Archive | November 2011

Best Seats in the House: Building 63 (63 빌딩)

Some fun facts: Seoul is the largest city in South Korea. It’s also the largest city proper in the developed world, and the second largest metropolitan area in the entire world, with only Tokyo beating it out. New York City is number four, if that gives you any indication of size. There are over 10 million people in Seoul, which is half the population of the country of South Korea. Needless to say, it is huge. And bustling. And you can ride the subway for what seems like hours and still not be to the other side of the city. We knew all of this about Seoul, but for some reason, it really sinks in when you can see it.

Halloween weekend Andrew took us to Korea’s famous Building 63, which at 63 stories used to be the nation’s tallest building. It’s not anymore, but it’s still the tallest building in the neighborhood it resides in, and so it offers a fantastic view of basically all of Seoul. The building is a huge tourist attraction, and has a wax museum, an aquarium, restaurants, cafes, and much more. The top floor is an art gallery–aka, a reason they can charge you to ride the elevator up and take in the amazing views. So we decided to spend the money and take the ride, and it was so worth it! The art gallery was nothing special, but the views blew us away. Andrew has been living in Seoul for a year, and as we looked out the windows and it was still Seoul as far as the eye could see in any direction, he said “I never really realized how big Seoul actually is.”

View from Building 63

So we enjoyed the views, and then we enjoyed the “art.” Which I hope you will also now enjoy, or at least, you can enjoy Andrew’s re-enactments of the art!

To get to the 63 Building by subway, use one of these three routes:

Take the Seoul Subway Line 1 to Daebang station and then use exit 6. From here, take the free shuttle or bus number 62.

Take Line 5 to Yeouinaru Station and use exit 4. Walk toward the intersection, turn left, walk to the bus stop. Take the free shuttle, about 80 meters away from exit 4.

Take Line 5 to the Yeoido station and use exit 5. Take the free shuttle or bus number 62 in front of St. Mary’s Hospital Platform.

November 6, 2011

Night of Fright, Korean Style!

: Halloween costumes. Yes, that’s a turtleneck that’s been turned into a cape and hood. That’s how Bruce Wayne does it! (or would if he had half the needle-skill Andrew does, pansy)

All Saints Eve in Korea! So instead of partaking in the American (or at least Northwest) tradition of heading to a friends house and…enjoying the spirits…of the holiday, we ended up enjoying the holiday spirits in a park full of Koreans! So, let me delight you with the tale of how we ended up taking video of Andrew being arrested by a police officer and some kind of general.

It turns out, Halloween is not a holiday that’s celebrated here (or at least the way most American’s celebrate). No one dresses up, unless they are doing something with foreigners. Some students will have a Halloween party at their Hogwans (private tutoring after school; I always want to call them Hogwarts…), but don’t dress up for the party. Most English teachers here will talk about the holiday, and get the point across that people dress up and go trick-or-treating — though they can’t really explain why we go trick-or-treating, or even why we say “trick-or-treat.” I could tell me students about why we say “trick-or-treat”, but I couldn’t really explain why kids are given candy…Anywho, we decided to join the multitudes of foreigners (also known as “white people”) and really show Korean’s what Halloween’s all about!

Saturday night we headed into Seoul, and after dining on the fine cusine of Costco — we had pizza and philly cheesesteak, STILL tastes delicious — and picking up a block of Tillamook cheese, we headed to Andrew’s GIANT apartment to change for the evening. As you can see, we had some sweet costumes. I mean, all the people on the subway thought they were pretty awesome. Especially the old man I was sitting next to. I have to give Andrew kudos, though, his costume definitely got the most attention (wanted and otherwise).

Andrew ended up taking us to a neighborhood by one of the big universities in Seoul that’s the place to go for Halloween. Once we got off the subway, we started seeing other people in costume, so we knew we were in the right place. Ended up meeting up with 4 or 5 friend’s of Drew’s in park that was having an outdoor concert and was start of a zombie parade. This is where we met up with the horse and the general (or whatever rank the officer was) in the pictures below. ALSO where we had easily a hundred pictures taken of us and the other foreigners (“whities”) with us. Yeah, I’m not ashamed that we even posed for a few of our own – I mean, we gotta remember this too!

We spent about 2 hours sitting on a bench in the park, sipping on some “spirits” and enjoying people watching (or having people watch us — we know how the animals in the zoo feel…yes, you look just as goofy to them as they look to you!). As like draws like, naturally our group grew as the night progressed, eventually gaining an extremely tall American girl that was dressed in an official korean policy officer’s uniform. Just as everyone else was attracted to Batman, she promptly felt the need to arrest him. We have a great video of Andrew in handcuffs, albeit a short one because he broke the handcuffs apart (accidentally) and shouted “no one can trap the Batman!”

The three of us eventually left the park and headed back to Andrew’s GIANT apartment, perhaps stopping for refreshment along the way. Suffice to say, we ended the night delightfully falling asleep to “Hocus Pocus,” and waiting to wake up to massive headaches.

That’s it from Mandrea for now! Next installment we’ll be including our adventures 63 flights above Seoul.

Batman has got to know what time it is!

Night of Fright. Even though the mustaches were pretty scary, the horse-head was by far the most frightening costume any of us had seen!

November 6, 2011

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Catching up on blogging today! Two weeks ago we went to Seoul and met Andrew at the Gyeongbokgung Palace.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Here’s a little blurb from the Korea tourism site about Gyeongbokgung Palace:

“Built in 1395, Gyeongbokgung Palace is also commonly referred to as the “Northern Palace” because it is the furthest north when compared to the neighboring palaces of Changdeokgung (Eastern Palace) and Gyeongheegung (Western Palace). Gyeongbokgung Palace is arguably the most beautiful and remains the grandest of all five palaces. The premises were destroyed by fire at the time of Japanese occupation from 1592-1598. However, all of the palace’s 7,700 rooms were later restored under the leadership of Heungseondaewongun during the reign of King Gojong (1852~1919).”

Gyeongbokgung Palace

So there’s your history lesson for the day! It’s really beautiful, and the architecture is amazing. Unfortunately there are not a lot of signs in English, so we weren’t sure what most of the buildings/rooms actually were. But we still enjoyed them 🙂 After we finished touring the palace, we went to a part of the museum where there were recreations of Korean villages/towns, starting way back when (not sure when, couldn’t read the signs) to the 60’s. Matt made friends with a train conductor on the fake train.

Matt’s new friend

Afterwords, Andrew had to head off to a dinner party, so Matt and I explored the Insadong neighborhood in Seoul, a really fun touristy shopping area. We decided to brave an”Indian food” restaurant, which wasn’t horrible, but as you can probably guess, not the most authentic Indian food we’ve ever had 🙂 Overall, it was a good time!