Sunday, July 5, 2009

Day 70: Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. We started off our weekend by going out for dinner on Friday with the new teachers, J.D. and Jamie (a couple), and Greg. Greg's been here for a couple of years but it was J.D and Jamie's first time having Korean BBQ and they really seemed to like it. It was nice to hang out outside of school to get to know them better. After dinner, we grabbed some drinks and hung out a little more before calling it a night.
Then on Saturday, we slept in a bit and decided we would head into Seoul to a huge electronics market called Yongsan to check out camera equipment and video games. The selection was insane and because all of the stands are competing, it's a great place to get deals! We didn't buy much yesterday, but we'll for sure go back again to do some bargaining. After that we took the subway to Myeong-dong to make our way up to Namsan mountain. Getting up the mountain can take two hours by foot and since it was crazy hot outside, we opted to ride the cable car :) Besides the convenience, the views were awesome!
Once we got off the cable car, we went up to the tower where there were cute little restaurants and shops overlooking the city. There was a fence surrounding the food court area which was totally covered in locks that people bought there, and wrote on. North Seoul Tower is known as a very romantic spot and the locks have become a tradition for visiting couples. There must have been a million locks covering the fences, it was pretty unique sight. Although we didn't spend $20 to get our own lock, we wrote our names on the tables in the cafe that were covered in love notes.
By that point, it was getting dark out and we went to the main area where there was a 10 minute light show. This wire figure looked awesome all lit up by the lasers, and the tower was lit up in all sorts of colors and even had photos of flames going up and down the side of it.
After the light show, we made our way to the elevators to go to the top of the tower which overlooks the whole city. The line up was sooo long and by the time we got up to the top, we had to hurry to make sure we didn't miss the last subway home. The views were beautiful with all of the city lights~ Unfortunately, the thick foggy glass, made it nearly impossible to get any good photos- but trust us, it was gorgeous! Its good we made sure to hurry since it took us almost an hour to get back down to the cable car because of another huge line up. Luckily, we were able to run and catch the last subway for the night back to Bucheon!
After that long day yesterday, we spent all of today just relaxing in the park, enjoying the sun and taking some photos. As we were walking around the park, a reckless old woman came speeding by on her bike and ran into Shayna! It's hard to yell at someone who doesn't understand your language but we tried to tell her to slow down and watch where she was going as best we could. Thankfully, she held on tight to her camera and it didn't get damaged. That is of course until about an hour later as we were walking across the street and Shayna slipped on a very slippery and slanted part of the sidewalk and sent her camera flying into the crosswalk! Luckily no cars ran over it and someone grabbed the flying lens cap...and by some miracle, the only part that got scratched were the lenscap and the filter. By that point, we decided it was a good time to call it a day and we made it home without any more accidents :) Hope you all had a good Canada Day weekend!


With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna