My weekend

This weekend was wonderful wonderful wonderful and will hopefully start a chain of equally great weekends for a while now.

Let me start by saying that on Friday night, I skyped BoBo and my sister, which started my weekend off just perfectly. I hadn't talked to BoBo in a loooong time, and man oh man, have I missed that girl. Really, I miss everyone on FUEL a whole lots. Then skyping with my sissy is always a wonderful thing. I talked to BoBo for like 40 minutes or so, and then I talked to Melly for like an hour+. During the chat, I took a hilarious picture of Melly where she had added some video effect with her camera, and it was funny. See right for said picture.

Also, on Friday, I got tickets to DREAM CONCERT! The link is for a travel package, and is all in Korean/Japanese/Chinese, but you'll still get the idea. This is basically the biggest k-pop concert inKorea. The biggest 15 names in k-pop will be performing (including BIG BANG, super junior, tvxq, lee hyori, 2ne1, 2pm, WonderGirls and everyone else that matters). Tickets were only 5,000 won (or just under five bucks) because it is a benefit concert. JACKPOT.

Anyways, then Saturday morning I talked to Mommy on skype. While I was skyping Moms, guess what happened? My doorbell rang, and it was a package! FROM NICKIPANTS! She sent me a lovely letter (I have the same stationary, Nick... haha, xoxox) and a new stuffed Ty griaffe (you did, indeed, spell it correctly). OMG, I absolutely love it. Now i have four giraffes on my nightstand, plus four giraffe pictures on my door. HOORAY!

Then, I left for Seoul at about 11 a.m. to meet with Ara and her sister. Ara is my old conversation partner/student at UF/the ELI. Ara moved back to Korea in July, and this was the second time I saw her. We met at Gyeongbokgung station which I had never heard of before. It's kind of near the northern part of the city. It's a really historic and artsy area. We visited Gyeongbok Palace, the largest and main palace of the Joseon dynasty. The palace was enormous and beautiful. Even the subway station was beautiful and reflected the historic nature of the area. One of the station exits was literally right next to the palace, which is quite convenient. When we first got there they were doing a sort of changing of the guards, which was really neat. The palace had a lot of similar architecture and decoration as the buddhist temple we visited during orientation. Still though, the palace was roughly ten times larger, but didn't have as many (or, rather, any) statues of buddha.

We visited the king's chambers, the queen's chambers, and the house of the king's mother, which had the most beautiful view of a garden and lake. The king's room/house/chambers (it's hard to describe exactly what it is because it's not super big, and it's sort of connected to another enormous potion of the palace, so I don't know how to explain it. One of the coolest things was that there is a walkway connect all the different sections of the palace. The middle of the walkway was just slightly (an inch or two) elevated, and that middle portion was for the king and other royalty only, and the side portions are for the servants and plebs. I was walking on the plebs part at first, and Ara told me that there was a part for the king and queen, and I made sure to walk on that part as much as possible from that point on. In the kings room, you could see the room where the king ate (which is two the left of the entrance), and then where he and his "lady friends" would sleep at night (note: this is NOT where the queen slept, haha). If you'll notice in the picture of the rooms where people sleep, the "beds" are straw mats. There is one bed that is a straw mat elevated on a wooden platform or bedframe of sorts. This is where the king slept. If you look closely at the picture (sorry they are so small, but the bigger the picture the longer it takes to load), you will see small wooden boxes on every mat. These wooden boxes are pillows. I can imagine this is not very comfortable, and in addition to that, they are tiny, so you move at all, your head will fall right off the "pillow"-box, and hit the floor.

Around one corner of each house, there was a cut-out area that was covered and stuff. In this picture, you can see this area. This area is like an area where you have access to all the water/fluid run-off from the showers and toilets in the rooms of the royalty. The doctors of the king and queen would squat in these cut-out areas, and open a door to smell, taste and touch the excrement of the king and queen to determine their health and general well-being or to diagnose illnesses. If you ask me, being the kings doctor those days would have sucked.

The picture here is of the gardens and view from the "backyard" of the King's mother's quarters. Her area was very very large and beautiful, and she had this absolutely stunning view of the mountains behind her, along with this beautiful little pond and pagoda type thingy. I think it is a prayer room.

Behind the king's mother's house was an additional secondary palace that the last king of the Joseon dynasty built. This building was where the king and his family lived when there was a fire that destroyed much of the original palace area. Also, this is where the king and his family lived when Japan (evil evil Japan) attacked and entered the palace grounds. In addition to all of this, this building was the very first building in all of Korea to be fitted with electricity, by the Edison Electric Light company. Interesting, huh?

After that, we went to the National Folk Museum of Korea, which was located on the grounds of the palace area, and was incredibly beautiful as well. We all took pictures with our respective zodiac animal. For those of you born between January 29, 1987 and February 16, 1988, like me, we were born in the year of the fire rabbit. For those who are curious, the rabbit is supposed to be moderately introverted (haha, not applicable to meet) and prefer not to be a leader (again, false). They are also typically cosmopolitan and "classy" or stylish. They are also considered considerate, but sneaky. Fire rabbits are considered more mysterious and look to live life to the fullest (and here I am in Korea, doing just that!) They are charming, but can tend to throw a tantrum here or there. Rabbits make excellent doctors, therapists, musicians, actors and TEACHERS! A rabbit's most compatible with people from the year of the sheep or goat ('79 and '91 are those closest to my age-- guess I need to look for some 18 year olds... hahahaha), and their enemy is the rooster (people born in '81 and '93 are those closest to my age).

Anyways, then we went to lunch, which was delicious and enormous and included what was missing in this picture, which was two hot pots of soup (one tofu, one spicy veggie). It was also so so so so so delicious. We couldn't even come close to finishing between the three of us. After that, we went up to an area of traditional houses that overlooked much of Seoul. The view was beautiful, although the walk up a mountainside was difficult. It was worth it though. Then we went to Insa-dong, an area popular for traditional Korean arts and souvenirs and whatnot. We saw a bunch of weird weird people protesting and advertising all sorts of things (movies, websites, products and North Korean refugee treatment, among others). We went to a shopping mall and sampled all sorts of delicious Korean treats. We watched people making these cotton candy/nut things, that are really neat. While they explain the process and make the things, they have a clearly rehearsed script, and they usually speak some English. One of the sets of people we stopped to watch were particularly hilarious. One (the one I'm in the picture with) told me he wanted a girlfriend and asked me where I'm from and such. Then he let me get behind the booth where they were selling/making/performing and take a picture with him. They were HILARIOUS, and kept winking at me and joking in English. It was awesome. We went to a coffee place and had a delicious CUPCAKE and coffee (see fbook for pictures from Ara on my profile). We sat there for a long time talking and laughing a ton because we were all very tired from all the walking we did (several miles, easily).

We left and had some delicious street food (chicken and rice tea) for dinner. It was amazing and super super cheap. They helped me figure out how to get to Bekah's, where I was staying for the night, and then we parted ways. It was a great great day.

At Bekahs, we grilled some food, and hung-out on her rooftop in Itaewon which has an awesome view of Seoul tower, which lights up really pretty at night. I haven't been to Seoul tower YET, but I will soon! Ara promised to take me sometime. It was really fun hanging out with a group of ultimate people in Seoul. It was a dynamic very similar to those I've felt hanging out with High Level and FUEL and stuff, so it was really nice. We were up on the rooftop till 1 am, listening to KRS-1 and telling stories and discussing fan death (see also: this). Ironically, I slept in beth's room that night and she had a fan on. SO DANGEROUS.

This morning we woke up and Bekah and I walked down to Paris Baguette for breakfast (pumpkin roll and sugar donut, delectable), and then headed to the fields for practice/fall league. My team won, bringing our record to 4-0, which is awesome. The game we had today was really competitive (13-11) and so much fun. The girls played savage on both teams, so I got a nice little workout in. Played some barefoot pickup after, drank Korean beer, and basically hung out for a bit. Then I headed home. This was the only really suck part of the weekend, just because it is a long trip (an hour and half or more) and the subway was really cold and I was really smelly and tired.

I interrupt today's regularly scheduled blogpost for this announcement:
Ali: we need to talk. Seriously.

Anyways, that was my weekend. I'm not completely done prepping for my classes this week, but I've got enough done that I can finish it up tomorrow morning before classes.

I hope everyone else had as wonderful a weekend as I did!

xoxo
A