Trip to Seoul (more are coming)

More are coming. In the next couple days, please check back. You will find more details on public bath, visiting Korean National Folk Museum, shopping in Seoul, visiting fish market, trying life octopus, and more.

August 14th, 2005—Meeting Jeongwoo’s Fiancé, and Public Bath

Yes, Jeongwoo engaged. Jeongwoo told me that she and her boyfriend planned to get married in October next year! I’m going to meet her fiancé first time. Jeongwoo told me her fiancé, Younggon Bae is a very nice person. We left Jeongwoo’s apartment around 11:00am. We met up with Younggon near his office at 11:30am. My first impression of Younggon is that he is a polite gentleman.

We first went to Seoul Forest, a new park in Seoul center. Jeongwoo and her fiancé are urban designers. And I am an urban planner. You can see why we chose to visit the new park in the center of Seoul.

Jeongwoo and Younggon told me that traditionally, Koreans would eat dog meat on the last day of the summer. Today it happened to be that day. They asked me if I would try some dog meat. As a Chinese, I would almost eat every eatable thing. (Some of you might have heard the story my parents and I tried warms.) Yet, I can’t image eating dog meat on such a hot summer day. So, I told them I would prefer other animals. During lunch time, we went to a restaurant specialized in chicken. It was very delicious. Jeongwoo thinks Korean food is the most delicious in the world. Even though I haven’t tried all cuisines on the whole planet, I agreed with her that Korean food is one of the most delicious.

Because of my special request, we tried famous Korean public bath after lunch. I really enjoyed it. I would live in Korea, if I could take public bath every day. I am sorry I didn’t take any pictures here. I would love to, however, I was afraid that I would have been taken out of the public bath.

August 13th, 2005—Seonyong and His Family, Leeum, Nanta Theater, Lotte World

Today, I would see Seonyong, a good friend and schoolmate of mine from Evans School of Public Affairs at UW. Seonyong graduated two years ago and came back to Seoul. Currently, he is working for Seoul government.

We were going to meet at the Iteawon, a popular district for foreigners in Seoul. Even though we haven’t seen each other for two years, we recognized each other immediately when we saw each other.

Seonyong came alone. He told me it was his younger daughter’s birthday today, his wife took their two daughters to a hair dresser, and they were going to join us this afternoon.

Seonyong has scheduled a full set of activities for me today. We first went to a Korean restaurant in Iteawon. We had Jeon-Gol, which includes beef and needle mushrooms. It was another delicious Korean dish I haven’t tried before. I enjoyed it very much.

After lunch, Seonyong took me to Leeum Museum, which is built and funded by Samsung. With nice expensive buildings, Leeum Museum collects a lot of Korean traditional and temporary arts. Seonyong told me the museum was just open this year.

Around 3pm, we left the museum and went to Nanta Theater. Nanta Theater hosts a popular drumming performance. The five actors use kitchen utensils as drumming instruments. Including modern music, and a humor story line, it was a good entertaining performance. I heard that they started in 1997 and they also performed at the Broadway.

After the performance, we took the subway to Lotte World. At the subway station, we saw Seonyong’s wife and their two daughters. Seonyong’s wife is very nice. Their two daughters are so adorable. The older daughter is only 9 years old. The younger one, whose birthday is today, is only 6 years old. Lotte World is an indoor amazement park. A lot of young people, and families with children were packed in the park. Five of us tried the pirate ship. The ship was swooped up and down. I was scared. Seonyong and I also tried Gyro Drop. People are dropped at the 10-story height. People who tried it were speechless when they finished. Oh boy! It was such an experience! I did it!

When I came back to Jeongwoo’s apartment, it was around 11pm. Jeongwoo told me that her boyfriend would take us to go around the town. She was talking with her boyfriend though MSN messenger about the plan for the next day. I was lying on the bed and listening to Jeongwoo’s music. Within a couple minutes, I felled asleep.

August 12th, 2005—Arriving Seoul

After 10 hours and 50 minutes, I arrived the second day at the Incheon International Airport around 5:30 in the afternoon local time. I felt hot and humid once I stepped out of the airplane. I haven’t had such a hot and humid summer for more than four years. What a good reminding!

Sohn, one of my Korean labmates, suggested me to change money at the airport. Jeongwoo, with who I’m going to stay, advised me to buy a phone card at the airport. After I got my suitcase, I went to the money exchange to get Korean won. The exchange rate of dollar and won was 1 to 980. I changed $300. I got 294,000 won. I felt I was rich first time. However, that feeling didn’t last long. I went to a convenient store to buy phone card. It cost me 5,000 won.

I have heard my American friends complain when they were in China, they couldn’t read, because everything is in Chinese. This time, it was me who complained. I can’t read Korean. The guide to use public phone is in Korean only. Thanks to the help from two policemen at the airport, I was able to find the correct type of public phone to call Jeongwoo.

Jeongwoo had to work that afternoon, so she was not able to come to the airport to pick me up. She is very thoughtful. She sent me a map with both English and Korean. With Jeongwoo’s map and help from airport bus staffs, I got onto the airport bus 603 to Seoul National University. The bus first got on the highway. Along two side of the highway, I could see quite a few greens. Once the bus passed the old airport and got off highway, more buildings and more people occurred. I could see three or four stories of buildings standing along the road one after another, with colorful neon lights and ad boards hanging outside the buildings. The four lane road, and buildings remind the airport area of Chengdu, Sichuan where I went to college in China. When the bus got closer to Seoul, I could see the more buildings standing along the road, more neon signs hanging outside the buildings, more people walking on the street, and more vehicles moving on the road. The bus was getting slower.

Jeongwoo told me to get off the stop before Seoul National University. However, because the language problem and misunderstanding, I was taken to the Seoul National University. With the help from a SNU student on the bus, the driver said he could take me back to the bus stop where I should get off. Jeongwoo and I planned to meet at a Starbucks nearby the bus stop. I got off the bus, walked along the street, and found the Starbucks on the other side of the street. It was dangerous to cross the street as the traffic was quite heavy. There must be a crosswalk somewhere, so I stopped and asked two young fellows passing by where the crosswalk was. These two young fellows looked like students. Once they understood I wanted to cross the street, they offered me help to take me to the crosswalk. One of them even helped me to push my suitcase. What a nice guy! By the way, he is good-looking too.^_^.

Jeongwoo had been waiting for me at the coffee shop for more than one hour before I met up with her. It is so good to see Jeongwoo again. It has been three years since she left Seattle. Her hair is shorter than before, and she got prettier. After she took me to her apartment and gave a call to Seonyong, who I would see the next day, we went out to have dinner. It was around 10 o’clock. We shared a big bowl of noodle and octopus soup. Jeongwoo said it was a Korean traditional dish. I haven’t tried this noodle soup before. I forgot to take a picture and didn’t remember the name… Yet, I still remember the shape of the handmade noodles and its delicious taste.

August 11th, 2005—Flying to Seoul

I am very excited today, my first time to Seoul, South Korea! I have quite a few friends from Korea. I have heard a lot about Seoul and Korea. I felt like I know Seoul. However, I haven’t been to Korea. To me, she is still very foreign.

My flight took off at 2:30 in the afternoon. I took Korean Airline, whose flight attendants are all Koreans. The nice thing is that they still provide meals. The better thing is that all attendants think I am a Korean. They all spoke Korean to me at first.

Before landing, I want to share with you a few facts of Seoul that I found online. Seoul, meaning capital, is the capital of South Korea. The total area of Seoul is 605.52 square kilometers, or 0.6 percent of the entire country. Seoul has a population of 10,276,968 as of the end of 2003. This accounts for about a quarter of the total national population. The number of foreign residents in Seoul as of the end of 2003 is 102,882 or about 1% of Seoul’s total population. They include 52,572 Chinese, 11,484 Americans, and 6,139 Japanese.

Seoul, S. Korea

Seoul is a very exciting city. So far, I have a lot of fun. So much fun that I can't wait to share with you.^_^. By the way, I'm writing from Seoul National University. They have very nice facilities.

I wish I could show you some pictures. However, I don't have time to upload any.

Here is what I have done. I arrived in Seoul on August 12th (Friday). On the airplane, all the flight attends thought I was a Korean. They all spoke to me in Korean.

The second day, I saw Seonyong, a schoolmate of mine from Evans School. He took me to have Korean lunch, visit Leeum museum, watch Nanat performance, and enjoy Lotte World (amusement park).

On August 14th, I met Jeongwoo's boyfriend first time. He is a very nice guy. Three of us, Jeongwoo, Jeongwoo's boyfriend and me went to Seoul Forest, a new park in central Seoul, then in the afternoon, we went to famous Korean public bath. I have to tell you. I fell in love with it. It was very relaxing. After we had dinner, we were planning on seeing Seoul at night. I was sooooo relaxed from the bath that I fell asleep in the car....

August 15th, it was Korean independence day, a national holiday. Jeongwoo took me to National Folk Museum, where she was a volunteer. We had lunch at Insadong. Then we went to Namdeamen market, a shopping center where there are tons tons tons of shops for teens. As many of you know, Korean teens are very very very fashion. In fact, all Koreans, not only teens, are very fashion.

August 16th, it was first day I was on my own in Seoul! I visited palace, Myeong-dong, and Sichon.

August 17th, I'm visiting Seoul National University.

I think I have to go. I'm going to meet Sohyun Park, one of few female professors at SNU. She graduated from UW.

More details are coming soon.

August Travel

Lin is going to visit her parents in China this August. She hasn't seen them for more than two years. She misses them very much.

One the way to China, Lin is going to visit Seoul for one week. Jeongwoo Lee, Lin's friend from Seoul, is very nice to offer Lin to stay with her. Lin looks forward to seeing Jeongwoo again.