Friday, July 22, 2011

The Han River

It looks like I took a lot of pictures yesterday. That's new, haha. But we were at the river, so that's why. Hopefully I can make it a habit to take pictures. I took like less than 50 during my first year of school. That's two semesters worth of memories I failed to capture!

Yesterday was pretty awesome except it ended not as awesomely as I expected... Class was pretty difficult to get through, just because it was the end of the week. Thursday is definitely the Friday here. Anyways, Korean Studies was a drag because we had a literature discussion except there wasn't all that much to discuss. Yet, the discussion took almost the entire class period. After learning stuff on Wednesday about the Park Chung-Hee regime, I decided to do my own personal research (i.e. I asked my parents about their experiences). It's always interesting to compare the "formal history" and the personal histories. They lined up pretty well but there were some things that seemed either exaggerated or forgotten in the "formal history." I didn't even know such a harsh dictatorship existed.

Pause. As I'm writing this, I smell cigarette smoke. I really hope no one is smoking in the dorms... This is one thing about Korea I can't stand: the cigarettes and the smoking. You can smoke in a lot of public buildings. Also, there are always people smoking when they're eating--and there's no "non-smoking" section of the restaurant. Most coffee shops, however, have a smoking room, which is nice for those of us that don't want to inhale second-hand smoke. But on the street, there's someone smoking on every block. And in bars, it's the worst. I heard clubs are pretty bad too. Ugh.

Anyways, sorry for my little tirade. In Korean class, we were all so tired that the class seemed to drag on for a longgg time. But we finally made it out! And off to dinner we went.

We ended up at the meat place with cheap soju. No soju for us though. I think it ruins the taste of the meat and the meat was really good there. And it was reasonably priced too! Oh I'm going to miss this food when I go back to the US...

 Naomi and Eunice!

 Rita has mastered the Asian poses.

 Walking towards the park where you can see the part of the river with the light show.

 What happens when I try to take a picture while walking. -__-"

 The show had already started when we got there. Luckily another one started 10 min after that one.



 This picture looked a lot better on my camera...

 I blinked the first time, which sucks because there was actually water flowing out in the first picture.



 Blurrrryyyy.


 The blue tower is Namsan Tower.



 For the second show, the water started on the other side of the bridge so we ran over to the other side. My camera had problems focusing on moving water, which I guess makes sense, so a lot of my pictures came out blurry.

Another video for your viewing pleasure! I really like that I can put up videos here. (Cristine says hi)

Naomi, Sara, and I headed back towards the dorms. But we made sure to stop by for patbingsoo on the way! Jai was with us too but didn't eat with us. I took this opportunity to ask him how old he thought I was and he guess 1990, 1991, and 1989. Woo! I look older than I actually am (which is a first for me...). He was shocked when I told him I was 92.

 Two patbingsoos for us. The one on the left is strawberry and the one on the right is just a traditional one with rice cake!


Naomi wanted to treat Sara and me and tried to not let us pay. But after a little war of sneaking a 10,000 KRW bill into each others pockets and purses, Sara and I finally won! Haha.

Naomi went back to the dorms and Sara and I decided to go back out. On the way, I was hungry again so I got some 닭꼬치 (spelling?). It's chicken on a skewer. Except this one, while it had the usual mayo/mustard/cheese topping, also had like sunflower seeds and squash/zucchini (?) seeds. And it had little mini sausages at the end. It was amazing! So I was full. And while everyone was already drinking by the time we returned, I was done and decided not to join everyone else. My day ended fairly early and I had a headache. =/ So I went to bed...slept it off. I feel much better today though!

1 comment:

  1. That light show looks amazing! And those deserts... nom!

    The smoking must be such a culture shock! I completely forgot that America was like that before the gov banned smoking in public places.

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