I survived.

Yesterday was my first day at ECC and tonight will be my first night at Prime. The school is kind of like classes at a college where there are MWF & TTh classes so today will be like another first day for me. I think everything went well. It really came naturally once I was thrown in there and the school does an amazing job of laying out all of the information that you need in order to make it as easy as possible. I love all of the kids so far. I was laughing in the morning because one of the teachers said I should walk in and throw a chair across the room just to set the tone. "You need to let them know 'This is KRISTEN TEACHER'S CLASS!'" lol.

When it was time to go upstairs to teach the evening classes, I followed Kate to her first class and then had a meeting to go over my schedule for the evening classes. I'm interested to see which age group I will like the most because I'll basically have all ages and proficiency levels. I'm not concerned about it because I'm sure I'll be fine once I get the hang of it.

Rob & Kate mentioned going to eat live octopus on Friday after we get done with our classes and invited anyone who wants to go to go with them. Umm yes. There are several people that die a year from doing it because the tentacle suction things get stuck to their throat. Sorry mom. Yolo. I'm eating an octopus.

Sorry to make this so short! But brace yourselves for octopus pictures.

Nothing important happens after 6 pm

I'm writing this in real time today as I sit at Kimbap eating my breakfast. I ordered the craziest looking thing on the menu because I'm feeling adventurous this morning lol.

YESTERDAY WAS A GREAT DAY! I'm so glad I decided to get myself out of my funk and go out and do something. I haven't learned the metro yet and I'm only comfortable with cabs right now so I took one to meet Ben & Cailtyn and their friend Mandy at the metro station by Seoul City Hall. It ended up being right around the corner from me. Metro would have been cheaper but it wasn't very expensive to take the cab. My Korean pronunciation SUCKS right now so I've been taking screen shots on my phone of locations I want to go and showing them to my cab drivers.

I found them immediately. Our plan was to see Deoksu Palace and it was beautiful. We had a rocky start trying to find somewhere to eat because they hadn't had any food that morning. We were turned around for maybe twenty minutes but I was totally cool with it because I'm still in my euphoria stage of being here so I'm just loving walking around and seeing all the new things. Deoksu Palace is located in a really great area with tons of stuff to do. We were walking through a park and saw some crazy statues that were really distorted (and made some of my group nauseous looking at them), and a street vendor selling steamed silk worms. I am not yet adventurous enough to try silk worms but I will report as soon as I get the courage.

Trippy!

Saw these balls of yarn decorating this tree outside of a small shop while we were lost. Made me think of Deedee!

By the time we finished at the restaurant, we were able to catch the changing of the guard ceremony at Deoksu Palace! What luck :) if we hadn't have gotten lost when we first got there, we would have been finished eating earlier and missed it completely. It was awesome.

 

Front of the Palace with some guards out front.

I would like to discuss many things in this picture. 1) Please note how my Korean guard friend is trying to contain his smile but he can't because I'm so delightful. 2) I'm wearing the scarf Mama Cova made me. 3) I've seen a million Dunkin' Donuts since I've gotten here. Chains are everywhere here. 4) There's a guy in a surgeons mask on the left and people wear these everywhere here if they're sick/they think you're sick. I love that. Long live the germaphobes!

Mandy was commenting, and I agree, how awesome it was to see the old traditions of the guards and flags mixed in with what Seoul looks like today with the high-rises in the background.

Heading back into the Palace. Later dudes!

The entrance fee to see the Palace was only 1,000 won! That comes out to be $.96. AMAZING! There was a 10,000 won option to see a museum that was located inside as well but we opted for the entrance fee by itself. Once we were inside, we got some really great pictures. The palace is pretty small so its totally doable to walk the whole thing without getting exhausted.

I asked Ben if he thought this was a sacred place and if it would be disrespectful to do my cart wheel picture. He said no. CART WHEEL TIME!

The painted detail in each of the rooms was amazing. This room was supposed to be designed in a Western way (hence, the chandelier).

View from inside the Palace. See the tower in the background?

Gorgeous!

Yay! Korean adventures!

I suggested we join this tour and confuse them by nodding along with what the tour guide was saying. Nobody went for it. When we left Ben said that kid was probably like "Dad!!!! Can I go with the foreigners!" lol.

Half past snowflake.

The museum we didn't go into. Caitlyn: "Exhibit from Prague? Wait.. where are we?"

Me: I guess nothing important happens after 6 pm so it doesn't matter what time it is. *Feels very proud of self for coming to this conclusion* Mandy: ....and the sun goes down

Ummmm I love this little guy. I forget what his name is but he's the symbol of Seoul. I love his fat little face.
(Edit Feb 9 2013: His name is Haechi)

Just in case the first one gets destroyed in a fire.

Throne.

Really pretty meditation benches inside of the Palace.

After leaving the Palace, I mentioned that I passed some really huge statues on my way in so we decided to check them out before heading out our separate ways.

While we were crossing the street and leaving the Palace, we looked left and saw the really pretty mountains that we hadn't noticed on our way in. Blue sky & sun out, it was a really nice day other than the fact that it was freezing.

Random ice skating rink & hula hoop man on the sidewalk :)

This was an area that showed pictures from what I think were from the Korean War. I think all of the flags are supporters of South Korea but its very possible I'm wrong about this whole caption lol.

Shout out.

Then I was dying and needed something hot to drink so we went into a coffee shop to warm up for a bit. Its really nice in Seoul because most every restaurant I've been in has had an English menu so you don't have to pretend to be able to decipher the Korean symbols. It is a priority for me while I'm here to learn the symbols and be able to sound things out for myself, but not in my first week lol.

You know how at home when you're waiting on a table at a restaurant they give you those vibrating light-y up-y things? They did that at the coffee shop we went to so you knew when to pick up your drink. And it had videos for you to watch while you waited. Whaaaaaaat? So technological.

Love it.

Yayyyy Caitlyn & Ben!

Yayyyy Kristen & Mandy!

Then we headed back out into the freezing world.

Koreans leave their holiday decorations up much later than we do in America. I feel like we take ours down immediately after Christmas but I've seen several places that still have theirs up. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the fact that they celebrate the Lunar new year and that's not until February?

I really should have figured out who this guy was lol.

I love this picture. The sun kind of messed up my statue shots but I'll get better ones next time.

I think this is the guy that invented the Korean alphabet and lived in the palace. Ben: They LOVE this guy!

I. Love. This. City.

BFFs <3 "60 years of partnership and prosperity"

Old gate to the city.

The yellow banner says this is the 2013 Special Olympics location.

Me, Mandy & Caitlyn.

I'm so Korean I can't even handle myself.

Then we all headed to the Metro and Ben was going to try and show me how to use it to get home. Umm the Seoul metro is amazing. There's tons of shopping inside of it.

This is for Jess and basically everyone so they can laugh at me spending so much money stocking up at Yankee Candle before I came here since they have one inside of the metro.

My new super cute touch-screen gloves that I bought at the metro station!

Me & Ben got off on the next stop and Caitlyn and Mandy headed back to Bucheon which is a much farther ride. I really live in a great area. Ben & me got off but I have no idea where anything is, what my stop is, what my exit is, basically anything about my life etc so after 10 minutes or so I gave up trying to figure out where we were supposed to go and got into a taxi to head home. Thanks for trying Ben lol. By the way, we were no where near where I lived lol. I'll learn the metro one day.

I got into my apartment at like 7 pm and laid out all of the snacks everyone laughed at me for buying earlier in the day and watched Family Guy until I fell asleep. I decided to go to bed early since I was getting blood drawn in the morning for my medical check and couldn't eat past 9 pm. I figured the best way to resist temptation is to fall asleep early after stuffing my face with snacks.

Snacks! Yes those are bagged "french fries". The boxed cookies were AMAZING! And the other 2 packages were these Kelloggs brand cookie wafers.

Korean vitamin water! Much smaller than our bottles at home.

The french fry chip things inside of the bag. I loved them at first but then they got weird and I threw them away.

A great end to a great day!

I'm really so happy that I went out yesterday because I ended my weekend in a great mood. Hope you guys love these pictures! Love you all <3