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Published: November 15th 2010
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Off we go!
Asiana Air Seattle-Seoul direct flight.Seoul By Mouth And By Foot (Not To Be Confused With Foot In Mouth)
Korea is awesome! I don’t know if it’s the unfamiliar culture, the cleanliness of the city, the warmth of the people, or the weather. Never have we felt so welcomed in our lives. We feel like celebrities sometimes when people come up and want a picture with us or when someone buys us something at a restaurant just to say ”welcome to Korea”.
The plane ride over was easy and enjoyable. We sat next to a nice guy from South Seattle who works for Amtrak. It was his billionth time traveling east over the Pacific and had some good insight into where to go and what to do in both Korea and Thailand. Our time on the plane was mainly spent watching in-flight entertainment, eating, and talking. Neither of us slept the entire time. Apparently this is a helpful for reducing jet-lag as when we got in on a 17 hour time difference it was as if we had pulled an all-nighter in Seattle. However, we went to bed here in Seoul before 11:00 p.m. local time and woke up with the sun, refreshed and
ready to go.
Our first few days were spent exploring. Steve’s apartment is centrally located in the Hongik University neighborhood (although central is a relative term in a 10 million person city such as Seoul), which allowed us to spend our days learning the city by foot. Each day we left the apartment after a cup of coffee and one of Steve’s fruit and spinach shakes ready to explore. We wondered around eating street food, laughing at the local signage (some of the signs are in English with catchy titles like “Buy The Way”) and admiring the cleanliness and infrastructure. Seoul is a modern city filled with ancient flair. There are great outdoor markets filled with live seafood, fresh meat counters, local vegetables,
and variously colored fruits, grains, beans and nuts.
Koreans are also connected technologically. There is never a concern about getting your camera or phone stolen here because everyone has one. Also, Korea just feels really safe. Confucianism is still laced in this modern day culture, thus people deeply respect one another and their elders. Koreans also love shopping and are very into fashion. Therefore, walking down the street one can find anything from furniture to
Hongik Neighborhood
This is near Steve's house. Cheap food and shopping. camera lenses as well as high end jackets, shoes, makeup and jewelry.
If you don’t feel like shopping in any of these fancy and abundant stores, Seoul can be done on the cheap. This is especially apparent with the street food. The food here is definitely a highlight. Such options include sticks of chicken and pork grilled over charcoal, dumplings, sushi-like rolls called “Kim Bap”, sweetbread rolls filled with red beans, almond bread mini-bites, tempura fried vegetables, all of which cost around the equivalent of about “won” dollar (ha ha ha). 1000 won is about .90 cents in the US and is the standard denomination when talking about street food.
We are here during a very special weekend with many events due to the fact that dignitaries are here from all over the world for the G-20 summit. The Seoul Lantern Festival was spectacular as you can see in the posted photos. We also hiked up to the base of the Seoul Tower. The walk itself was really beautiful as it was along a tree lined path amidst the changing leaves of fall. What would otherwise be a tourist attraction also seemed like a popular destination for locals.
Street food
Chicken on a stick In just a few minutes you can escape from the noises of the city. At the top we listened to live music and had some snacks before we walked back down to the busy city full of lights, people and excitement for pleasant Saturday night.
Steven P. has also been working with us on our Korean, and we actually have a 20 to 30 word vocabulary at the moment. It is really fun to be able to communicate with venders and to at least be able to say please, thank you, hello, goodbye, how much?, and some quantities of won so that we can understand the answer. We will be fluent by Tuesday when we leave and need to be starting on language number two of the trip, Thai. Until then, we will continue enjoying all that is Korea.
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tim
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Laura's Chicken Stick
The 4th picture of Laura eating chicken on a stick looks as if a very small Korean woman is also part of the meal. Check the sharp end of the stick.