Dongdaemun Market, Seoul Plaza, The Changing of the Guards and more!

We had another GREAT day of fun and exploration as we discovered a little bit more of Seoul and fell in love with our city a little bit more today. We started at Dongdaemun Market, which is a huge district off the 1 Line that sells EVERYTHING. They have a cloth market, a shoe market, a used book market, clothing markets, toy market...it was pretty amazing. There are several open air markets scattered all around creating an overcrowded maze of people and vendor stands loaded with mountains of products. We saw probably more than 50,000 pairs of shoes today. Then there were the department stores...or I really should say Department Towers, since are gigantic buildings that are just floor after floor after floor of clothes. Below is the Doosan Tower, we went up to the rooftop garden, it was very picturesque. It took a lot of self restraint to not go on a mad shopping spree. We saw a ton of "Engrish" items again today, it was hard not to laugh out loud at some of the ads and shirts we saw.


After walking around Dongdaemun for a few hours we decided to hop back on the Subway and head over to the City Hall area. We got out of the underground to a very interesting exhibit of artistically cultured mushrooms. We enjoyed taking pictures of the weird yet beautiful fungi until we were distracted by a HUGE drum pounding...we looked across the street to see Deoksugung Palace, they were in the middle of the changing of the guard ceremony that occurs three times a day at the main gates. What luck! We quickly ran across the street to check it out. The changing of the guards is a wonderful show of the different platoons of guards dressed in traditional outfits (complete with their bows, arrows and swords) switching shifts. There is music and chanting and flags being swung about in a colorful loud swirl of activity. We were enthralled, we could not get over how stunning the display was. Nick especially loved the huge drum - the man in charge of hitting it in time used his whole body to strike the gigantic colorfully painted drum as hard as he could.




After the 30 minute amazing show the changing of the guards was over and Nick and I wandered back over to Namdaemun Market (check out our "window shopping in Seoul" entry to see more about Namdaemun) and also ventured into Myeong-dong. We even found a BENNIGANS in Myeong-dong! We were quite amused.


We had some chicken galbi for dinner...we ordered one serving of regular chicken galbi (or spicy chicken with fried rice cooked in front of you) and an order of special chicken galbi...which surprisingly had no chicken in it at all, but beef and octopus. Oh well, it was good anyways. We've eaten a lot of octopus in this country, it is a very popular ingredient in many different dishes. We hope to try the live octopus soon - one of our Korean coworkers has told us he'd like to take us to try it, but since the new semester starts on Tuesday we have all been very busy at school lately and we might have to wait until he is not quite so busy.



After dinner we were pretty much exhausted after seeing and doing so much so we returned home to our cozy little apartment. I am excited for Monday, I will teach my first full schedule including kindergarten! The teacher I replace left this morning so I finally get all my classes tomorrow.


Below is a short video of the changing of the guard, enjoy :)

100th Club Day

Friday night we went out with one of the teachers from our school to the 100th Club Day. Club Day happens once a month In Hongdae near the Hongik University and a ticket gets you entry into 21 clubs to watch live music and dance. We ended up being mostly disappointed in the clubs but we still had a ton of fun roaming around the streets and checking out the bands.

There was a drum parade that randomly went by at one point in the night and we were enamored by the rhythm of the drums and the festive spirit the paraders brought to the streets. There were literally hundreds of people out and about during the warm summer night and we were happy to be a part of it.


We saw lots of interesting motorbikes (including the Spiderbike!!) and Nick really enjoyed collecting as many Club Day balloons as he could, haha. It was a fun night out :)



The streets were packed with people all night long, and we met some random people along the way. We also were thoroughly amused with all the street vendors that stayed out all night long selling watches, sunglasses, hats, and costume jewelry.

Some food updates :)

Last night we went to an Italian place with two other teachers from school. We really enjoyed the pasta since it's been so long, but it wasn't quiiiiite like home. My pasta el mare in cream sauce had some interesting pieces of octopus and also some weird doughy balls. But it was a good change of pace to all the kimchee, hahahaha.

We've had a lot of great food lately. We went to a katsu house and had delicious pork katsu with cheese.


We also went to a fried chicken house and had some awesome tangy fried chicken and fries...with fancy bananas on the plate too, hahaha.

Jongmyo Royal Ancestral Shrine, Changgyeonggung Palace, & Jongno-Gu

Sunday has turned into our adventure around Seoul day. We decided to go to Jongno-Gu today and see the royal ancestral shrine and Changgyeonggung Palace. It ended up being a gorgeous day and walking around the palatial grounds was a wonderful way to end the weekend. We took in the sights of the raised stone plazas at the shrine and the preparation buildings where deceased royalty were honored through a series of rituals. Each member of royalty has a tablet written about them when they die and this shrine compound is where the tablets are kept. Although, we didn't actually see any tablets. But we did enjoy walking around the peaceful gardens and seeing the grand Asian architecture of a bygone era.



We took a footbridge across to the palatial grounds and we completely fell in love with Changgyeonggung Palace. It was gorgeous. The grounds were magnificent, the buildings were amazing, and the gardens were lovely. The palace was built in the early 1400s during the Joseon Dynasty. This is actually not even the main palace for that dynasty, this is where the queen's quarters were. We were captivated by the ornate style of the buildings, how the brightly colored and intricate wooden masterpieces interacted with each other and the majestically cultivated gardens surrounding them. We really liked the details that had been used to create this architectural wonder - like the hand carved dragons on every shingle, the gargoyles on every rooftop, the carved stone steps leading up to gardens and the shutter systems used to open up bedroom quarters to the outside air.



We loved the gardens a lot; there was a picturesque lake full of giant fish, cranes relaxing in the trees, and ducks wading in the water. There was also a beautiful white and glass paned greenhouse with carefully shaped hedges outside and a very pretty fountain. We had a wonderful time walking around and enjoying the hot summer day in such a beautiful place!


After walking around the palace we ventured out onto the streets of Jongno-Gu. We enjoyed window shopping throughout the jewelry district and seeing all the street vendors. There were so MANY random things for sale! As dusk fell we found a wonderful pedestrian arcade full of tents with everything you could imagine for sale, including Korean wooden masks, silk screening paintbrushes, statues of Buddha, incense...and of course shoes, purses, knock off everything, and hats, haha. We had dinner at a tiny little Indian place up above the street on the second floor. After a simple yet delicious meal of chicken and vegetable curry with yellow long rice loaded with peppers, veggies, and yogurt sauce we returned home to our little apartment.