Greetings from Seoul! I arrived here on Saturday night with my colleague Erica, and let me say that travelling in business class on Korean Airlines is the only way to fly (To quote Ferris, "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.") When the flight attendants aren't on the plane, they are clearly part-time supermodels. In fact, the women in Korea in general are incredibly pretty, thin, and the most fashionable I have seen most anywhere. That is probably because Seoul is a shopping paradise. Not just clothes, but also an incredible assortment of cute things, half of which you have no idea what purpose they serve, but want them anyway. I think I have used the word "cute" more times in 3 days than in my whole life. Koreans seem to have a penchant for items that are very small, well designed, and well,...cute!
I am staying at the Grand Intercontinental in Seoul (also very choice by the way!) and there is this amazing mall called COEX right underneath the hotel. There is also a Hyundai department store next store, which is incredibly nice (no cars in there, but they have everything else!). There are huge apartment building high rises everywhere as far as the eye can see (10 million people live in Seoul and 23 million in surrounding areas) so the sprawl goes upwards rather than outwards. Seoul seems to be a very vibrant city- everything is open very late and there are tons of people out late everywhere. Traffic is fairly nightmarish however- we were stuck in gridlock even at 8 pm yesterday.
On Sunday, we went to the arts district (Insadong) which was really cool. Lots of handmade jewelry, crafts, etc and of course an assortment of (sorry to overuse the word, but it is a perfect description)"cute" items. We had tried to do some sightseeing that day, but the weather turned miserable on us and it was pretty much the worst sightseeing day ever. We retreated to this indoor/outdoor shopping complex in Insadong to escape the rain/lightning. As we were walking down some steps, I completely slipped and scraped my arm down this flight of stairs. My arm is pretty much one big bruise and I also lost quite a bit of skin (think road rash type of injury) but I am glad to have not broken anything. The hard thing at the time was that Koreas are not really into paper towels, so I was just kind of bleeding and trying to find somethign to clean myself up with besides toilet paper. Luckily when I got back to the hotel, they gave me some bandaids and some ointment. See the photo below to check out my wounds!
Here is a photo of the little mall where I fell in Insadong. It actually was a lovely little place- I will try not to hold a grudge since I fell there! :)
The food has been very interesting- some good, some weird, some bad, but overall I have liked it pretty well. Luckily, my Asian colleagues have been around some of the time to tell us what is good and introduce us to new foods. There are many side dishes here, sort of like tapas, and many different types of kimchi. I even had a kimchi pancake, which was quite tasty. THere are also many American restaurants (Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Baskin Robbins, TGI Fridays, etc) around so if I get desperate for a taste of home, I should be able to find something. Erica and I joke that for every 3 Korean meals we have, we earn one American food credit! :) Our hotel breakfast is quite nice as well, and almost anything you can imagine can be found there. Here is a photo of our lunch in Isadong, where you can see all of the side dishes.
The photo at the top is from a palace area called Changgyeonggung, which was pretty cool. We also went to a place called Jongmyo, which was were ancient rites were performed. Then as we were walking to Insadong, we came across Tagpol Park, which had one of the most incredible documents I have ever read on a plaque there. It was the Korean Declaration of Independence, which was read aloud there in 1919 to protest the harsh Japanese rule.
In Tagpol park, there was also a beautiful pagoda- the colors were absolutely gorgeous.
The other thing interesting about Korea of course is the language! I am having fun learning some Korean- most people here speak very good English, and are genuinely touched when you utter even the most meager Korean phrase. Schoolchildren kept saying hello to us on Sunday and when we would answer hello in Korean, they would just giggle and seemed quite amazed! I walk around with my phrase book constantly! People here at our Korean center also have these electronic Korean/English dictionaries, which makes conversation a little easier and also more fun. Our Asian counterparts are very kind and I am enjoying getting to know them better. Ok well that is enough for now! Have a good evening in the US! Annyong-hi-kye-se-yo!
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