Vacation Part 2: An American Test in Korea

After checking into our hotel (a queen sized bed, what luxury!), we headed out to COEX mall, which is supposed to be the largest underground mall in Asia or something like that. We looked around a bit and hoped to take in a movie, but everything was sold out. While we were there we saw a few interesting things. First, Starcraft 2 had just been released, so there was a huge PC room open in the middle of the mall, dedicated to the game. I could see Michael salivating at the sight, but convinced him to go eat instead.

These girls were modeling for a new car, can't remember which.

Banana milk is all the rage here. The thought of it makes me want to vomit, but many were fascinated by the animated statue dedicated to it.

Well, we didn't go to Seoul just for fun. According to ETS sources, my only chances of taking the GRE's essay portion was to go to Seoul during our vacation time. I made the appointment for the 11:00 am test thinking that we wouldn't have to get up too early and that we would have plenty of time afterwards (the test is about two hours) to hang out in Seoul awhile before heading back to Chuncheon.

So we went to the Fulbright Building in Mapo, Seoul. I took the test, which hopefully went smoothly. There was a little problem about ten minutes into the second essay where I accidentally pulled out the video cable from the monitor, luckily the moderator was able to fix it in a couple of minutes. When we finished, we headed to Namsam Seoul Tower, which is now just called N Seoul Tower. We took a bus, which was cheap (800 won each way) but kind of long.

After getting off the bus, we climbed a giant hill to the top of Namsam.

We unfortunately went on a day with a lot of smog. It was also humid and hazy, not a good combination when you decide to pay 8000 won to take an elevator to an observatory. Even so, it was a great view of Seoul. The tower itself was a bit disappointing, but the garden and park surrounding the tower was well worth the visit. Apparently the area was once occupied by a castle. The remnants can be seen here. They still have the watch tower that you can check out while there.

While at the top of Namsam, we ate at an Italian restaurant. I can't remember the name and everything in the menu was in Italian. The descriptions were in Korean. Times like these I'm glad I studied a latin-based language in college and could decipher some of the root words. We ended up with a salad and a tomato basil pizza. The bread they gave us (with our food and not before for some reason) was really good. The food was just okay. It was nice to get something other than Korean food for a day.

We spent awhile after our meal walking down Namsam, taking in the scenery and stumbling onto a few observation decks. It's really nice to live in a place where pedestrians have wide lanes for strolling on.

After climbing down the mountain, we took a bus to the top. We thought we could stay on the bus, since it would be going back to the stop in the city, but the driver kicked us off, saying, "Changee!" So we got on another #3 bus and paid another 800 won.

We returned home to Chuncheon to an attention-starved cat and a very smelly toilet. We should think about getting an automatic flusher...

Vacation Part I: Seodaemun Prison History Hall

I will be breaking our vacation (August 1-8)  up into 3-4 parts.

We started our vacation by traveling to Seoul. We took the noon train to Cheongnyangni Station and got there around 2ish. We immediately took the subway to Dongnimmun station. This was super convenient because it was only about 100 meters to our first stop, the Seodaemun Prison History Hall.

Seodaemun Prison built in the early 1900s by the Japanese during their rule of Korea (from the early 1900s to the end of WWII). We were led through the facilities by the cutest 11-year-old tour guide named Lee-Jin/Annie. I normally destest guided tours but we were strongly advised/forced by the administrators to take a guided tour with their English-speaking volunteers. Lee-Jin was very well versed in English (better than most of our students) and she did a good job of explaining many of the sites of the museum/prison.

There were dozens of rooms depicting Japanese guards punishing/torturing Korean prisoners.

Michael got to try out one of their coffin-sized punishment rooms.

We were led through the isolation chambers, interrogation rooms, and standard cells that held up to 30 prisoners at once. Lee-Jin was able to explain many of the interesting points of these rooms, but she did rush us through it. We were not able to see much in the main buildings.

She took us outside to view the labor building, the leper/contamination building, the execution rooom and the corpse exit tunnel. The end of the tour was a glance at the women's building. The rooms were tiny and the ceiling was only about 5 feet high! Lee-Jin explained that the famous patriot Yu Gwan-sun was nearly 6 feet tall so this imprisonment was torture for her.

That was the end of our tour. We didn't walk around the park that surrounds the prison because we were hungry, but the area was beautiful. I only wish I had taken more pictures!

Baby Burgers

Over the weekend since I had some extra time (without my computer) I did some extra cooking to prepare us for the week ahead. Since we work until 9-9:30, it's nice to get home and have something conveniently waiting for us in the fridge to eat. I made red bean burgers, peanut soup and red bean and "sausage" soup. This is what we ate for dinner on Monday:

We topped them with "cheese" slices, tomato and lettuce (I added onions to mine as well). They were a bit dry, but went nicely with some ketchup. The buns are actually dinner rolls that I found at Homeplus. They were whole wheat and the perfect size for the small patties that I made. Yum! The only thing is that Michael is craving an actual burger now. Six months to go!

Update

I have taken the last few weeks of due to a few circumstances:

First, we had our vacation. We had a great time touring the Seodaemun Prison History Hall and Namsan Seoul Tower in Seoul and then hiked around Seoraksan National Park in Sokcho. I plan on making some posts in the near future so stay with me!

Then, my computer decided to break down. Michael and I believe my graphics card is fried and it will be near impossible to get it replaced here in Korea so I will be purchasing a new laptop soon. This will take about six weeks though. In the meantime, I will be sharing Michael's computer so things will take longer to get written.

Lastly, I have been working full hours. I used to have a couple hours of downtime at work but this session I am teaching 6-7 classes a day. My only time off is the same time off that Michael has so it's hard to get any blogging time in. I had a post written but it didn't get saved due to some Blogger malfunction.

So yes, we are alive and have been doing some fun things, but for the next month or so, there will be fewer posts until I get a new laptop.

Love, 

Lisa, Michael and Gizmo