Vacation Week!

Man, is vacation awesome.  After having basically been busy continually since January, it was a REALLY nice reprieve for us to get some R&R for a week after our craziness of a move.  And boy, did we need it.  For the first two days of vacation, we did nothing except try to right our body clocks and catch up on Zzzs.  After that, we decided it was best to not waste the time we'd been given off and actually do some exploring!!! Here are some of the highlights of our week off:

National Museum of Seoul - The Ichon stop on our subway line was the first of our vacation adventures and connects directly to the free National Museum, which is enormous.  We didn't even see the whole museum because we had to give up halfway through the 2nd floor, it's that big.  We've heard a few people talk about how boring it is, but we really enjoyed it - there are lots of really old relics inside and there's also an impressionist art exhibit next door (which we haven't gotten to yet).  We'll definitely be back for more, but here's a few pictures from the excursion.

 These are huge Buddha and Bodhisattva statues that date between the 900-1100s.  The picture with Taggart is dark, but we thought you'd want to see how huge they were (in reference to him, of course)!

 A scepter of carved jade and gold, one of the many gorgeous pieces of pottery, and a bronze mini pagoda.

 Come on, you don't think we'd forget the Samurai sword?? Or the armor... also a huge stone pagoda.

This was a really cool bronze gilded horse that predates the Ming Dynasty.

You can't really get the whole perspective from this shot, but the entrance is a huge glass atrium, and this was taken from one of the staircases that looks out over it.  It's really laid out beautifully.

Dongdaemun Market - This was seriously the craziest, scariest part of the whole week.  This market seems at first glance on a map like it will be busy but pretty straightforward. Oh. My. Gosh.  It is labyrinth after labyrinth of textile stalls, back alleys, hats, shoes, backpacks, anything you can think of.  Dongdaemun is the textile and clothing market, so if you need to select from a million types of suiting fabrics or (heaven help you) shop for some trim or have a hanbok made (traditional Korean dress), then this market is for you.  We wandered around for a while just in awe of all of the vendors, and then we found one of the three side by side malls and went in (for the air conditioning, of course).  This ONE mall was 9 stories with a food court on top, and this particular mall was only designer stuff.  So one FLOOR was for jewelry, one for cosmetics, one for shoes, etc.  It was huge.  I can't even imagine what the other two must look like, but I'm grateful for our sanity's sake that we only scratched the surface in the first day, otherwise I may have died.

 We were so tired from this excursion that by the time we found food, we were just happy to be alive!!!

We got to meet up this past week with my friend Bryan who is here teaching on the other side of the city from us.  We happened to chance it well enough that our other friend, Pratyush, was in town for the week visiting Bryan, so we had a mini reunion over Korean BBQ in Dongdaemun.  We had been out and about all day, and it was REALLY FLIPPING HOT, so we were sweaty messes, but still had fun exploring the back alley street markets of the Dongdaemun area, which are just jam packed with all kinds of kiosks, shops, restaurants, etc.  It was really nice to catch up with those guys and see how they were, as well as get another perspective from a teacher here.

We also had our first Korean movie theatre experience on the 31st and went with one of the teachers at our school to this awesome theatre in Nowon, which is one neighbourhood up from us, and went to see Guardians of the Galaxy! The movie was amazing, and yes, that's right, we got to see it first ahead of our US friends because of the time difference. The theatre is at the top of a high rise Lotte department store, and serves carmel popcorn along with regular, though we didn't get to try it because the cashier misunderstood us and gave us some kind of ranch-cheese combo, which was gross.  But the movie was awesome, and we thoroughly enjoyed being the only Westerners in the theatre who laughed at all of the English inside jokes that went right over everyone else's heads with the subtitles.

 The movie was so good!  Seriously had some major geek moments, but I think that's also because I've been reading the comic.  Also, Korean bed frames are made of marble?  Also, They're like $9,000. Weird...

Ssangmun (our neighbourhood) - Most of the week was spent exploring our neighbourhood.  There are so many cool shops and weird markets around us, that it's really interesting just walking out our door.  There's a brand called Lotte that is basically everywhere, from department stores to pharmacies to grocery stores... I think it's the Korean equivalent of Kroger here.  Yesterday on our way home from dinner, we passed a small seafood store that had tanks of fish in the window, including, but not limited to, octopus, clams, sea sponges, and what looked like eel.  The biggest thing for me, too, is the smells here.  The smells are so varying, and conflicting with each other, that walking down the street is pure olfactory overload, from sweet breads to fish to garbage to korean BBQ.  And the Korean BBQ is amazing! We've been to a few places since moving here and they have all been fantastic, and reasonably priced considering how much meat you get for the cost.  Meat in Korea is very expensive, especially beef and chicken, and a lb. of ground beef here is over 10,000 won (about $9).  But never fear, there is a Costco near! Well, thirty minutes away by train, but still. It is more crowded in the middle of a weekday afternoon than Walmart on Black Friday.  Seriously, it is terrifying. We made the trek on the Friday of vacation week, and were able to find a lot of good staples. There is also a Home Plus across the street from Costco, which I'm told is like a mix between Walmart and Target, but we haven't been there yet.  But we DID get a slice of Costco pizza, and it was divine!  Here's some pics from around our neighborhood:

 There is a cute little pet shop on the way to the subway station, and last week there were mini-Mays!!!

Here's us, the masters of the subway, or as Scott recently put it, the "Seoul Train"... Get it? *nudge nudge* 

Stay tuned for reports from the first week of teaching and more!