What can I do in Seoul? Pt. 1 (Sightseeing)

Seoul has something for everyone...just about. Seoul, being 10 million people certainly should. For those who come here there is something that should lure you in particular. It is a city for shoppers, sightseers and of course the people drawn to night life. Having been living here for almost eight months  I have gotten a good taste of what the city has to offer. Here is my list, not rankings, of things that I enjoyed so far being in the megapolis of Seoul.

People who appreciate sightseeing will have plenty to see in Seoul. Here are a few of my favorites.

The Five Palaces of Seoul

• The Five Grand Palaces of Seoul were built during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897). Gyeongbokgung is the most famous of the five and is located at the end of Seoul's main plaza. The other four are Changdeokgung, Changyeonggung, Gyeonghuigung and Deoksugung. They are an excellent example of Korean architecture and you can spend a good hour at each. Gyeongbokgung is the most extensive in size and has daily changing of the guard ceremonies that draw crowds. Deoksugung also has an entertaining changing of the guard ceremony and is only a short walk from the main plaza. 

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/01/24/2012012400190.html

 Gyeonbokgung

 Gyeonbokgung

 Gyeonbokgung

 Gyeonbokgung

 Deoksugung "Changing of the Guard"

Gyeonbokgung "Changing of the Guard"

• War Memorial of Korea

This is an excellent stop for those interested in the history of the Korean War. The memorial is not just a memorial but a very large museum. The memorial consists of several displays outdoors and you can see up close the military equipment used by the forces involved in the Korean conflict as well as some post-Korean War equipment. Indoors you will be treated to a very well designed museum with highly interactive exhibits. You will be taken through not only the history of the Korean War but the entire military history of Korea up until modern times. You can expect to spend at the very least three hours at the museum. If you plan on coming to the you should make a day out of it to really appreciate what the memorial and museum offers its visitors. Like all national museums and memorials it is completely free to the public.

http://visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=268131

• Seoul Arts Center

The Seoul Arts Center will have something year round for the music and art lover. Operas, Philharmonic Orchestras and classical Korean music are some of the many types of music that play at the Seoul Arts Center. Seoul Arts Center boasts three concert halls, an opera house, two performing arts stages as well as art and design museums within the complex. It is located just a few hundred meters from Nambu Bus Terminal.

Seoul Arts Center

• The National Museum of Korea

The National Museum of Korea is the premier museum for Korean history and art within the country. It holds over 300,000 pieces and contains some of Koreas most cherished national treasures. It is a must see for the Seoul visitor. Over 3 million visitors walk its halls each year. Some of the items you will see will be very hard to miss. I loved the beautifully crafted ten story stone pagoda from the 14th century housed within the museum. The pieces in the museum date from the Paleolithic era to the modern era. One could spend hours within the museum so it is wise to plan to spend multiple hours at the museum. 

National Museum of Korea

To be continued with...

• Insadong/Bukchon Hanok Village
• Namdaemun Market
• Seodaemun Prison Museum

South (남) of the River (강). Living in Gangnam (강남)

Tomorrow marks 6 months of living in Gangnam. It is the halfway point of my year long stay in Gangnam. I have regrettably neglected my blog once again. I want to credit this to the disease of "Gangnam Style" that has finally filtered itself out of the airwaves in Seoul. I feel it is now safe for me to emerge form my bunker and describe the area of Seoul called Gangnam.
Gangnam certainly lives up to it's overhyped repute as the "Beverly Hills of Korea". While the rest of the country is driving Hyundais, KIAs and other Korean made vehicles, Gangnam's residents strive to drive the finest foreign cars. Seeing a BMW or Mercedes is about as common as seeing a bicycle on the streets of Amsterdam. For the lowly pedestrian that may get in their way on the crowded streets of my neighborhood they will be the recipient of a honk or perhaps even a little love tap from the bumper, as some of my acquaintances have learned. I have never seen so many luxury vehicles per capita anywhere else in the world. There is a Ferrari and Porsche dealership only a short walk from my apartment. Ironically, the apartments that many of these affluent drivers live aren't much bigger than my small studio apartment.
Indeed, the cost of living of living in Gangnam sets it far apart from other places in Seoul, certainly with other places in Korea. The monthly rental for a one room studio apartment probably ranges from $500-$1000. If you are looking to buy an apartment the median price is going to set you back $700,000. Housing is just one of the things you will notice about Gangnam. Food is much more expensive in Gangnam. The Korean BBQ that costs you 8,000 won (8 dollars) will probably costs you 10,000 won (10 dollars) in Gangnam. The 15,000 won and hour rate for noraebang (karaoke room) will costs you at  least 20,000 won in Gangnam. Money aside, Gangnam is a major draw to the young and aspiring Korean. Gangnam is a symbol of money in Korea and money is of the utmost importance to Koreans, especially the Seoulite.
Personally, I didn't come to Seoul for the Gucci, Luis Vutton and Ferraris. I am not really drawn to the clubs and nightlife. I just happened to land a job here that placed me close to where my girlfriend works. There are certainly things that I dislike about Gangnam. However, there are things that I find so convenient about it. Just within walking distance from me are several Seoul hotspots. I am certainly thankful to have the COEX (large underground shopping mall), the beautiful Bongeunsa Temple, Seolleung Joseon Burial Tombs near me. Not to mention the endless variety of food and shopping that can be found here. Living in Gangnam has also been a convenient experience for me.

 My Street

 Just around the corner from my street

 Near Gangnam Station

 Seolleung Station, the closest station to my apt.

 Gangnam crowds

 Every once and a while a good musician has a concert here.

 The remnants of "Gangnam Style" still echo in the streets

 Seolleung Tombs offer some quiet and solitude from the busy streets

 Seolleung Tombs in winter

 Bongeunsa and the World Trade Center/COEX in the background

Bongeunsa in fall

9 months later...where am I? Seoul!!!??? Gangnam Style? ECC? What???

In the 9 months since I have left the city of Mokpo, much has happened. I spent 6 months at home spending much of time with family, friends and eventually Jaeeun for two months. From the sprawling cities of South Korea I adjusted back to the wide open rolling hills and mountains of Idaho. It was a great time to get back to what I was familiar with. A solid year of working and teaching to relaxing and making each day different from the day before. Probably because of my desire to enjoy unemployment during my stint at home.
After numerous attempts to get a public school job in Ilsan it became clear that I would have to broaden those horizons. I pursued a public school in the Seoul area. Much to my dismay there were none to be had. After that I pursued a hagwon job in Ilsan, no dice again. Finally, I settled for a job at ECC in the now famous Gangnam area in Seoul. It was clear to me it would take a major adjustment. From a little port city in Korea to the second biggest metropolis in the world. I would move from my "neighborhood" in Idaho, which consisted of 3 other houses, to a neighborhood of roughly 1 square mile that has a total of 86,000 people within. Yes, the same amount of people in my neighborhood would equal the same amount of people residing in my hometown which spreads out over 30 square miles. Life would be and is very different here in the Daechi neighborhood of Gangnam.

The Han River looking towards Gangnam

Fast paced. Glitz. Glamour. Luxury vehicles and never ending lines in subway stations. Gangnam and Seoul in general. Not something a rural Idahoan is accustomed to. Though I had visited Seoul several times during my last year I never had a desire to live within it. Yet, here I am. There is a lot to enjoy and a lot that flusters me. I will have a lot to say about the things I have done so far and a lot about Gangnam. There is much to be said about my job too. Of course I also have a good amount to say about me and Jaeeun too! :) It's been a fast 4 months since I have arrived in Seoul. It's good to be back to blogging again and I look forward to catching everyone up!

Intermisson

It's been about 11 days since I left Korea. Leaving Mokpo and a year of memories there was the easy part. I made numerous friends and memories in my year of teaching there. I learned to live on my own, to rely almost entirely on my decisions. It provided a year long life lesson.

The hardest part was leaving Jaeeun behind. I have known her for nearly four months, it seems like she was there in Korea the whole time with me. She lifted my spirits when they were down and she still does to this day of course. We have a bumpy road ahead. It will be another three months until I get to see her face to face again. She will come to the USA at the beginning of June and will spend almost two months with me and my family. We will travel across the Western States to cities like Seattle, LA, Las Vegas and see sights like the Oregon Coast, camping in Idaho, Disneyland and the Grand Canyon. In the mean time we have Skype, Kakaotalk and Facebook. I bought an iPod touch just so I could Kakaotalk (free texting app) with her.

This isn't the end for my time in Korea. I plan on returning in July or August for another year. I am currently in Idaho working on my GRE, TEFL and learning some more Korean.

Jaeeun always seems to make the simplest statements resound the strongest in my heart and soul.

"We can do it"

"We are strong"

I love you J

I will see you soon.

Korea,

We are not done.

Last Week in the 'Po

The year is winding down in Mokpo...My 1,225 teaching hours will soon come to a close. From February 14th to February 29th I will have spent all those hours in my little cramped desk in my little classroom doing I what I think was teaching. To the children it was probably more of a show or game of charades. All those hours added up totaled 51 days of total work. A lot of fun, but also a lot of pain and suffering. Teaching in little Mokpo has been a joy and I will come away with numerous life lessons and things I learned about myself. Perhaps most importantly, I may have learned how to not raise children...some of the students being prime examples. Nevertheless I will come away stronger, wiser and more financially stable than I was the year before.

What is the plan after the 'Po? A 6 month "sabbatical" full of studying for the dreaded GRE test and learning Korean. I will have more than a month to spend with Jeaeun when she comes to visit in the early summer. Hopefully I will secure another job in her hometown of Goyang where I would work and study for another year. None of this would have happened had I not taken a chance on this job.

Take that leap of faith...

Visiting Ilsan

The time had finally come. It was time for me to finally go to Jaeeun's hometown of Ilsan. So for the weekend before Valentin's I finally made the journey to Ilsan. The night before I had a late dinner with friends at 11 P.M., my train was at 6 A.M. After an uneasy 4 hours of sleep I managed to get onto the KTX and sleep for the majority of the 4 hour train ride to Ilsan. Ilsan is a far-cry from sleepy little Mokpo. It is considered a suburb of Seoul and is connected via the Seoul Metro. Ilsan is in fact part of the larger city of Goyang, with a total population of about 1 million people. The apartments and officetels are nicer and there is certainly more to offer than little Mokpo. For my next home, this one sounds good!

The plan while in Ilsan was to meet Jaeeun at the train station where she would take me around her hometown and eventually her home for dinner with her family. Was Kyle nervous? Perhaps. I met Jaeeun at the station still feeling a bit groggy. We went out to shabu shabu with her friend for lunch. After lunch we went to coffee (my first of four that day). Next on the agenda, the arcade, yay! Jaeeun's friend had to go to work after that and we headed of to the multi-bang (much like a noraebang but it includes movies and video games in your own private room). I destroyed Jaeeun in Mario Kart, she schooled me in golf (typical Korean). We then sang a few songs with a terrible selection of songs.

Jaeeun thought it was a good idea to rent some of Goyang's "green bikes" to ride to Ilsan Lake Park in the subfreezing temperatures. We did and we froze. Jaeeun gave me a nice narrative and tour of her city and home and then it was time for dinner. Was Kyle nervous? Perhaps.

Dinner was great! It was a meal fit for kings, quite literally! Some of the dishes were specially created for Korea's long line of kings. I managed a few lines in Korean and most of the Korean I knew seemed to have disappeared from my mind. I managed to make it through with Jaeeun and her brothers help with translation. :) After dinner it was time for bowling. We had to wait 30 minutes to finally get a lane. I was scared that my bowling skills would be inadequate. Yet somehow...somehow I bowled by second best game, a 172. Success! Bowling was followed by J taking me to her old part time job, an Izakaya restaurant. We played Connect Four on the little game tablet for our table and ate some beef sashimi. After about an hour of this it is safe to say that we are now Connect Four pros. Day 1 was complete!

We planned on going to church the next day but her parents though it best for us to stay in and relax. Jaeeun made a delicious breakfast and she suggested a movie, the Sound of Music. Instead she fell asleep in her room and I fell asleep too :(. Two hours later...

We woke up appalled that we had wasted our precious little time sleeping. We went to coffee again and picked up some 똥빵 a.k.a. "poop bread" for my trip home. This 똥빵 is actually quite marvelous, little poo shaped pastries filled with different flavors like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and *ahem* corn. We said our goodbyes at the metro station and I went to Seoul for a few hours and finally home to sleepy little Mokpo where I have been since. :(

Shabu Shabu

Ilsan Shopping Mall

Crazy Pirate arcade game!

Norae bang

Waiting for the multi room

Taking a break from video games

Ilsan Lake Park

Our rental bikes

Sticker photo!

New Year's in Busan and Gyeongju! Pt. 4

New Year's Eve didn't end on the beach, it didn't go out with a bang with fireworks.However, I didn't want the last post to end on a sour note.

After the beach and fireworks at midnight we had the urge to play darts. Me and Jaeeun have acquired a fascination for darts after her visits to Mokpo and playing darts at Moe's. Jaeeun took me to a bar she had spotted earlier that looked promising. We sat and observed and drank our nasty flavored beers (passion fruit and chocolate, not a winner). There was a dartboard with a board where you signed up to wait your turn. I wrote "Kyle" in big letters. There was another couple that came in perhaps 20 minutes later. They were clearly confused by the board and put there names before ours. We waited patiently, perhaps 30 minutes before it was our turn. The board had been messed up, my name erased by that time. We remained calm, cool and collected. The "crazy couple" consisting of a Korean girl and her European boyfriend freaked out at us. Jaeeun got a little angry :). Nevertheless I ceded and let them go first, let children be children. We played our darts eventually, I did terribly and Jaeeun cheated.

Cute as can be

The "crazy couple" as J called them

Day 4

The Plan: Wake up bright and early for the New Year's Sunrise Festival at Haeundae Beach.

The Result: We woke up late but still made it with plenty of time to spare

The Story:

A few hours of sleep later it was time for our main goal on our 4 day trip. We were destined to watch the "first sun" of 2012 make its ascent into the sky. Being in Korea we would be among the first in the world to see it. We woke up two hours late! It was still dark and as we scampered through the streets of Haeundae to the beach. We made it to the beach and Jaeeun wanted to get one of the complimentary balloons given out to be released at sunrise. We waited in line but they eventually ran out before we could get one.

We made our way through the crowded beach until we found a suitable spot to stand and wait among the hundreds of thousands of early morning spectators. It was a little chilly but I kept warm thanks to the knit hat that Jaeeun made me for Christmas. We laughed at a group of Koreans that made a plunge into the frigid ocean to celebrate New Years. It seemed like an eternity before we caught saw the orange glow on the eastern horizon, the sun was on its way. All eyes gazed east and it seemed like it was just me and Jaeeun out there on the beach, never mind the thousands huddled around us. The orange glow got brighter and brighter until at last a sliver of an orb could be seen and the huge crowd applaud. A countdown began and thousands of golden balloons were released into the sky at once with music and celebration. The sun was exceptionally big that morning, we're talking the beginning of Lion King big. It sounded silly at first, watching the sun go up on a cold beach. In reality it was one of the more special moments I could ever experience. 2012 promises to be a special year.

Waiting in the dark

Me and Jaeeun

The Korean swimmers

Waiting amongst the thousands

The first sun arrives!

Hello sun

After the sunrise we went to Starbucks which was surprisingly not crowded. It was around noon when we went to Shinsegae Centum City, the biggest department store in the world. We exited the subway station and the department city loomed before us, it was incredibly massive! We were excited as Jaeeun chased me into the store only to find...the majority of the store was closed for New Years. We settled for a visit to the bookstore, Jaeeun got me a notebook I could use for taking notes and journaling. We then went on a wild goose chase to look for a good meal. We wound up in a popular shopping and dining district. We were lost for a moment, I get cranky when I am hungry, but luckily Jaeeun puts up with me. The food was delicious! We got some snacks at a little bread shop and made our way to Busan Station for our return home on what would be a very crowded train!

Delicious food! Worth the wait and journey!

We got to the train station with perhaps 10 minutes to spare. We thought we had done well to get there early. We waited on the platform...and the mob arrived. We packed into the train with no where to sit and little room to stand. I got us a spot by the vending machine where we had to sit for 4 hours on the floor, the last hour we had to listen to two old men fighting and cussing at each other. We would eventually get to Sintanjin station again. It was biting cold in Sintanjin and we were hungry, we had to settle for Lotteria. We got in the next train to Mokpo, this one with less people but still no seats. We had to cram ourselves into one of the seats used for the pay computers for an hour or two. The closer we got to Mokpo more people left the train until we could finally get seats in one of the cars. We reached Mokpo, tired and weary but full of incredible memories.

Sardines

Me and Jaeeun on the floor

Exhausted