Seoul in the Snow

So once again it has been too long since my last post; if any of you would like to come live my life for a day so I can have time to write blog posts, feel free.

In the last week since my last post, I did indeed join the church Ensamble, I got the couple who leads the single's group hooked on the tv show Psych, I finished season 3 of Lost with another couple and started season 4, I went to Byeongjam (near Suwon) twice in one week to go shopping for food with different people, I broke up a fight at school, I started tutoring a fifth grader, I lost my voice- probably from all the smog, and I stayed up half the night so someone could call me from the States. Fortunately, today is only a half-day of school so I can relax a little. And clean my floor.

I also babysat for a young military couple who are friends of people I know at church. They have a 5 month old boy and a girl who is 1 1/2. Both kids are really sweet, and it was nice to meet different people for a change and see kids who aren't in high school.

I don't believe I ever talked about the second trip to Seoul I made over lunar new year. My friend Aleithia, who teaches English on the island Jeju-do just south of the mainland, came up to Seoul for 2 days to see me and a couple other friends she has here. We became friends at Cedarville when we found ourselves 2 of 7 girls in a few engineering classes with 90 guys, and when we realized that neither of us had any business studying engineering. She left after that year and I hadn't seen her since, although we had stayed in contact. It was great to see her again.

Even though it was snowy and freezing cold, I took her to see Gyeongbokgong Palace, the largest of the palaces. When we started to fear frostbite, we decided we were hungry for food we couldn't get where we live, so we went down to Itaewon, another part of Seoul, for a late lunch of some Middle Eastern shwarma and falafel. After that, we took the subway back up to the palace to see Insadong, the shopping/art street. You can tell how cold I was by what I bought there: two scarves.

After that, we hopped down to Myeongdong, a more upscale part of Seoul that has some American stores, so Aleithia could pick up a few clothes. After a little bit, I left her there to meet up with her friend and began the long trek back. We spent literally half the day on the subway, but it wasn't too crowded since everyone had left for the holiday and it gave us a lot of time to talk and catch up. Just so you can see how complicated the subway can be, and how crazy we were to go across down a few times, I drew out our route on this map. The red covers most the day, and the green is the way back. The subway is not usually hard to use, and they say that if you can get around Seoul with all its 13 lines, you can get around any subway in the world. I'd be willing to test that theory :^)