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Published: January 4th 2007
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Hello Everyone!
About a week before Christmas, our good friend Ramit from Los Angeles came to South Korea for a visit. Ironically enough, the same day his plane arrived from sunny California, we had a large snowfall....the only snow we've seen this winter so far! Before picking up Ramit from the airport, we unfortunately both had to work this day. Larry found ways to make the most of it though...as you can see he chose to have some snowball fights with his students!
But anyway, Larry went to Incheon Airport to pick up Ramit later that same day, and had a nice surprise waiting for him at the airport...the entire Korean Soccer Team was there! Of course he took lots of pictures! Once he found Ramit, they hurriedly drove back to English Village together... They were trying to make a showing of "A Very Barry Christmas" here that the entertainers were putting on for the entire staff. Unfortunately, they were a little late....but that is when the show was really just beginning. Since there were two casts for this show, the first cast put on the show as it is usually done - A nice clean version
of a holiday show that is intended for Korean children learning English. But, the second cast added a little twist. This cast did the show with extremely vulgar, sexual, and drunken undertones...which proved to be completely hilarious!!! It was, however, maybe a strange way to welcome Ramit to S. Korea. But then we took him to have live octopus for dinner...so maybe the show wasn't so strange afterall.
We started off the next day by heading to Gyeongbokgung Palace. Larry and I had been there before with our Seoul tour, but we couldn't walk through it because it was closed that day. Anyway, as you can see, this palace was so beautiful and we had a gorgeous day to be outside and get some great pictures. We particularly loved the open building set on an island with a moat around it....the sign said it was once used for holidays and royal feasts, but we all agreed that it would be a prime place for a rave!! After checking out Gyeongbokgung Palace, we walked through the National Folk Museum of Korea.
Next we headed to Insadong for a little lunch, dessert and shopping. We also visited Namdaemun
Gate and Namdaemun Market this afternoon, before meeting our friend Stanton for some dinner and drinks at a little Italian dive. But the night wasn't over yet...Finally we all went to the Grand Hyatt of Seoul for some drinks at the hotel's extremely popular club: J.J.'s. Here we had a few good laughs...especially when the same Korean man who had asked me to dance, turned to ask Larry to dance with him when I told him "No thanks!!!" Hmm...what kind of club was this anyway?!!?
On our last day with Ramit, we began the day by heading to the Odusan Unification Observatory. Here we had a great view of North Korea! We also saw some N. Korean propaganda films here, as well as looked through giant telescopes to see some of the N. Korean villages on the border. Strangely enough, we didn't see any people or cars there. On the outside decks, there were signs everywhere that said we couldn't take pictures...but guess what? Yes, you guessed it...Larry took them anyway! We kept joking with him the whole time, telling him that someone was gonna take him out for disobeying the rules.
After visiting the Observatory,
we went to our favorite conveyor-belt sushi restaurant in Ilsan for an all-u-can-eat sushi lunch. Then we drove back to Seoul. That night we were going to see a very popular show here in Korea called "Cookin Nanta," so we did a little more sightseeing that afternoon until it was showtime. Before the show, Ramit treated us to a very delicious (and expensive!) steak galbi dinner...which was very greatly appreciated, even after our stomachs hurt so bad later that night that we thought we definitely had a case of food poisoning, and had to miss work the next day! Oddly enough, Ramit's Superman stomach was the only one not affected!
"Cookin Nanta" was a great show...very funny and entertaining!! It reminded me a little bit of "Stomp" actually....except they used food and cooking utensils to create beats, instead of trash can lids. It's supposed to go International soon, and so if anyone ever gets the chance to see this show, we would both definitely recommend it to you!
Well, that's about all for now... Our holiday blogs are soon to follow!
Lots of love,
Larry & Melanie
Korean for the Day:
"Chon kisaengch ung-i issoyo." - I have a parasite.
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danny
non-member comment
korean phrase of the day
That may be the funniest foreign language phrase of the day yet. Very entertaining blog - good work :)