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.