Gyeongju, Nami Island, and Volunteering

My Saturday was like a tourist's dream! I got to wake up at 6 am and spend a total of 10 hours on a bus! Okay, so maybe it was more like a tourist's nightmare when you look at it that way. But in spite of the long hours, it really was a fantastic trip! We went to Gyeongju, a small city outside of Seoul. It had such a different feel since it was so much more rural and relaxed! Almost every site we went to had beautiful trees colored bright red and yellow by the fall leaves. It was so gorgeous! We also got to see some cultural sites, like a temple, the oldest astronomical observatory in Asia, and tombs of the kings. The tombs were really odd! They looked just like small, weirdly perfectly shaped hills. The actual tombs were inside the hills, which were even covered with dirt and grass. A very unique way of burying the dead!

My second adventure of the weekend was Nami Island! Nami Island is a small island in the Han River about 2 hours outside of Seoul. Once we got to the ferry boarding site, though, my roommate and I opted to take a different route to the island. We took a zip line from the mainland to the island! It was one of the most terrifying and awesome things ever! It was fairly short, but it had a beautiful view of the river and island. Definitely worth my time and money. The island was really beautiful too! Nami Island is famous for it's beauty in the Fall. The more traditional, sleepy feeling of the island, like Gyeongju, was a pleasant change from the hustle and bustle of Seoul.

On our way back from Nami Island, my roommate and I stopped in Dongdaemun to see the Pikachu parade they were hosting there! This year, Korea won it's first Pokemon World Championship, and was holding a celebration in Dongdaemun. Thursday through Sunday there were supposed to be photo-ops with Pikachu and several Pikachu Parades each day. Unfortunately, once we got to Dongdaemun, we discovered the remaining Pikachu Parades had been cancelled! Apparently Koreans are so crazy about Pikachu that they had flooded the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and mobbed the Pikachus. There were so many people that it created a safety hazard and the rest of the parades had to be cancelled. (If you want an idea of how insanely cute and crazy this whole thing was, look at this article! http://www.soompi.com/2014/11/14/pikachu-invades-seoul/)

The last topic of discussion is what I did with my afternoon today. Rather than go to my marketing class, I joined a troupe of students volunteering in the community! Me and two other girls from my study abroad program teamed up with many other Korean students for about 4 hours to pass out a total of 3,000 charcoal briquettes to low-income households that still use the old heating systems that require the briquettes. Overall, it was a lot of fun, but a lot of work, too! Hauling huge briquettes up to houses on a hillside gets exhausting fast. But in the exhaustion, I also felt really encouraged! So many students showed up to help out! And none of them seemed to be complaining or anything. They really did seem genuinely happy to help out! It was a very refreshing view of community service. As a thank you for helping out, all the volunteers were given a cute plush charcoal briquette cell phone charm! It is so cute and totally Korean. I could definitely get used to a country like this!