abroad in Asan: day 3 & 4 French friends, Deoksugung, and Seodaemun Prison

Remember that latte I drank yesterday afternoon? The caffeine boost I got was pretty great.. until the morning after, when I woke up with what felt like an iron rod being slowly pushed into my head. Isn't withdrawal supposed to work the other way around?

The morning began slowly, as I didn't have any plans until the afternoon and also had no desire to encourage the iron rod any further into my brain. (It did leave pretty soon after I woke up, thank goodness.) I had spent the night forcing myself back to sleep until 7:30am again, then I showered and hung out in the dorm room for a while.

There are two new girls from yesterday, one Chinese and the other Danish. The Danish girl is studying independently in Korea for two years because she wants to unearth Korean culture and learn as much about it as she can. I think that kind of knowledge will come in really handy for the UN or something when the North Korean government fails and we have to deal with the fallout of that. Not many Westerners understand the depths of Korean history and culture, but I think a lot of resources that North Korea can rebuild itself with are to be found in the west.

I had gotten up in the middle of the night at about 5am to use the bathroom and closed the bedroom door behind me without realizing it was locked. You can imagine it was a little alarming to stagger only half-awake back to the door only to find myself locked out. I didn't have a key, so I had to jiggle the handle and knock as softly but desperately as I could. It was really awkward because that's a stupid reason to have to wake up the other five people in your room. Luckily, though,  it didn't happen again.

I grabbed lunch with the classmate I met yesterday and also one of my teachers from last summer--it was so good to see her again! Her English has improved a lot in the past year. The restaurant we ate in is owned by a travel company so it has a small room that is open as a travel agency during the week. Since it was the weekend, however, the employees used it to take naps during their lunch break. We may have done some pointing and also maybe some laughing...

I didn't have any plans after lunch but when I returned to the hostel there was a new French girl named Marion in the room, and she invited me to hang out with her and her friends (she was in Seoul last year as well and was meeting up with the people she'd met then). They planned on going clubbing later but I'm still getting over the jet lag so I knew there was no way I was going to last that long. I was happy to be able to have someone to spend time with until they went out, though.

We had to walk to her friend (also named Charlotte!)'s place, which this friend claimed was nearby and I guess if you are a bird then that would be true, however I am not a bird and so when I had to walk up and down the somewhat mountainous hills that are scattered throughout Seoul, the destination could not come soon enough.

There was this cool wall though:

The whole thing was maybe three or four times longer than what is pictured, and covered the wall on the other side of the street as well. I wish I had been there thirty minutes earlier when the sky was still light out, so I could've snapped a few more photos.

Marion and Charlotte were hilarious and so fun to spend time with. I don't really know how to capture their personalities in words, but they were just really sassy and fun-loving, I suppose is the easy way to say it.

We spent a few hours together with some of Marion's Korean friends and then parted ways as they went off to the club and I to bed.

The next day I had plans with another girl in my room, Rochelle, to tour Seodaemun prison (click for a link to the Wikipedia page), but not until the afternoon. In the morning she decided to go to Yeouido ("yo-ee-do"), where the largest church in the world is located, and I decided to check out one of the smaller palaces near Gyeongbokgung (click to see the post I wrote about visiting last year) I hadn't had a chance to see last summer.

The palace is called Deoksugung ("dock-soo-gung") and the Wiki link can tell you way more about it than I can because I was too cheap to buy the 50-cent brochure. (Sorry mom.) I still had a grand time walking around the grounds though, and even made it to see the 11am changing of the guards.

There was technically a voiceover in Korean, English, and Japanese to describe each movement of the guard, which I'm sure would have been incredibly informative if I had been able to understand what the voice was saying. Unfortunately I couldn't even tell if she was speaking English most of the time. It was still fun to watch though. Right before the final movement to complete the ceremony, the actors all paused in place for about ten minutes so the tourists could take pictures with them.

I actually felt really awkward taking this photo. I don't know if people normally take selfies with the musicians.

To me, a tourist can be described as an oblivious newcomer who has a passing interest in whatever it is they're touring, where from they will leave after a matter of days and likely not return. Last summer I took literally thousands of pictures and I didn't care how much of a tourist it made me seem because I was a newcomer and I was kind of oblivious. This year, however, I most certainly am not a newcomer (and am hopefully at least less oblivious), and so up until I toured the palace I was rather reluctant to pull out my camera. I was wary of becoming obnoxious with it.

However, it's impossible to not want to capture the beauty of the palace grounds. In 90 minutes I took over 200 pictures.

After thoroughly enjoying everything to see there, I set off down the street towards Gyeongbokgung to find a used bookstore I had read about online and wanted to check out.

On the way I heard drums beating in the distance... and then realized the gate procession from before was going down the sidewalk on the other side of the street! I'm so glad I do not ever have to wear as much clothing as they do. I don't know how they do it.

Although I'd visited Gyeongbokgung I had never been on this particular stretch of the road before, and it was pretty cool to see the Chosun Ilbo building, since I often read their news articles.

I also stopped by Cheonggyecheon for a hot minute to see if it had changed since last year (it hasn't) and if it was as lovely during the day as it is at night (it's not) (but still enjoyable).

I didn't take any photos because I was kind of weirded out in a bad way, but for some reason there were tons and tons of police officers around Gyeongbokgung and in the surrounding neighborhoods. They didn't look like they were particularly on their toes or sensing danger or something, but there were so many of them. I saw at least ten police buses, and lost count of how many officers I passed. Sometimes they walked in pairs, and others I saw lined up two by two in groups of six on the side of the walkway. Maybe it was some kind of training exercise.

Anyway, I decided lunch was in order before I could visit the bookstore, and this was where my thus-far perfect streak of effectively communicating in Korean with Koreans ended. I walked into a soup store where there was a chair and table option or a floor and table option. The waitress said something to me that I couldn't understand but she motioned to both the chair tables and the floor tables and made an X with her arms, so I assumed she was telling me I couldn't wear my shoes if I wanted to sit at the floor tables. She walked away and I figured I might as well try it and bent down to take off my shoes, but she came back and said more things I couldn't understand and emphatically crossed her arms in an X. One of the customers finally noticed our predicament and kindly informed me that all of the tables had reservations.

I don't know why, but I was unreasonably embarrassed about the situation. I was really furious with myself when I left the shop. However I'm glad it happened because it was humbling, and reminded me that I shouldn't assume I know what people are talking about.

I walked another block or so and then stopped right there on the sidewalk because I was so tired and so hot and so hungry and feeling so foreign and helpless and unintelligent and I decided I just couldn't walk any further. And right at that moment I looked up and saw a sign for the restaurant I had stopped in front of, which just happened to be selling my favorite dish. And I walked in and there were no reservations anywhere. :)

Things have a way of working out sometimes.

After eating very delicious tteok mandu guk ("dock man-doo gook") and drinking an entire jug of water, I felt totally rejuvenated and struck out on the streets once again. About half a block down I saw a coffeeshop selling macaroons (my favorite sweet) and decided that would make an excellent dessert. When I walked in I couldn't see any workers anywhere, so I stood around for a few minutes thinking they had gone somewhere and would be back shortly. However when no one showed up I poked my head around a corner and saw the barista had fallen asleep reading in one of the booths.

Waking someone up while they're on the job is pretty awkward.

She was very, very apologetic but honestly I totally understood why it happened, because there was absolutely no one else in the shop and it was warm and the booth she'd been in had been a bit shaded. Those definitely make a sleepy combination. But I successfully distracted her from her embarrassment by speaking Korean to her, which was great for us both because it also reassured me that I wasn't totally useless. After the yummy soup and my experience at the coffeeshop, both my tummy and my heart were full again. :)

I spent an hour in the book store just looking through random second-hand art books. After so much time in there I felt kind of obligated to buy something, so I browsed through and chose some of the postcards they were selling. I didn't bring and of my letter-writing materials with me to Korea, so I kind of needed them anyway.

By then it was time to meet Rochelle at the prison. We spent a little more than an hour and a half walking through it. Not all of the information had been translated into English, but what was sounded almost like propaganda because it was so severely pro-Korea and anti-Japanese. I've taken Korean history classes and I did notice a few instances where the information they provided about an event twisted it into sounding more dramatic than it really had been. Also, there were a few signs (not many) that had Japanese translations, but I would be surprised if very many Japanese eyes ever saw them. I would feel pretty uncomfortable if I were a Japanese person walking through that prison.

Photos of prisoners' info cards

Demonstrating the wall-tap communication some prisoners developed.

A leper colony. The inside contained more cells. The pond in front was once part of a porcelain factory.

Don't know what this is but it was green.

A memorial dedicated to those who died during imprisonment.

The building where many famous Korean rebels and martyrs were executed.

A hidden tunnel that was recently discovered, through which the Japanese would smuggle dead bodies.

The exercise area for prisoners.

Basically they could just walk in circles.

The recently reconstructed women's quarters.

While we were walking past the leper colony we noticed some firemen getting ready to take down what I thought was a beehive.

I don't know why but we (actually, probably just I) decided it would be cool to stay and watch the beehive removal. It quickly became less cool when the beehive turned out to be a wasp nest, from which a multitude of very confused and angry wasps emerged. I am not ashamed to say that I ran half-screaming in the opposite direction (mostly because everyone around me was doing practically the same thing).

It looked like it might rain when we finished the tour, so we decided to head back to the hostel and see if anyone was back and wanted to get dinner with us. On the way we stopped for some bingsoo (shaved ice), my first one in Korea this year!

Strawberry yogurt flavor!

It was realllllly good.

The Danish girl was at the hostel and ready for dinner, so the three of us found a ginseng chicken soup place very close by that looked good. I was the only one who had eaten it before, so the other two were very curious to see what an entire boiled chicken might be like.

I am happy to report that it was much easier for me to eat this than last time. I was still the last person to finish eating though! I spent a lot of time fishing the tiny bones out. I hate being surprised by those when I bite down.

We stayed in the restaurant for quite a long time after we finished our meals just to talk, which is not frowned upon in Korea as it is in America. Then we walked around Hongdae for a bit and I actually ran into another friend of mine who just moved to Seoul to teach English, which was a nice coincidence (although still not as shocking as the one that happened when I first arrived!) We went back to the hostel and talked some more, chatting with one of the employees there and also looking of videos of traditional Korean dances, which Rochelle had never seen before. I was really happy to show her, I really love those dances.

The night whirled by and before we knew it, it was after midnight and way past the time to go to bed. My time in that hostel passed so quickly, and I hope I get a chance to stay there again.

p.s. this is what my bunk looks like:

It has my name and everything!

The next post will cover my first few days at my university, so stay tuned!