First Weekend in Korea

Friday, August 14th

So Ian and I have had a great first couple of days in Korea. We arrived on Friday evening, August 14th. The flight was long but good. Asiana airlines was a great airline. They took very good care of us and we had our own tv's which helped the 12 hours past a bit more quickly. After gathering our many bags we easily found the bus we needed to take to meet Benjamin. The bus was a charter bus which was nice being that we were on it for a little over an hour. Benjamin was there waiting

for us and after the poor guy put all 4 of the bags in his tiny car he drove us to the hotel. It was much better than we were expecting. It's small but clean, safe, and nice. The bed is ridiculously hard but I can move into my apartment on Saturday. It is quite literally across the ally/street and down 2 buildings so the move should be quite easy. We were very exhausted so went to bed and woke up to explore Seoul the next day!


Saturday, August 15th

We were up pretty early today due to the time change and highly uncomfortable bed. We got ready and headed out to Itaewon...the "American" shopping area in hopes of finding a cell phone rental place. We did not realize that the best and one of the only places to rent was at the airport. It took us a bit to figure out the subway system but a very nice Korean woman who did not speak a word of English was eager to help us through very fast Korean speaking and large hand motions. We thanked her for her help and headed on our way. Itaewon did not have any such places and had a lot of tourists and Americans due the the nearby base so we decided to head somewhere else. We got back on the subway and headed for the nice looking park along the Han river. Once we got there we realized that they are completely renovating the park but we still strolled along and had some great but hazy views of the city. By the end of the day we had the subway system down...it is extremely easy, clean, efficient, and modern...I am a huge fan.


Sunday, August 16th

Today we woke up early again on account of going to bed very early and the very hard bed. We found that the GS tower had a LG Telecom mobile phone rental facility (one of 4 in the entire country...2 of which are at Incheon Airport) It ended up being extremely close to us but unfortunately it was closed on Sundays. After some pastries at Dunken Donuts (which is on every street corner...I swear) we took the long subway/train ride down to Suwon to catch the bus to the Korean Fold Village. It was extremely hot (this weekend sent record temperatures for the summer) but very fun. The Folk Village covered almost 300 acres and we walked most of it. We saw the old-style farms, houses, and way of life. We also visited the Buddhist temple grounds and ate our first very traditional and delicious Korean meal. We also watched some very impressive shows. Fist was the Equestrian acrobats. Think of the pommel horse in the Olympics but on an actual horse which is galloping very fast around a ring. It was very impressive. We then watched the Farmer's Dance which was absolutely fantastic and extremely impressive (see the pictures and videos) Last was the tight rope walker , who was an elderly gentleman, who did not only walk on the tightrope but also did jumps and tricks along with his own narration. All in all it was a very fun day which left us very hot and extremely tired.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4vzYea8Ixg

This the the equestrian acrobats video


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJoKh9H4KiA

Here is the tightrope walker video
(you slackline people...I want to see you do this by the time I get home)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R2L6CJzskY

Here is the farmer's dance video. The beginning is cool and then about halfway through you can see them using the ribbonos on top of their hats.