Jongmyo, Insadong, and Hangang Park

OK, so update about the whole pan thing. So apparantly, Paul 'approved' my whole pan buying experience while he was asleep. So when the pans appeared on our doorsteps the other day, he was very confused as to why there were 4 new pans in the house. I'm not giving them back. hehehhe. He says that he'll get me back by asking for a new watch while I'm asleep. We'll see :)

On another note. So, Paul is on his vacay and my classes have been really light because students are studying for their midterms. In the US, if midterms are around the corner, too freakin bad, we're gonna have classes right up to the midterms right? Well, not so in good ol' ROK. So here, students get a lot of "self-study time". If we have tests or anything along those lines during the week before midterms or finals, parents call the principal, and us teachers get a trip to the principal's office. Testing is a very important matter! So right now, my students are working hard, studying for their 13 tests and I am in the classroom writing up this blog post!

OK so, because Paul isn't working this week, we have a ton of energy to explore Seoul. On Monday, we went to Jongmyo... one of the few shrines that Korea has to offer.

Paul decided that it was high time that I got a picture taken of me so here I am, blue shirt, backpack and all! This is in front of the main shrine.

According to Wiki, Jongmyo was built to hold memorial services for deceased kings and queens. I was expecting really a lot of cool stuff to be in there - but it was quite empty.

What was really nice about it, though, was that from inside the walls, you couldn't see any of the modern skyscrapers and the air was relatively fresh.

It was also beautiful.

Anyway, the ceremony. The kings themselves took part in this ceremony, conducting it with the high officials.

So these are the vessels used to hold all sorts of ceremonial lootz for the spirits. Most will carry either alcohol or food to try and pacify the spirits of all of the deceased kings and queens. One particular piece that Paul and I liked was the dragon pouring-spout-thing. It contains some kind of grain alcohol (of course) and the king would pour the wine from it into some kind of hole in the ground 3 times to try and make the spirits happy. Paul and I think the kings were just trying to make the spirits drunk so they could bribe them with food afterwards. Also, outside the building, there was a mysterious iron handle on the ground.

Paul thought that maybe the Korean dudes put treasure in there, and if you could lift up the stone, you could get to the treasure. We decided maybe if we harness up the poops and we both pulled, it'll give way a little :)

Also, the pillars were kind of these lame colors. In Jeju, the pillars on the buildings were very intricate and all sorts of fun colors, but these were just a plain aqua/turquoise-y color with minimal design.

But the shrine made it all up to us by having these awesome grates that looked like faces

(Paul decided to feed these 'faces' some acorns)

and an awesome tree

It looks like it ate some children or something.

There were also some cute oak trees there and so Paul found some triad caps.

Paul and some people ran around gathering acorns.

Paul, to collect them because he likes big piles of stuff...

Other people... to eat them because acorns are tasty.

The best part of the whole thing, though, was that at the exit gate, there was a cute little bin.

Roughly translated, it says "the acorns real owners are the chipmunks!!!"

So, people threw their acorns into the bin

:) Now the chipmunks have something to eat during the winter if they accidentally wake up.

After our fun times @ Jongmyo, Paul and I decided to go to Insadong.

Insadong is just a big tourist-y place with lots of traditional food and shops. It's really fun to go there, but it is kind of out of the way so we don't go too often.

So the main purpose of this trip was to satiate Paul's craving for Kon-guk-su, AKA bean noodle. A couple of months ago, Paul and I were running around Insadong when we got really hungry. We just wanted to get a quick bite so we went into this noodle shop that had only 4 things on the menu. It was blistering hot out so we decided to order said kon-guk-su and just had a terrible time with it. The best way to describe the texture is... smooth and grainy? It doesn't have much of a flavor besides this umami dark roasty taste.. like peanut butter. Anyway, it wasn't what we expected so we just kind of chowed it down and went on our merry way. The taste though stayed with Paul and so as of a month ago, he started craving it. We attempted to order it at some fast food place near us, but it was just watery and not flavorful at all, and just created a bigger craving. So while we were in Insadong, Paul got a chance to satisfy the craving.

I realize I should ave taken a picture of this thing BEFORE I started chowing down on it, but I promise it's not as gross looking as it looks.

So basically, you have some chewy noodles, you put some matchstick cucumbers into it, then pour a cold bean slushy type of mixture on top, and voila - kon-guk-su. It's a summer dish and is served cold.

Yesterday, I came home to Paul sleeping...



and after waking him up, the pups decided that they wanted to be restless.



so we decided to visit Hangang Park (gang means river so Han River Park). They've (the city and its government) been doing a ton of construction on it so we haven't actually been back in awhile.... But there was a restaurant that I've been wanting to show Paul for awhile so we decided to bike along the river.

We loaded up the poops and headed west. The skies were blue!

When we got there, we decided to check out the new structures that they'd built. To our surprise, there was a concrete BMX bike course O.o and an art-bike exhibit.

So if you're wondering what an art-bike is...

These bikes are open to the public.. so of course, being the adventurous folks that we are, we decided to have a go on them!

This bike is propelled by jumping up and down the back portion of it.



What a fun science project it would be to analyze the different simple machines on these!

We also decided to get on one of these made for multiple people to ride on.



Weeeeee!~



As you can see, I decided to steer and made Paul do all of the pedaling :)

We wanted to ride a few more - especially the one with the toilet cover as the seat o.O but it was 5:00 and they were closing. We vowed to come back sometime and have some more fun.

After leaving that area, we still had a lot of energy left. Paul went to the park convenience store (the 7-11 hehe) to buy some water and I let Kamja off the leash to let him run around.



He was entirely too happy to be free!

When Paul came back, he walked Tank - we can't let Tank off leash because he will run away :(

Here he is peeing!!!



He likes to lift his leg up high into the air to pee on tall things... like grass.

So Paul and I headed over the river path to the Secret Garden (the place I wanted Paul to see) but on the way there, Kamja jumped out of the basket (Paul didn't put a blankie in his so it was uncomfortable, I guess) and almost got killed by oncoming bike traffic. :( I yelled at Paul :( :( :( and then stole my puppy and put him in my comfy basket where he esentially laid down and enjoyed the rest of the ride. I also made sure to buckle him in this time.



Poor puppy :(

When we finished, we laid the blanket down and rested awhile. Paul found a fuzzy weed and decided to look like a farmer.



Then he became grumpy as we saw a very angry black rain cloud coming toward us. We huried home and gave puppies their din-dins! Overall, a pretty good day!