It appears that I am falling a bit behind in my posting . . . I suppose the fact that I know this trip is almost over makes me feel like I can slack a bit, as I'll have time to catch up once I get home and the excitement slows down. But if I let myself become lazy, then I know I'll start to forget some of the things I've done, and I won't write them down, and then this trip will all become a jumble in my mind, and I won't have a record to refer to. So I shall continue on.
On Sunday, the second day of our free weekend, my roommates and I once again got breakfast from Paris Baguette. I got a cappuccino and four different pastries, ate three of the breads for breakfast, saving one for later that night. It made for a quite tasty (if not particularly healthy) breakfast. After that, some of us chilled in our rooms for a bit, while the others continued work on their papers.
An hour or so passed until those of us that were ready decided to venture out to Namdaemun Market in Seoul, where a number of stores and stalls sell clothes and trinkets and some snack foods and whatnot. There were only three of us, and all Cedar Crest students, so were adventuring a bit by having so few people attempting to master the Seoul subway system. We actually did just fine, not getting lost once, except for getting confused a few times by signs that seemed to contradict each other, but luckily the confusion this caused was minor and easily remediable. We got to the market and as soon as we got off, encountered a stall selling slices of watermelon and pineapple and other fresh fruit. I bought a slice of watermelon for only 1000 won, and it was delicious. The vendor also sliced the piece in such a way so that it was each to eat without having to bury your face up to your cheeks in order to get at all the fruit. I'll have to remember that trick once I get home.
We wandered around a bit, and found a stand selling clothes in the most disorganized manner I have ever seen. I don't have a clue where the clothes might possibly have come from, but there were a few tables set up that were covered with the most random assortment of clothing items you can imagine. Mainly (I think) women's clothing, there were tops and pants and skirts and dresses, with the tags from all kinds of companies, and in all kinds of sizes (though mainly the clothes were on the smaller size, considering that Koreans tend to run smaller than most Americans). I didn't see any duplicate items, and the fabrics and patterns ran the gamut. I bought a dress made of some kind of jersey material, completely devoid of any tag or label, but it only cost me 4000 won, and it does in fact fit (forget about finding a fitting room in these markets). The girls I was with also found some items, and they also bought shoes, but I was unable to, as I couldn't find anything big enough for my size 9 feet. The shoe sizes here aren't American, but through trial-and-error the other two girls managed to find out that they were size 240 and 245, respectively, I'm guessing I would be around a size 260, though the biggest size in the store we looked at was 250.
Though Namdaemun was reported to be an all-day trip, we finished in only an hour or two (we're still not sure if we missed some major portion of the market or if the guidebook just lied), and then tried to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. None of us could think of places that we knew we wanted to visit, but we didn't want to return to the dorm and waste our free weekend while all of Seoul lay out there for us to discover. After some guide-book flipping, we decided to go check out Olympic Park, from when the Summer Olympics were held in Seoul in 1988.
Considering it was a somewhat spur-of-the-moment decision, we didn't really know what to expect once we got there, but it turned out to be a beautiful park filled with sculptures (SOMA Art Museum is right there) and the Olympic buildings ringing the outside. There was also the Peace Gate and plenty of exercise equipment sprinkled about. That's something I've noticed, next to playgrounds and such, a number of times I've seen outdoor exercise equipment installed, I suppose Korea takes its citizens' health seriously. As we walked, we heard some very loud music, and it turns out that the K-Pop band Girls' Generation was playing in one of the Olympic Buildings that day. Compared to our bands back in the USA, the K-Pop bands I've seen seem to have a LOT more members. For example, Girls' Generation has nine girl singers . . . I don't even know if they play the instruments, or if they have extra members for that. Much larger than any American bands I can think of.
Walking around Olympic Park had made the three of us rather hot and sweaty and hungry, and we searched for a place to eat. We went into a Chinese restaurant to eat and were told it would be a 10-minute wait, which we were fine with, until we started waiting and started to see the prices for the dishes . . . and then we decided to try elsewhere. A bit further down the road we found a Burger King, and decided to check it out. Though I am vegetarian, and usually most fast food restaurants don't offer me anything reasonable to eat, I was fine with stopping, as I like to see what items the international branches of American fast food companies offer. This menu offered a "Bulgogi Burger" in addition to most American favorites. The one disappointing thing was that the menu of sides was completely different from home, offering fewer options, which is how I ended up eating corn salad, a brownie with ice cream, and a cappuccino for dinner. Oh well.
We then returned back to the dorm, and called it a night, as we learned we had to get up early this morning for our trip to the DMZ.
We left the dorm at 7:50 this morning in order to get to the border at a reasonable time. It took us about two hours to get to Cheorwon county, and once there, a guide got on the bus to show us around. We first stopped at the 2nd Infiltration Tunnel, which is a tunnel that North Korea built to sneak-attack South Korea. Our guide said that, had the tunnel been completed and used, it would have been able to transport something like 30,000 troops into South Korea from the North within an hour. We were allowed to travel down it, and it got quite chilly as we went down. It also got quite short and narrow, and we were glad for the helmets that had been provided, as every couple seconds you could hear a *thwack* followed by the "OW" of someone someone hitting their helmet on the rocky roof of the tunnel.
After the tunnel, we got to stop at the Peace Observatory, where we could see some North Korean lookout towers, and mountains that were the sites for various skirmishes during the Korean war. It was a bit odd to look around and see the sites that were the location for such historical conflicts.
That's about it for today, though tonight we are having a bit of a party with our RA, who has been a very nice guy in dealing with 11 very giggly young adult girls. Right now he and a few of the Korean students are out getting the snacks and should be back any minute to hang out for a few hours. Tomorrow we have to meet with our discussion groups in order to prepare a 20-minute presentation that we will give on Wednesday (the day after tomorrow). I'm not so much concerned about the presentation itself, as I am about the preparation tomorrow. I don't know how 12 of us will be able to choose a topic and all contribute to the presentation production process - within 3 hours or so. In order to not have the process drag on interminably, we've set ourselves some time limits, though I wonder if we'll be able to buckle down and really be able to get down to business in that short amount of time. I guess we'll have to . . .
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