Thunder and Lightning

Today I went to the National Museum of Korea, because it happened to be the next destination circled on my map.

The grounds were really nice. The weather was okay, so I wandered around and had lunch in the park.

I'm reasonably sure that that perfectly-placed picturesque mist is not from the little waterfall in the back, but is being spewed out of pipes behind those rocks. Oh, well. At least it's pretty.

Admission to the museum interior was free, but the guy at the door still stopped me and made me go back to get my free ticket. Weird. It was pretty big, so I'll just give you some highlights.

This is a two-story pagoda. Each tier is built like a little house, and you can see monks inside praying. It's insane.

A painting of a kirin. Heh, like from Petshop of Horrors (oh, God, does most of my knowledge of Asian culture come from reading manga?).

I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but I kind of want it as a pet. It looks so happy to see me.

This statue was in a room all to itself, with benches and dimmed lighting. It was one of the very few quiet places in the whole museum, since there were so many school groups running around screaming and stomping. I hung out there for a while with Buddha looking pensive at me.

After leaving the museum I wandered down to the river (easier said than done, I might add. Koreans seem to have an aversion to putting crosswalks across their enormous streets). It was getting chilly, and I even felt a few raindrops, but I had my coat and I was moving, so I was quite comfortable. I was actually thinking about how classic Portlandian the weather was.

Well, so much for that. While I was crossing a footbridge over the Han River, I was treated to a sudden thunderstorm. I stopped in the middle of the bridge and watched several spectacular lightning flashes. I tried to get some video, but I swear the lightning can tell when the camera is rolling.

Then, when I got to the other side of the bridge and no longer had cover, the rain suddenly stopped! Woo!

At this point I was well aware of a problem with my knee. For about a month now, whenever I do anything really strenuous it starts flaring up. Well, climbing that mountain yesterday set it off and walking around all day today just aggravated it. It's now worryingly painful to go down stairs, or even down an incline. I had to shuffle sideways down all the staircases in the subway station. Ugh. I'm too young for my body to start falling apart. Hopefully it'll go away on its own.

Aaaand this. If you haven't heard of it yet, count yourself lucky. I'm still holding out hope that it's an elaborate practical joke by Andrew Lloyd Webber, because I honestly can't think of a way that it could be anything other than pure tripe.

I texted Drew, and I'm going to meet him tomorrow morning to go to his Korean language class with him. I'll also have to apologize for fleeing last week... Hopefully he doesn't think I'm too much of a spaz after that.