Paint Your Palette Blue and Gray

We went to the Van Gogh museum with our roommates.

The guy on the bunk laughing at Stellar's antics is Darren. There's also Alvin, a Chinese-Canadian drummer who is very cool. The museum was amazing, but unlike the Orsay, when they say that there are no pictures allowed, they aren't fooling around. No pictures this time.

Laundry and Impressionists

Laundry day.

We were perplexed. The soap dispenser was on the other side of the room from where you put coins in, and the machine ate three of Stellar's euros. We managed to get our clothes clean though.

Out on the Town

Some select photos from last night. Check out how red Stellar got.

The Best Crepes in Paris

On Friday night, after spending the day at Versailles, we wanted to get some more cheese and baguettes and have a picnic dinner on a pedestrian bridge. Apparently lots of people hang out on this bridge at night, play music, eat food, drink wine... But we got back pretty late and we were exhausted, so by the time we went back out all the boulangeries were closed. We went by the bridge, but we'll have to wait for another night to join in the fun.

PARIS!

Parisian food!

EDIT: Sorry. I was going to edit this post with a recap of the last few days, but as soon as I uploaded the video the internet crapped out. Then whenever I tried to finish it, I kept running out of time! Then by the time I returned, there was more to recap! I need to learn Mimi and Stellar's method of shorter and more frequent posts.

Fountains

Now that I have found my tiny shorts and sports bra buried deep in my drawer, I can face the heat without dying. I also found my flip-flops, and quickly noticed that I have been wearing my sneakers for far too long; I have a pretty impressive ankle-tan-line.

I decided to start things off at City Hall, since I hadn't been there since the first World Cup game. I couldn't get pictures that night due to rain and limited pocket space, but here's what it looked like:

Not so impressive in the daylight, and minus the throngs of red-clad, screaming fans.

Wandering

It occurred to me that these are my last days in Seoul. Soon I'll be going to Suwon. I'll stay there for about a week, since I haven't seen the family since before I went to China. By the time I come back, it'll be just in time to pack and head back to the States. I suppose I could seek out more museums and mountains via the guidebook, but 1) I'm lazy and 2) I often have more fun just wandering aimlessly and seeing where I end up.

China

I tried, I really tried to keep a detailed diary of my trip to China. But Kayli had so much for me to do that I never seemed to have time to sit down and write. Once I had fallen about four days behind, I realized that I probably wasn't going to catch up. So this will be the abbreviated version of Christina's nine days in Beijing. 

Dae-han-min-guk

I would love to make this a long post, but it's midnight-thirty and I have to get up in six hours to catch a flight, so I'll give you the abbreviated version.

Sam arrived on Friday very jetlagged but very excited. It was so nice to see her, a total blast from the past. When I was waiting for her at the gate, I kept worrying that I'd let her go by already because we hadn't recognized each other. But then I saw her, and I knew her right away. She conked out as soon as we got back, but she got up early today to spend the morning in Seoul with me.

Of course, after weeks and weeks of sweltering heat, today it decides to pour down rain all day long. We walked around, did some last-minute shopping for Sam, saw some old Korean palaces (pictured), and generally got soaked.

I saw Sam off and headed to City Hall to watch the Reds play Greece in the World Cup. I got myself a nice jersey-style team shirt and someone gave me a big inflatable hand for free! I elbowed my way up near the front, watched the game on the big screen, screamed and sang, and drank beer with a group of Americans that I met. Koreans have a little more freedom than most in making up cheers, because there are so many permutations of the country's name that you can fit it into any tune. In different songs we used "Korea," "Hanguk," and "Daehanminguk," and some songs used more than one.

Oh yeah, and it was still pouring. Everyone got soaked, our team won, and someone handed me a free can of Coke as I was staggering back to the subway station. A good night.

I probably won't have time to post anything tomorrow, which means this will be my last post until the 22nd! Damn China and their hatred of Google. I'll keep a diary and do a massive catchup post when I return. Until then!

Damyang

I have conducted an inadvertent experiment, and I have discovered that the number of days that I can disappear from Blogger, email, and Skype before my Mom calls Kris to ask if I've died is... 2. Sorry for making you worry, Mom, but I had a good excuse. You see, I've been in Damyang! Where they apparently have no internet! What? I didn't tell you guys that I was going to Damyang and please not to worry if I didn't update?

...Oops.

Well, I'm back. And since I didn't have internet, I wrote out journal entries in Word so I could post them later. Unfortunately for those of you who actually have things to do, writing in Word somehow makes me very verbose. These entries are not so much the picture-and-caption format of my normal posts, but more like long-narrative-with-pictures-added-in-later. You have been warned.

Staircases

I braved the heat today and climbed Namsan.

Remember? The mountain with the tower? I went there once before, at night with Kris and her family. But I wanted to climb it when it was still light out, and take the walking path instead of the bus.

Turns out I still didn't know how big Seoul is

I met Jessie for lunch at Jeongbalsan station. Turns out that's a two-hour subway ride away from home. Jeez. So I was late, but not to worry. Jessie took me out to a buffet-style restaurant before showing me all around her neighborhood.

We bussed over to a huge street market where we wandered, examining bowls of live sea creatures and observing open-air butcher shops. On the main street adjacent to the market, one of the candidates for mayor was giving a speech from the top of a campaign bus.

Next we went to a place that was either a museum or an art gallery - I'm not sure which. It was definitely about the Joseon emperors' tombs, but most of the exhibits were modern art based on the Joseon dynasty. It was all really interesting, and some of it was a little spooky. It didn't help that two attendants in black clothing were following us everywhere (I suppose they were making sure we didn't touch anything). They kept their distance, but it was still unnerving. Especially when we walked through a dark, narrow hallway draped with silk partitions while numerous grandfather clocks softly struck six (the death hour, according to Jessie), that feeling of being followed isn't really pleasant.

Finally we went to a huge park on a lake very near Jessie's apartment. It was gorgeous there. There were cute little walking and biking paths, bridges so you could completely circumnavigate the little lake, docks and islands, sports courts... I would go back if it wasn't two hours away. Yeesh.

Don't Panic (now where's my towel?)

This morning I woke up and got online. This was waiting for me on Skype:

Stellar: Wow Christina, have you been up on the news about the potential war within Korea? This is insane.. I hope you are updated about it because its getting a bit intense: if you don't know here is a link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/world/asia/26korea.html?hp 

Luckily, I was pre-warned, so I didn't freak out. Stellar was still online, so we got to have a talk:

Christina: Hey, this is funny. Last night Sunghun was talking to me about this stuff, asking if I had heard anything from back home, and now I see this first thing when I log on. It's pretty scary, but the general consensus in Korea is that it's mostly posturing on the part of government officials because elections are next week. Re-declaring North Korea as their "archenemy" is them trying to remind people of the constant danger, the same way Bush tried to stir up fear after 9/11.
Stellar: I know, its kind of scary though! How is everything going?
Christina: Things are fine. There are banners everywhere for the election, and little campaign cars are all over the streets blaring music and info about the candidates. It's kind of hilarious.

Stellar: LOL.. Korean style campaigning. Gotta take in the hilarious moments :)
Christina: They apparently get pretty worked up about the whole thing, so I can see the stuff with North Korea blowing over afterward (as long as Kim Jong Il doesn't decide to be a genocidal dick). I have to say, that line from the article about turning Seoul into a "sea of fire" gave me pause.
Stellar: ME TOO. I tried to translate that into Korean and I was like..oh ok it makes sense. But in English...ahem..right.
Christina: Yeah. It sounds pretty evil-dictator over-the-top. You can totally imagine some ridiculous sci-fi villian going, "If you do not bow to our demands we will turn your precious planet into a SEA OF FIRE! MWAHAHA!"
Stellar: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA

So, yeah. The news is scary, but Seoul is still intact. Here, I will show you it!

Visa success!

Woooo! I finally found the damn travel agency, and I can pick up my passport with a shiny Chinese Visa next week.

I didn't have a specific destination in mind today, so I decided to start at Wangsimni station and go from there.

Catch-up post

The last two days have been jam-packed, and I'm going to cover both in one post. So brace yourselves; this is gonna be a long one.

I'll start with our trip to the beach. We left Suwon on Thursday night with a car full of bags. I didn't know what was in the bags, but I kind of wondered why they needed to pack so much (spoiler: the bags were full of food).

At a rest stop, Aunt Jung-hee noticed that I didn't have a coat. I had stopped carrying one around since it started getting hot recently; it gets a little chilly at night, but I'd rather be a little cold than have to haul a coat around. Well, she got worried about me and gave me a jacket to wear. I'm glad she did, because I can now say that I have found the least-flattering jacket on me ever.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming

I very much appreciate all the concern I've been getting for the past few days. It's nice to know that I have at least three people who will mother-hen all over me from across the Pacific. But I want you all to know that I'm not being stubborn; I really honestly don't need to go to the doctor. I feel better, and while my eyes are still a little bloodshot they no longer look like alien-eyes. And I'm back outside.

Look! It is me outside! For realz guyz!

Seven Luck

Korean class in the morning. I saw some of the girls I met on the hiking trip - Rachael and Cait. They wanted to go to the foreigners' casino later that day, and of course I was all over that. But before that I killed a little time in Myeong-dong.

Dude. They have clowns. Why doesn't Saturday Market in Portland have clowns?

Rain

Ugh. Sorry about the lameness of my posts recently. The weather's been terrible, and since my main mode of transportation is my feet that tends to mess things up.

Today I really tried to go a to a museum (I figured if I could get inside, I could learn about Korean culture while staying dry). I packed an umbrella from the cabinet, but when I exited the subway station it was barely drizzling. Everyone had umbrellas up, but not me! I walked in the rain like the proud Oregonian I am. Well, eventually I realized that I had no idea where I was going and the rain was getting worse, so I grudgingly pulled out my umbrella.

It was tiny and flimsy. Apparently my reliance on Dad's enormous golf umbrellas has made me forget that not all umbrellas are created equal. I wandered around for about an hour and a half getting cold and wet, and never once did I even see a roof in the distance that might have belonged to a museum. I have a high tolerance for being lost (I kind of have to), but being lost in the rain and cold is just unnecessary, so I bailed at the next subway station I found.

So, yeah. Lame. But it's supposed to clear up by the weekend, so hopefully we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming.

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.

Guidebook, you may now die in a fire

Today I was determined to go hiking on this little mountain right here. My guidebook had lots of good stuff to say about it - that it was a holy place for Buddhists, which landmarks to hit on the way up, some history, blah blah blah. What it was conspicuously missing was maps, and my big city-wide map doesn't show enough detail to tell me how to get to the base of the mountain from the nearest subway station. All the guidebook had to say was, "Leave the station, go toward the Hyundai Apartments, and follow the road behind them to the gate." Considering the honeycomb of streets between the station and my destination, this advice was almost completely unhelpful.