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...