Busan Part 2/ Seoul Wanderings

Here are some pictures from the second half of our time in Busan.

That weekend it just so happened that there was a Sand Festival going on at Haeundae, apparently one of the most popular beaches in South Korea. S.'s dad's apartment also happened to be less than a ten-minute walk away, which was quite nice.

One of the main events of the Sand Festival was the sand sculpture exhibition. One night after dinner S's dad took us for a stroll along the beach to see what all the hubbub was about.

Cat! (I've somehow become wired to have this sort of "Omg cat! must take picture and tell my friends" reaction whenever I see one...)

This one was by far the most impressive.

There was also a modern dance performance going on on one side of the beach, and pop/rock performances on the other. Of course we went to watch the singers, in our hopes that one of our (my) Korean idols would materialize.

But sadly, nothing of the sort happened, although we did get to hear this really awesome rock/soul singer whose name I cannot recall. Afterwards, a turntable was brought onto the stage, staff started clearing away the chairs, and a line quickly formed for free beer. A dance party was clearly about to go down.

We stayed for maybe two transitional songs and then decided to leave because they were taking a while to set up and we were also tired.

On the way back to the apartment, S.'s dad randomly suggested we go to noraebang (karaoke), and so we did...

It was interesting. The room had a mini disco ball and whenever a song started up the lights would automatically go out and the disco ball would start going. We actually got 'scores' after each song we did, on a scale of 0 to 100. Why does even going to noraebang have to feel like taking a test?

The next day we took a day trip via the train to Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Silla kingdom.

We visited Bulguksa, a Buddhist temple, and took an unexpected hike to see a Buddha statue.

For those of you who have watched or are watching The Great Queen Seondeok, our taxi drove by her tomb! And we also walked past Cheomseongdae, the observatory that she built for the monk in the drama. It was a little underwhelming but still pretty cool. Sorry there are no pictures =(

Now I am comfortably back in Seoul, and this past weekend was the first full weekend I have had to do things around the city. Remember the weird weather I've been trying to describe? It's not just fog and cloudy skies, it's smog. Since I came here I've had this dry cough that won't go away, and I've talked to other people who have had the same problem. One of my classmates said that it is pretty typical to start coughing when you first arrive, but it should go away within a few weeks. Let's hope so.

Let me take a moment to introduce some of my classmates in the Level 1 Korean language class at Sogang.

This is about half of them right here at lunch. Going from left to right, their home countries are Australia, France, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands. It's a really interesting mix of super nice people, and conversations usually revolve around our different perspectives of things coming from different cultures and backgrounds. It's great too because I can practice my nihongo with the three Japanese speakers in my class. English is the language that most people have in common, surprise surprise, and even those who know the littlest bit of English know enough to communicate with those who do.

So on Saturday, I went with a few classmates to Noryangjin fish/seafood market. It was much much MUCH bigger than the one in Busan, and many times more disorienting.

There was not only seafood I've never seen before, but sea creatures that I didn't know people ate.

This was one of the weirdest ones. Any guesses? I'm going to say some sort of sea slug.

Here's the hoe-master doing his thing. Like the market in Busan, you can also buy fish and have it carved up on the spot and then take it to a restaurant nearby for a meal.

We ended up buying some variety of crab, some variety of fish, and some variety of prawns (or were they shrimp?). All the names were in Korean so it was really hard to tell. Luckily one of the ladies in the restaurant upstairs spoke Chinese and offered to go down to the market with us to get some seafood. After we made our purchase they brought it up for us and cooked it.

As far as the meal went, I had higher expectations, but ultimately it wasn't as good as the one in Busan. The fish just okay, the prawns were good, the crab was delicious. The bill came to about 25 USD per person, and we didn't even get fish stew this time. But it was for sure a cool experience!