Just a short walk from the traditional housing was the Blue House! That's pretty much the Korean equivilant of the White House. They had security guards who were checking bags for weapons blocks before the house was even in sight! The security was really impressive. And a lot of people in my group were excited to see it because they had seen it in so many k-drama's.
Our next stop was right across the street! At Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was comprised of a beautiful pond, traditional architecture, statues, and even a museum! We only had half an hour to peruse the museum, but it was fascinating. They had lots of Korean art! That was my favorite part: looking through all the paintings, pottery, and clothing. Although we spent lots of time at Gyeongbokgung Palace, it's hard to actually describe what we did. A lot of it was just enjoying the sights. Hence, pictures will sum it up better. Hopefully I'll be posting some on facebook soon!
After that, we walked through a very interesting section of Seoul. In the middle of the modern, downtown city, a beautiful little man-made, stream-type thing ran down a trench of sorts. Again, this is a really difficult thing to describe! But it was crazy. One minute you'd be walking on the street, but then you'd go down some stairs and almost feel like you were on a nature trail. There was foliage, birds, and even fish!
Finally, we took a lunch break. YES, that all happened BEFORE lunch!
Once we finished eating, it was off to the "Hanbok Experience!" Hanbok is the traditional dress of Korea. So we went to a store where we rented Hanbok to take pictures in! It was so fun. Everyone looked so cute in their Hanbok outfits~! I'll post pictures of this too.
Last Stop! A Buddhist temple. There's really not much to say about this, other than it looked cool too. There were some big, gold Buddha's in the temple and some cool paper fish hanging all over the palce. That was cool.
After that, our tour guide showed us how to get back to the subway to get back to the university! But me, Chris, Kate, and Jenna decided to keep looking around and have some fun. So we headed to the nearest Cold Stone Creamery (Yep, they have those even in Korea!), where we met up with one of Kate's friends from High School. We were going to go see Guardians of the Galaxy too, but then it wasn't at the theater we went to. Boohoo! Instead, we just looked around in some shops nearby. We walked around for a long time! We ended up going to Lotte, which is pretty much the Korean equivalent of Nordstroms. But better. Unfortunately, equally as expensive. So it was more of a 'looking around' trip than a 'buying' trip. There were also some fun street performers! There were two stages where dance groups were performing and lip-syncing to popular k-pop songs. We grabbed dinner while we were out, too. And during dinner we all totally crashed! By the time we left, though, we had literally been walking around Seoul for almost 12 straight hours, so it made sense for us to be exhausted.
And thus concludes our week of orientations and tours! Tomorrow is just a free day to rest up before classes begin. Part of me is sad that we don't have more tours and have to start classes. But the other part of me is so ready to be done! It's been an insanely busy week and I'm excited for it to calm down a bit.
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