a yarn store, which is pretty much par for the course with us. Then we went out to dinner and a bar with her friend Julie, who lives in Washington. Julie offered to let me spend my last night in Washington at her apartment, which turned out to be a helpful offer since my hostel screwed up my reservation, gave away my bed and left me with no where else to spend the night. Of course, I was in such a snit packing that I left my cell phone charger and a pair of shoes and had to stop by the next morning and go all angry southern woman on the front desk so I could pick them up.

Part II: New York City coming soon soonish. Maybe.

So, hi! I'm back in the States. I've been back in the States for a month now, but first I was jetlagged and busy seeing family and friend, and now so much time has passed that I'm not really sure what to say other than, yeah, I'm back in the US. The first week back was surreal and I kept pointing out mundane things like not being given a wet napkin at a restaurant or people speaking English and going, "That's so weeeeeird!" When I first got back to the US, still in the airport at San Fransisco waiting for my connection to Charlotte, I got so flustered by the rampant use of English around me that I had to retreat behind my headphones, but for the most part I've re-acclimated to life in America.

I haven't done too much since I got home. I've been exercising like a fiend (I'm trying to run a few miles five days a week), playing tennis (for the first time in nearly a decade) and playing an obscene amount of Wii Mario Kart (my new goal in life in to beat the snot out of my brother at least once before I die). I've visited friends in Chapel Hill and Knoxville over weekends and seen my brother in Winston Salem a few times. I'm also constantly reading everything in sight. After a year of not having a library and having to methodically plan how fast and how much I could read so I wouldn't overshoot my book budget, I'm reveling in the ability to read a book a day and be able to get more, for FREE, whenever I want.

I also got to watch the leaves change (including one veeeeery long road trip through the mountains during the peek weekend), which I missed last year.


I'm currently in on a proper vacation to visit a friend in New York. I took the Amtrak to Washington DC yesterday and I leave for New York on November 4th. I will say traveling is substantially easier when you can understand the language.


It's good to be home!

I leave for the airport in just a few hours and if I tried to actually sum up this past year, I would end up being disgustingly sentimental and Sunrise, Sutset-esque, so instead, just for the lolz, I'm going to post two of my favorite videos that I think do a pretty good job of explaining what life is like for a waegook in the Land of the Morning Calm.


(Probably not safe for work, what with the multiple multiple swear words.)


Bye, Korea! See you in December.

I spent the last few day signing the backs of worksheets and blank pages in textbooks and notebooks. Every time I sat down in between class, a line of students wanting my signature instantly appeared. Students have been coming by my office all week with presents; there were a few material items, but it was mostly letters. Wonderful, precious letters full of broken English that they wrote themselves, letters they couldn't have written when I arrived a year ago. I've been torn between wanting to spend the week behind the lens of a camera, capturing every last detail of my school and my kids for posterity, or just enjoying these last few days.

Today was my last day of school and oh, it was hard. I knew I was going to cry when I left and I did. After I untangled myself from students wanting one last hug, one last reassurance that I wouldn't forget them, I sat down on my bus and silently cried, tears running down my cheeks while I watched my school and the town disappear. What I wasn't prepared for was walking into my classroom for the last time, one last quick trip to throw away the last of the trash from my office, and starting to sob. Great, noisy, undignified sobs because despite all the frustrations, I've been so happy here.


The boys were a bit rambunctious and the boy to my right was being crushed. He kept shouting, "Help me, please! Help me, please!" It's a fitting end of my year here: we started studying Chapter 12: Will You Help Me, Please? today.
After school, I went out for samgyeopsal with friends. We ate at an outdoors galbi restaurant along a pedestrian road near our apartments that is overrun every night with dinners. We had beer and pork and kimchi and a metric ton of cooked garlic (that might have just been me) while we talked and toasted Korea and watched squids bob for freedom in the tanks at the restaurant next door. A good way to celebrate the end of a good year.

One of my favorite things about living in Asia are the bizare and amazing electronics you find here. For example, the machine where you can text your camera phone pictures and have them printed out as Polaroids on the spot or the claw vending machine where you attempt to fish out live lobsters. Only in Asia!

Last night, I went down to Ansan Asia Town for some amazing Vietnamese with friends. Marie, Greg and I walked around for a bit afterwards and we found Sea World, a claw vending machine with live lobsters as the prize. Greg gave it a try while I took the video. We didn't manage to win a lobster, which was probably for the best, because what the hell would we have done with the thing if we had won. I have this mental image of me trying to shove a live lobster into my purse, along side my bus pass and knitting, as I hop on the subway home. It's not a mental picture that ends well. For the Stargate fans on my flist, we also found what appears to be a life sized state of a Jaffa holding a staff weapon. I don't even pretend to understand.

I bought my plane ticket home this week! Actually, after much fanfare and hair pulling, my school bought my plane ticket home, as per my contract. I leave Korea on Monday, September 28th, which is only ten days away. I was originally planning traveling around SE Asia after my contract was up and making it home in time for Christmas, but abandoned those plans at the last minute for fiscal responsibility. Instead, I'm heading straight home for two months, visiting with family and food, then heading back to Korea in December for another year.

I've started telling my students I'm leaving, which has sucked about as much as I thought it would. On Wednesday, the day my ticket was bought, 긴원 and 다니, two of my favorite sixth graders, came by my office at lunch. We've been playing with Scrabble tiles during lunch recently. The kids pour the tiles out of my table and spell out the names of their favorite singers: FT Island, G Dragon, Shinee. The girls poured the tiles out onto the table and asked if I was leaving Korea. I told them I was going back to America in a few weeks, and instead of getting into their usual argument of 2PM vs. Big Bang, they wrote this:


Ow, my heartstrings. They asked why I was leaving and I explained that I missed my family and needed to go home. 긴원 gave this some though and suggested that I just call my family and tell them come live in Korea with me. That way, I can see my family and can stay in Korea. (Also, it gets around that pesky confusion of me living alone while unmarried, a rarity in Korea.) Then she grabbed my hand and said, "Teacher, promise remember me," and my heart just broke. I solemnly took her hand in mine and promised that I would never ever forget her. Yesterday, I was sitting outside by the playground after school, watching my students play. As the students ran past they shouted, "Hello Teacher!" A few stopped to show me things and joke with me (Kids: Teacher, it's raining and snowy. Day: *remains sunny and warm* Me: Oh no! Raining?! Snowing?! Kids: *laugh uproariously at the gullible foreigner*) and my little 4th grade girls run up for a hug. Damn, I thought to myself as I left, I'm really going to miss this place.

Another vacation post. (For the record, they're all being tagged I got Seoul after the chorus from the Killers song "All These Things That I've Done" because a) Seoul/Soul puns are even funnier now that I know the correct way to pronounce Seoul and b) I unapologetically love Hot Fuss, even though I know that makes me an emo hipster.) After a week in Seoul, Sarah and I decided to ventured out into the countryside and on Friday (08/01), we left for Gyeongju. If you look at the map, Ansan (where I live) is the blue pen and Gyeongju is the green pen. Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla Empire, which lasted for nearly a thousand years (from 57 BC - 935 AD). At its height, Gyeongju had nearly a million inhabitants and was the capital of the entire Korean peninsula for 300 years. It's full of tombs and temples and pagodas and lotus ponds. That last one will be important later.

The quick and dirty highlights version is we went to a lotus pond full of beautiful, delicate blossoms...


and I fell in. OF COURSE I DID! Was there any other way for that setup to end? If I were a stick figure drawn on the back of an Hello Kitty envelope, it would have looked something like this:


I Twittered about it that night (I'm in ur social network, connectin' with mah peepz), saying Today I fell in a lotus pond. Some days I feel like I really shouldn't be allowed out of the house without proper supervision. Several people responded, saying things like Doesn't Sarah count as proper supervision?, and the answer is no, no she doesn't. Trust me, it's more fun that way.

I originally planned to write about the entire trip to Gyeongju in one post, but that was taking too long to finish, so I'm going to do it day by day. (And also, Step by Step.)

( Saturday, August 1st: Sorry, No Train, But How About This Dragon Trolley? )

So, I've been studying Korean in earnest (albeit on and off) for a couple of months now and, well, it's slow going. Korean is so different from English or any other language I've studied that I barely even know where to begin. I have a textbook that I haul around with me and pull out when I have a spare moment, and I've spent hours writing the same words and sentences and grammatical concepts over and over again:

가다 - to go, 가다 - to go, 가다 - to go, 가다 - to go
나는 서울에 가요. - I go to Seoul. 나는 학교에 가요. - I go to school.
는/은 - object markers, 는 - if the previous syllable ends with vowel, 은 - if the previous syllable ends with a consonant
너 - you, 너 - you, 너 - you, 그 - he, 그 - he, 그 - he, 그녀 - she, 그녀 - she,그녀 - she

And really, I'm no closer to being able to understand what people are saying around me than I was a few months ago. I understand the idea behind immersion learning, but without a basic understanding of how the language works, you don't get far. Once I learned how to count, I was able to figure out the basics of number classifiers just by listening to how other people ordered things, but only once I knew the numbers. And other examples are few and far between. I get by okay by speaking phrases and nodding a lot while not really understanding the answer, but sometimes I despair about actually being able to use Korean on any sort of a functional level.

My fifth graders are working on possessives and on Monday my co-teacher gave them a worksheet that included, among other things, six Korean sentences to translate into English. I was walking around, helping the kids with the other sections when I realized I didn't know the translations for those sentences. Crap, I thought to myself, as I turned to find my co-teacher and ask for a translation. Then I paused and really looked at the sentences:
이것은 너의 연필이다. // 이것은 너의 것이다.
이것은 그의 컴퓨터이다. // 이것은 그의 것이다.
이것은 그녀의 가방이다. // 이것은 그녀의 것이다.

And I realized - dude! - I got this. I know what those sentences mean. I'm not just inferring based on being able to read a word or two, but I *know* what those *sentences* *mean* and I understand the underlying grammatical components. In a perfect combination of acquired knowledge and sheer exposure to Korean, something clicked.

이것은 너의 연필이다. 이것 = This. I know that from the phrase how much is this. 은 = means the word this is the object of the sentence. I learned that out of a textbook. 너 = you. I ought to know that one; it's one of the hundreds of words I've written over and over again while studying. 의 = possessive marker. I knew the lesson was about possessives, which means that something has to turn the you into your and 의 was the only unknown in the sentence. 연필 = pencil. My students like to teach my Korean, usually by pointing to an object on my desk and telling me the Korean and English word. I've have dozens of different students teach me the word for pencil. 이다 = is. My students shout BINGO이다! whenever they see the Bingo boards on my desk. "Hurray," they're saying, "it's BINGO!"

이것은 너의 연필이다 = This is your pencil.

I'm no closer to being able to understand Korean than I was last week, but I feel like at least I'm making some progress.

The Purse Meme, as first seen over at cherrybina's, which I've loved because apparently I'm a bit voyeuristic:


This is my main purse, although I have several. They are all the sort where the strap crosses over the body so they're hands free. This particular bag is made by Puma, but I forgive it because it's a cavernous black hole. I do need to find something to spice it up. (During the winter/spring, I had a scarf tied around the strap just to add some color, but I took it off come summer.)  Just for the record, I never actually hang my purse up.

( Inside the bag: )

Good Lord, I have a lot of crap.

On Friday (07/31) Sarah and I wished Harry Potter a happy birthday in style and went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on 3D IMAX. Turns out only the first fifteen minutes were in 3D, which we found out twenty five minutes into the movie when the 3D still hadn't come back on. Still, I think we looked smashing in our special glasses.


I'm throwing the peace sign (when in Asia...), but you can only see the tip of one finger. The perils of self portraits. Photo taken by Sarah.
I really enjoyed the movie, but it reminded me how very little I remember of the original series and it inspired me to re-read the books. The library at my school has the entire series (in English) and I'm currently on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'd forgotten how much I *loved* these books the first (several) times I read them. I mentioned to a friend that I was suitable impressed with the English book selection at my school library and I was checking out some books to read. She snotted HA - you read kiddie books, and I just stared at her blankly because, hello, have we even met? I find YA Fiction a valid and entertaining genre. Do I need to get that put on a shirt?

After the movie we headed to the Yongsan Electronics Market where I finally - two hard drive crashes later - bought an external hard drive. An external hard drive is a terribly *boring* purchase, since it doesn't actually *do* anything and if I drop that sort of money I want more excitement than whee! let's back up my Word documents!, but I've had two hard drive crashes and both times I lost everything. It was time to have a backup. It is a very Whovian hard drive. I partitioned the hard drive; one third is a backup and the rest is storage for my rather large collection of .avi files. The backup is named Time Machine (which is the name the Mac backup system - not my fault), and I named the other part TARDIS, because it is a very small hard drive that has an awful lot of TV series in it. And now look, I've gone and posted to my blog with my geek showing.


Yongsan at dusk

On Wednesday (07/29), Sarah and I went to the Korean Folk Village in Suwon. (Fun story, the first time I was in Korea [summer 2007] at least one of the signs for the Korean Folk Village said Korean Fork Village. The 'l' and 'r' sound are the same symbol in Hangul [ㄹ] so it's an understandable, if funny, mistake, but I will forever think of folk villages as fork villages.) Folk villages are a pervasive part of Korean tourism, but with 282 buildings, workshops, markets, games, a theme park and five traditional performances, the Korean Folk Village is the largest.

( Sarah and I spent an hour... )

The full set of photos are here (down at the bottom). Incidentally, a few days ago something happened and my set of Suwon photos got 18,000 views in 24 hours. I don't know *what* happened - it was probably a bug - but it was very unsettling to refresh my Flickr page and discover 400 people had viewed the page in the past ten minutes.

Back to the vacation posts. On Tuesday (07/28) we went to Costco. People are always surprised to hear there are Costcos in Korea, but there are seven in Korea, four of which are in Seoul. On the way, we stopped by my school so I could transfer money home.


Due to complicated and boring reasons, to transfer money I have to withdraw the money from my bank and then go to another bank to actually send it home. Until very recently, the largest bill in Korea was a 만 원 (man won = 10,000 won), or roughly $8. It's still the only bill offered at many ATMs, which means that when I need to transfer money home, I end up with a very large stack of cash. I sent home 1 million won (about $800) which meant I ended up with a stack of one hundred bills. Here I'm showing off my sack of money in front of my school.

On the way back from Costco, laden down with bags and bags of cheese, a guy came up to us on the subway. We exchanged greetings, shook hands (very difficult to do when holding bags and bags of cheese) and he asked, "어디서 오셨어요?" (Where are you from?) I told him we were 미국인 (Americans). He asked if I spoke Korean and I told him 조금 (a little). He thought that over, looked at us and said, "Obama!" Then he bowed and walked off. Sarah and I spent the rest of the trip discussing what the proper response to that would have been. Clinton? (Hillary Clinton had been in Korea a few days prior and pictures of her with Korean president Lee Myung-bak were all over the newspapers.) Micheal Jackson? Oprah?!

The fall semester starts on Friday, which means I'm stuck sitting in my office for eight hours a day with nothing to do all week. I'm taking advantage of the down time clean my office, catch up on Cracked and make my grocery list. (Note to self: buy tomatoes.) I'll miss the free time when the semester starts again, but right now I just wish I wasn't so bored.

I took pictures of my office now that it's clean. One of the best things about my school is that I have my own office. A lot of English teachers I know either share an office with the Korean English teachers or have a desk in the teachers' room (along with the vice principal), but there was an empty room across from my classroom and my school converted it into an office just for me.


My office is shaped like an L. The left hand photo was taken standing at the door and looking at the long part of the L. There isn't much use for the table since it's not like I have meetings, but it makes the office feel less empty. The right hand picture is my desk, which is in the short part of the L. The cabinets behind my desk lock, so I use them to lock up candy and other goodies that I would rather the students not find and beg me for. ( More after the cut )

Today was my last day of English Camp! The goal of the 5th & 6th grade camp was reading and eh, we did read every day, but I just don't feel comfortable teaching reading. I know that I learned how to read at a very early age and that I haven't stopped since, but I don't really know how to teach someone else how to do it. You look at the page and read the words and then - voilà! - comprehension, knowledge, enlightenment. I can't even begin to figure out how to teach reading comprehension and when you take a kid who perhaps doesn't have the strongest reading skills to begin with and add a whole new language, you get a quagmire. Combine that with students who would. not. look up a word unless I beat them over the head with a dictionary, and by the end of the week I was ready to throw my hands up. We did read a story every day, but we mostly played a bunch of games and watched Finding Nemo.

I justified Finding Nemo by watching it in English (with Korean subtitles) and giving the kids a worksheet asking them question about the movie, even if I did have to prompt them on most of the questions. (Me: What's that? Kids: It's whale! Me: Look at question 10. [Name 10 animals that live in the ocean.] Kids: Oh yes Teacher!) My students loved it, as did every other student in the library, including those working with a tutor and complaining about how they wanted to go to English Camp. Whoops. Had I known English Camp would be held in the library before the day it started, I probably wouldn't have chosen to show a movie, but I wasn't about to rearrange my entire lesson plan once camp started and I was spending every moment trying to get ready. I did think this line was particularly apt:




Same, Same

On the last day of English Camp, as a review, I gave the kids a bunch of letter posters (I printed PowerPoint slides with the letters of the alphabet in different fonts) and let them decorate them.
Sarah arrived on Friday, but my vacation didn't start until Tuesday. On Monday, I had to go into school and teach my last day of English Camp. My first English camp was with the first and second graders and we studied the alphabet. I'm not sure how effective it was; half the kids clearly already knew the alphabet from their hogwons and the other half were floundering because trying to cover the entire alphabet is a lot for one week. Due to construction (all the classrooms are getting new floors, hopefully ones that don't give people splinters) class was held in the library. It's a nice library, very modern, but it was also full of crazy Korean robot children who spend their summer vacation studying in the school library. Every time I did something that was even remotely noisy, like play a game or speak in a slightly raised voice, I would have an instant audience of forty or fifty kids, only half of whom were my camp students.

( I gave all the students... )

Hyangwonjeong @ Gyeongbokgung
The first of the vacation posts! (Technically, it's the third of the vacation posts, but it's the first of the post-vacation wrap up posts, i.e. the part where I feel guilty for ignoring my blog for weeks and spam it with photos. Lots and lots of photos.) Sarah arrived on a Friday and the next day, we headed into Seoul for some shopping and sight seeing. We spend a few hours looking at fans and posing for (other people's) pictures in Insa-dong, then walked to the nearby Gyeongbokgung, or the Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven.

Gyeongbokgung was built in 1395, shortly after the foundation of the Josoen Dynasty, and served as the main palace until 1592, when the Japanese burnt it down. It was rebuilt 300 years later, only to be destroyed by the Japanese again in 1915. It's a story that's repeated throughout Korea; this was once a site of important cultural patrimony until the Japanese burnt it to the ground. I had no idea the Japanese were so arson prone. Restoration of Gyeongbokgung began twenty years ago and it's a lovely, if no longer authentic, site. (In all honestly, I spent enough time in the museum and archaeology business to know how very few "historic sites" are truly authentic and Gyeongbokgung is at least a well done restoration.) ( Cut for the aforementioned lots and lots of pictures )

The full set of photos are here.

Sarah taught me how to make homemade tortillas* on Wednesday! She's in the Peace Corps, so she knows these things. They were super easy to make, which was a surprise. Sarah said they were easy, but me and cooking don't get along so well. If I was the sort of person who ever made Jello, I would probably manage to burn it.

On Monday, we went to Lotte Mart, the Korean equivalent of Super Wal-mart, and bought flour, salt and oil for the tortillas. We also picked up some tomatoes, onions and garlic to use as filling. We tried to buy beans, but could only find the sweeten red beans used for 팥빙수 and while 팥빙수 is delicious, tacos are not the time nor the place for sweet sticky beans. Then on Tuesday we went to Costco and, among many other things, bought avocados and cheese.

Wednesday night, we made the tortillas. We spiced the dough with Cajun seasoning to make them extra tasty (and because my family is insane when it comes to Cajun seasoning). Sarah also suggested adding taco seasoning or garlic for flavor. Both sound delicious. Sarah showed me how to make dough and I made the tortillas. We bought a rolling pen, but they still came out pretty oblong. Cooking is hard, yo. After we made the tortillas, Sarah chopped the vegetables while I cooked the tortillas. Well, actually she chopped all the vegetables while I watched the first tortilla cook. My stove is actually a hot plate and isn't very efficient. (I have to pre-boil water if I want to make pasta or else it takes half an hour for the water to boil.) The first tortilla took nearly twenty minutes to cook, but the rest went much faster.


The first plate of toppings: tomatoes, red onions, avocados and garlic. We possible cut too much garlic, but it was super tasty.


The second plate of toppings: cheese and avocados. You'll notice there are avocados on both plates, to which I say, "What's your point? Girls gotta have their avocados!"
Once the tortillas were cooking at a decent speed, we piled our toppings onto the tortillas while they cooked and then ate them straight from the stove. They were delicious! We only had vegetable fillings this time. Next time I either need to find beans to use or saute some tofu to use as filling.


Om nom nom nom nom!
*I'm currently reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and on the way to the airport to pick Sarah up, I read the section about maize and homemade tortillas and I very seriously considered running away to Mexico, right then and there. Because making life choices based on the availability of tortillas is a totally valid decision.

I've been friends with Sarah since high school. We met when I first moved to North Carolina in 8th grade, but I mostly remember her as that girl who skipped very violently and she says I was the new girl with the weird pig lunch bag. We had the same PE class in 9th grade though, and ended getting in a long conversation about Harry Potter and how, seriously, was child services never called? We've been friends ever since.

Sarah is currently serving in the Peace Corps in Tonga (in the South Pacific), but right now, she's in Korea visiting me! (She's currently on the floor of my apartment watching Gossip Girls. Korean internet is a tad bit faster than Tongan internet.) This is super exciting for a number of reasons. I haven't seen anyone from home for the past ten months AND I'm getting the next two weeks off school.

Taking a vacation at home, especially when you have a guest, is a new experience. I'm enjoying taking the opportunity to really look at my city. I tend to get stuck in a rut, hanging out with my friends and ignoring all the things Korea has to offer. On Saturday, Sarah and I went to Insadong, a shopping district in northern Seoul. Insadong mostly sells traditional Korean objects: hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper), celadon pottery, silk bags and fans.


There will be loads of posts coming, but right now I'm just going to enjoy Sarah's visit and my vacation.

A few weeks ago I visited Deoksugung, one of the five grand palaces of Seoul. Deoksugung, the smallest of the palaces, is located across the street from City Hall. It first became a royal palace in 1592 after the Japanese invaded and burnt all the rest. In 1897, King Gojang founded the Great Han Empire and made Deoksugung his primary palace. (It was a very short great empire. Thirteen years later, the Japanese invaded again, forced King Gojang to resign and burnt some more palaces. Always with the invading and the burning. It's no wonder the Koreans dislike them so much.)

I originally visited Deoksugung because I wanted to see their traditional changing of the guard ceremony, but when I showed up, there was a sign saying the ceremony had been canceled and hundreds (literally) of police officers were sitting in front of the main gates. The palace was still open though, so I sidled through the crowd and went to take a look.


Junghwajeon Hall was the main throne hall of Deoksugung. It's a new building, only built in 1902. King Gojang would have conducted official state affairs and greeted foreign dignitaries here. ( More behind the cut )

The full set of photos (with commentary) is here.