As you can see, I'm way behind on the blogging, so I will keep this short. We had our city tour on Tuesday, and our three tour guides were great! All three volunteer with Holt and try to keep families together throughout the tour. Our tour consisted of three families: Aaron/Me, Kim (our fellow Texan), and another couple adopting through Holt.
Deoksugung Palace
Our first stop was Deoksugung Palace. Although we weren't able to view the changing of the guards, the palace alone was very impressive.
The building on the left is a museum.
The king's and queen's quarters. Yes, they had separate living areas and bedrooms. The tour guide from the Chongdeokgung Palace joked that they believed at the time that men and women were very different and should, therefore, live in different areas.
A peak inside...
When our tour guide said they did not use nails for any of these buildings, Aaron and I looked at eachother in confusion. How? It looks like they used grooves with wooden "nails" that fit through the slot. Even so, most of the walls do not show this type of construction, so we are still puzzled.
I think we puzzled the tour guides asking questions about these two figures. We still don't know what they are.
I am in awe of the great care for trees we have seen while in Korea. One of the oldest trees in Chondeokgung Palace was supported in the same way as this tree in Deoksugung Palace.
A Japanese show was broadcasting outside the temple, so we were not able to take any videos or pictures. I nearly fell to the floor laughing when I recognized one of the Japanese talk show hosts (a man dressed as a woman) from a talk show my mom and I watched while in Japan last year. Sorry, Mom - no pictures :-(
Aaron thought it was interesting that some of these tall office buildings had windows that open.
Namdaemun Market
We picked up several things for Rai at Namdaemun during the second part of our tour. There is only one Korean cartoon charcter that I have seen since we've been here - Pororo! Pororo is a penguin and has several friends who are different animals. While in Namdaemun, we picked up a Pororo backpack (very cute) and three DVDs of Pororo teaching English and a regular cartoon episode series. We also picked up Kung Fu Panda in Korean which had been "out of stock" on the Asian version of Amazon for quite some time.
Insadong
Had I known the amount of tourist shops in Insadong, I would have come much sooner! I did nearly all of my gift shopping in this one hour time span and bought several things for the house and Rai's room. After a short trip of shopping, our tour guides led us down an alley to a great bulgogi place for lunch. It was GREAT and CHEAP (less than $5 per person for a serving that should really feed two)!
The other couple had a doctor's appointment for their child at 2:30pm, so we headed back to Holt a little early. Kim also had several appointments that afternoon, so Aaron and I relaxed and started packing what we didn't need (less than 24 hours until we let Rai loose in the hotel room). Later that evening, Kim and I were crazy enough to venture out to Insadong again (by taxi) while Aaron took a power nap. (The poor guy was so wired after such a busy day yesterday that he didn't sleep.) Kim and I remembered that we saw the big souvenir shop as we were leaving Insadong, so we went back to look inside. After all, this was our last day to shop before the focus shifted purely on our children. It was amusing to see the Helllo Kitty section of the store (i.e. Hello Kitty in traditional clothing, such as a hanbok). Once we finished the last our shopping, we found a McDonalds, and having heard of a Bulgogi Burger, decided that our trip just wouldn't feel complete without trying it. As it turns out the burger takes like a pork patty with bulgogi sauce, not as exciting as we thought.
1 comment:
I'm Kim's sister and I just wanted to thank you for taking such good care of her. I was worried about her going alone and I'm so glad she has you guys. Congrats on your little one. Adoption rocks.
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