I guess we'll go all the way back to last Friday, July 11 (the day after the cat cafe visit). I woke up so happy that morning from visiting the cat cafe that I'm not sure anything could have made the day a bad one. Luckily, I that theory wasn't tested. As usual, instead of having normal language classes Friday, we went on a field trip. This time, it was to the 63 City Building by the Hangang River.
In this photo, the 63 City building is the tall, brass colored one. The building itself is huge, and it's color and design does not match the rest of Seoul very well. Its bold color and slightly warped design contrasts the more gray, square design that most of the rest of the buildings I've seen in Seoul.
We went to all of the main attractions in the 63 City building, including the Seaworld (it was just an aquarium, not like Seaworld in the USA), the Sky Art Gallery, the Wax Museum, and the Imax 3D movie theater.
This aquarium was not as nice as the COEX Mall Aquarium. I felt like the animals did not have enough space to live comfortably, which was very sad to see. Again, I was a little confused with the assortment of non-aquatic animals on display. They had hedgehogs and Prairie Dogs. I felt like the Prairie Dogs in particular were in a very small enclosure for the amount of space that I know they would normally have. The hedgehog, on the other hand, was very photogenic and took some of the best pictures in the aquarium.
The aquarium also hosted many marine creatures, so here are more pictures of my favorites!
After the aquarium, we went to the Sky Art Gallery. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the art gallery, but I think that's okay because I haven't quite developed a good appreciation for modern art yet. Sometimes I look at the paintings and compare them to the pages my parents saved of my very first scribble drawings as a kid (except I think I used more colors..). We were able to get incredible pictures of Seoul, however. Being so high up offered an incredible view!
The gallery did have two really cool items. One was a wall of colored blocks that you could spin. The different sides of the blocks had different colors, with the idea being that the viewer 'finished' the piece by spinning the pieces into whatever design they wanted to see. The artist also left instructions for his final message, which we took the time to spell out. It was "Enjoy!" The other really cool item was a huge wall filled with little hearts that people had written their dreams and wishes on. Some of them were made by kids, so they were just pictures with no writing. They were from all over the world, with writing in Korean, English, Spanish, Russian, India, France, and somewhere in the Middle East. Although I couldn't really read most of them, I could see that whoever made them put a great deal of thought into their message. Then, all of the messages were compiled into one huge piece of art.
For lunch, we went to a very nice Chinese restaurant. I didn't really know what I ordered because had to decide on that last Tuesday. Of course I had forgotten by then, and I'm also not quite sure I knew what I ordered to begin with. It ended up being delicious, so all turned out well.
After lunch, we had free time to see the Wax Museum and Imax movie. This was my first wax museum, and it was interesting, although I wasn't always impressed with the likeness the wax figures had to their human models. Some of the body proportions were too incorrect to be negligible, but it was still fun to see what American celebrities they decided were wax museum worthy.
Then we all went to see the Imax movie, which was titled Galapagos, and was aimed to educate about the unique wildlife in the Galapagos Islands and how they evolved into their unique species. The visual effects and graphic quality were impressive!
Later that night, we met for the final attraction, the B boy show Marionette. It was performed by the dance crew Expression, which won a talent competition show in Korea in 2002. This was my first dance show, so I didn't know what to expect. I thought it might be a little bit boring, but I was very wrong. It was incredibly exciting from start to finish, and the crew really knew how to engage the audience. Again, no pictures during the show, but it's a really cool experience. I'd recommend the show to anyone who gets the opportunity to go.
Saturday, I spent the morning studying, and I went to see the movie Inside Out with my host family. I was expecting the movie to be in Korean, but to my surprise, it was in English with Korean subtitles. I asked one of my Korean friends about it later, and she told me that Korean people in general prefer the Korean subtitles because the Korean dub affects the character of the voices. The movie theater was pretty much the same as an American theater, except that you had to reserve your ticket ahead of time and pick out an assigned seat, and the snack selection was slightly different. The biggest difference was the addition of fried squid to the snack menu. The other main difference was the fact that the popcorn was not over seasoned with salt and butter.
Then a bunch of classmates and I went out to celebrate someone's birthday. We went to dinner and then Korean karaoke (nori bang). While we were walking to dinner, we saw some kind of crazy Korean TV show being filmed. I'm not sure what the show was called or what they were doing, but whatever it was involved having a giant water slide take up the entire road, so I'm sure it was very fun :)
I'm not much of a singer, but there were enough of us at the nori bang that is was very inexpensive, and we all had a good time! We were even able to surprise our classmate with a cake. The cake was good, although I'm noticing that in Korea, they always use whipped cream as icing, instead of actual icing that we think of in the US.
Sunday was a day I would describe as beautifully rainy. It rained a lot, but I didn't mind because the temperature dropped down to something comfortable. I went to the World Lotte Mall, which is basically a huge shopping mall (complete with a California Pizza Kitchen). They were having some kind of sustainability campaign featuring thousands of tiny panda statues, which were everywhere.
Then, I ended up at the Olympic Park and World Peace Gate. The Peace Gate leads into the rest of the Olympic Park. Despite the rain, it was really neat to see the huge arch. It has one of those eternal flames that stays lit year round, rain or shine. The Olympic Park is huge and very scenic. Many of the building have been repurposed or are still in use, so I could only look at the outside of most of them. I stumbled upon a kumdo tournament inside the Handball Stadium. It looked like a pretty high level competition, and it was free for spectators, so I got to watch some of it.
I also visited the Olympic Center and Museum, which mostly highlighted the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, or any athlete who won a gold medal representing South Korea. I saw Yuna Kim's gold medal winning performance on a huge movie theater screen, which was super cool. For the long program, there was this Ride Movie experience thing, which is where you sit in a seat that kind of moves to take you through the motion of the action. I can tell you as a figure skater myself that the seats did a very poor job of emulating the skating movements, but it was a little something extra that was cool to experience. I also got to participate in my very first "free for foreigners" activity, where I decorated my very own souvenir coffee mug.
On my way back, I went to McDonald's to see how it differs from the US version. They really aren't very different, except the food is much better. I tried the local specialty, the bulgogi beef burger off of the dollar menu. Nothing was dripping grease, but it was still definitely McDonald's. Not five star dining, but a step up from the food served in the US.
After I got home, I went to see my Korean friend who lives on the 21st floor of the same apartment building I live in. I think I've mentioned her before, but in case I haven't.. she's a 15 year old who speaks English very well and wants to go to America for high school. She is scared of Korean high school, which I've noticed is not an uncommon theme.
Looks like I'm slowly getting caught up on my travels. Stay tuned for week 3 and more, which will be coming hopefully tomorrow. Then I'm going to try really REALLY hard to post more on time. This heat gets pretty exhausting, and it looks like it won't end soon, so I can't promise I won't just end up taking a nap instead...
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