Happy Birthday to Bu(ddha)

Last weekend was a really eventful one. It actually felt like about 2 weekends within one. Well, actually it was a long weekend of three days, so it was more like 2 weekends in a weekend and a half. Still, an eventful weekend.

It started Thursday night when the band was supposed to play a show. We unfortunately found out an hour before we were supposed to play that they weren't expecting us to play a show that night. Some kind of gap in communications. We were pretty upset and ended up drinking kind of a lot.

This becomes important because our singer Jake ended up setting up a show for us just down the street. So we called all of our friends over there and played a set with the three of us in the band being pretty hammered, and it didn't go extremely well. There were definitely a lot of missed notes, words, and some timing issues. It could have been worse, but we got a lot of sympathy comments which stung a little.

So with that over with, the next day, Friday, was a holiday in Korea because it's Buddha's birthday. I don't really know a lot about this holiday, but I still headed to Seoul to meet my friend Megan and her sister to go to a lantern lighting in honor of Buddha's birthday.

Our plan was to go on the bus tour, so we met around that area and there were a lot of fountains. I ran through one.

There was also this giant silhouette of a woman hammering something, which was cool.

And some strange giant shoe made out of a bunch of regular sized shoes:

The bus tour was booked for the rest of the day, so we decided to just play some frisbee and then walk along the river to where the temple is. Here's a picture of Megan and her sister Becky along the river walk.

So we walked over to Insadong where the Jogyesa Temple is for the lighting ceremony. They have a whole bunch of lanterns kind of like being under a tent or something. Next to the temple there were some monks and some women all bowing in front and then a man who did a chant for about an hour. There were even little boy monks who were super cute. One fell asleep and had to be carried away.

At the temple was this cutesy looking Buddha statue with happy anime eyes.

People were filing into the temple for something, but I'm not sure what it was.

We had gotten there a little after seven, and the lantern lighting happened after sunset. So we were waiting there until after 8 o'clock listening to a man doing chanting and a lot of people were singing with, but we didn't know what they were singing about. Finally, the lanterns were lit and and everyone was happy.

So actually the most exciting part of the night was after this ceremony when we went to this little hof (drinking place) called Johannes Brahms, themed after the composer. We ordered a bottle of wine. As the woman was at the bar opening our bottle, Megan says "Oh my god, there's something on her leg!" Megan had watched something run across the floor and up the woman's leg. I looked over, and it was this giant hideous cockroach bigger than my thumb. It continued running all up and down the woman's leg and we decided to let her know about it. So she inspected her leg and the roach ended up running up the woman's shirt. She finally saw it, and freaked out and brushed it off of her. At this point the cockroach ran behind a shelf directly behind my chair.

We all looked at each other, startled at this event, and Megan says "you guys, chug the wine we have to get out of here." I was a little freaked and couldn't drink anything for a few minutes, but eventually was able to down a glass. Another woman in the bar went to the bathroom and on the way back the roach was following her to her seat. It was a super aggressive Korean cockroach.

We stood up as if to leave and the lady just packaged our bottle for us to take it home. We got out of there as quickly as possible, but the lady still charged us for these nuts that we orded and didn't have time to eat. That stung a little bit, but at least we made it out of the bar without being attacked.

A Day in Insadong

Let's get back to the blogging then. This is a post about an exciting day I had when I went to visit Insadong, located in Seoul, Korea. It's home to perhaps the highest concentration of gift shops in the world centered around one street, as well as art gallerys littered along the sides of the primary street. I knew I wanted to visit some art gallerys as well as pick up some art supplies.

My bus left at noon. I was waiting outside of the terminal when I checked my phone for the time. It was 11:51 so I figured I should get on the bus, though this was the last time I would see my phone for a while. I was looking through my pockets for it once the bus left, and found no sign of it. Oh no! More on that later.

I made it to Seoul and to Insadong fine, but my day was hindered by thoughts of whether I would ever see my cell again. I looked around a few gift shops looking for paper lanterns I could paint, and ran into a Korean man I had met before. His name was Jacob and he remembered me from a birthday party we both went to in Seosan, though I didn't remember him right away. He and his friend David invited me to lunch with them. I said no because I wanted to see art galleries before they closed, but these guys didn't take no for an answer. They said they would find the gallery I wanted to go to and then go to lunch from there, so I agreed.

The whole area was really nice along the side streets that contained the art gallerys.

The one I went to is called Kyungin Museum of Fine Art, which is a complex of about five buildings housing galleries with a nice courtyard and some sculptures.

We went through only one of the buildings and they were hungry enough that we decided to leave and look for food. We went to what turned out to be really great dok bokki. For anyone who doesn't know, this is cylindrical rice cakes in hot sauce, which my little sister likes to call fire noodles. The restaurant even had a great mascot:

"What's for lunch? Oh....my head. Well, let's dig in."

The dok bokki had some shellfish and noodles in it as well as the rice cakes. It was really really good.

A picture of Daniel:

And Jacob:

And me. We got to wear nice red aprons because the food is so sloppy.

After lunch we walked down some more of the streets in the Insadong area. It was super scenic, and we walked to the area where the president of Korea lives, The Blue House.

Here is a picture of what the main street of Insadong looks like on a Saturday:

I bid farewell to my new friends, and I was finally able to do the shopping I wanted. I picked up a few paper lanterns from a souvenier shop, and I also found a really great art store that had canvases, paint, and brushes:

So it was a nice day in Insadong, but there was still the matter of my phone. I got back to the bus station in Seosan at about 9:30 and started (trying) to ask around for a lost and found. This involved something very similar to a game of charades, but with real consequences. After being shown a bank of pay phones, I was led to an office around back of the station. The guy there let me call my phone to see if I could hear it, but nothing came up. He then thought of an old desk where some items like this are kept, and luckily the cell phone was in one of the drawers. Sweet relief!

Korea can be a great place because people tend to be honest about things like this and not go and make a dozen phone calls to Nigeria or something. So thanks to whoever picked up my phone!

The Folks Came to Korea

As I mentioned last time, this is the first of my series of posts where I describe when my parents and little sister came to Korea, and then we all went and met my older sister and her husband in Japan. I figure I'll wipe out all of the Korea stuff in one post so I can get to the Japan posts quickly. It was actually a really good time spent in Korea, though.

My parents and sister, Kelsey, ended up leaving the states on Christmas eve, and then flew for about 12 hours while experiencing a time change of 13 hours. This meant that they basically flew for the entire time it was Christmas. How nice of them.

It was just a simple matter of hailing a semi-shady taxi to my town from the airport in Incheon, well known for shady taxis. This guy seemed like he didn't like silence and kept talking about the long bridges he was going over. Except by talking about, I mean that the only words he know about long bridges were 'long bridge,' so he just said that over and over. After paying a fair price, we arrived safe and sound at my somewhat tiny apartment where we all were staying and celebrated Christmas with the help of my 12" Christmas tree I bought for about $8. It was nice.

The next day was a full day to spend in my town of Seosan, Korea, so I tried to make it worth while. The morning included a small tour of the town around where my school was and to a nearby temple. It's a really beautiful temple, called Sogwang-sa, and I'm planning to write a post about it sometime soon. See picture:

We had a nice lunch of sushi, and then toured the market nearby my home which has a pretty impressive amount of sea food. That night was definitely the most exciting one in Korea, and one of my favorites of the time that I spent with my family. For dinner we had what is called Korean barbecue, where meat is cooked on a grill at the center of the table and wrapped in a lettuce leaf along with toppings, as I had mentioned before. The dinner was complete with some soju and a few beers bought by the guy at the table next to us. We then went to norebang (singing room) and cranked out two hours of well sung favorites. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don't have any photos of this part. That was nearly the end of a great day, which was eventually capped off with Dok Bokki (what my sister calls Korean fire noodles) and some ice cream.

The next day was off to Seoul by bus. We left late morning and had a small hangup at the Bus terminal in Seoul where the taxi drivers didn't know where the hotel was and also didn't want to take us because it was in a really close neighborhood. We eventually got a taxi to take us to a nearby hotel where a desk worker called our hotel to bring the manager to walk over and get us. No problem. This hotel ended up being top-notch for what the price was, so If you are ever in Seoul looking for a cheap stay look no further than the Cello Hotel. The manager speaks great English and will go to great lengths to make the stay enjoyable.

This is a photo walking back to the hotel that night.

That day, Sunday, was spend eating Thai food at my favorite Thai place outside of Thailand, called Thai Orchid, located in Itaewon. They pretty much lived up to my promises of great food so I was happy. We spent the rest of the day exploring a part of Seoul called Insadong which is in some ways like a giant souvenier store. There are just dozens of shops, museums, and souvenier stores for virtually any Korea related gift. I also saw this robot:

A few stands had this traditional Korean candy made from stretching sugar strings into hundreds of strands and wrapping them around assorted nuts all while doing this chant about how great the candy is. It was definitely worth a photo and the candy ended up tasting OK.

An outdoor mall building had this directory of stores, and my dad noticed something interesting top-center:

Yeah, so no comment on that one. That capped off what I thought was a really enjoyable experience in Korea. I think Kelsey and my parents had a favorable impression of the country, even if the amount of snow we got on Sunday in Seoul made things a little difficult. Actually there was only one restaurant open when we were trying to get food delivered to the hotel, but the manager there was excellent enough to find it and order us some delicious chicken. See you tomorrow for a Japan post!