Day 6 began with a trip to the nearby “folk museum” which, while not the most exciting of museums, still had some redeeming items on exhibition. I especially enjoyed the huge wall of traditional Korean face masks, which are used in dramas and dances. They are especially interesting because many of them don’t resemble Koreans at all, making me wonder where they drew their inspiration from…Towards the end of the tour, there was a stray cat sitting at the front of the doors into the museum and two people from our group thought it would be funny to let the cat into the building. When they opened the doors for the cat to get in, it didn’t budge. After a minute or two of coaxing and cajoling, the cat nonchalantly wandered in and the students conspicuously walked away. It hadn’t been more than 5 seconds when a teeny tiny old Korean woman came running after the cat, yelling at the students that let it in. While, in theory, letting the cat in was funny or cute, in real life it was immature and kinda scary. Didn’t reflect so well upon our group…Our group sponsored by the Korea Foundation (subsidiary body of the government itself), mind you…
The grounds of the museum were quite extensive and our group was divided into two, with my group heading down to a small amphitheater area to get a lesson on how to play traditional Korean drums. I haven’t played an instrument since I quit band my sophomore year (yeah, yeah, band geek, I know), and it was kind of exhilarating to play the rhythms on both ends of my hourglass shaped drum and let out any stress or boredom I had. Our instructor said I was the star pupil. No big deal...
We traded with the other group and moved to the traditional dancing lesson, which was less of a dance and more of a story through body movement. “Macho”, the main male character, had just married the daughter of the “old woman”, who had to sell her daughter to get money. The dance features movements that mimic a flower blooming and somewhat of a duel. Our dance instructor was very shy about dancing in front of so many girls (especially the blonde ones)—almost to a point that he was awkward about it. My partner and I volunteered to perform the dance (with me in full costume as the “old woman” and him in Macho #1’s mask), meanwhile, Kyle somehow got swindled into being my daughter, instead of Macho #2…The dance instructor and his assistant wanted Kyle to show a little skin and made him pull up the costume so that it would show his belly and they wanted him to stick it out as far as possible. Initially mortified, Kyle just went with it, and from what I could make out from my little peephole eyes in the mask, it was almost as hilarious as the sweatshirts from the previous night…The dance/drum lessons were probably two of my most favorite parts of the trip.
Being upbeat and hyper from our two lessons, we headed out to lunch which was an Asian buffet. It was a lot nicer than I expected and all the food was very photogenic. While meandering around deciding what to pick, a very special little thing caught my eye: a teeeeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiny OCTOPUS. Seriously. A whole octopus, but it could fit on an Oreo. I put it on my plate out of sheer fascination. Half of me said, “eat it, eat it!” and the other half said, “we’re putting this on the plate out of curiosity. Not to land on the next episode of bizarre foods…”. After finishing my lunch, the baby octopus was staring at me on my plate. I decided to eat it. Already knowing it would make me wanna vomit, I anticipated the worst and wasn’t surprised when, after the first chew (chewy head, crunchy tentacles), the texture alone made me want to blow chunks. It was disgusting. Luckily there was no taste to it, but the mental image of eating this tiny ass octopus and its horrible texture made me gag about 6 more times before I swallowed it all, followed by a big gulp of water. I got a video of the whole thing that you may view on my Facebook! J
The next part of our itinerary, Everland, was questionable for me. Everland is essentially the Disneyland of Korea, but it’s sponsored by Samsung. It seemed kind of cheesy and not all that cultural, but being that it had been years since I’d been to an amusement park, I will admit it was amusing. Wasting no time, Brian and I headed to the biggest rollercoaster at the park. It supposedly has the worlds steepest/tallest drop of any wooden rollercoaster in the world. After a 40 minute wait in a line that, every time you turned the corner, a new part of the line was revealed, we finally made it to the front. I was shocked to see that it had started snowing just as we strapped in. Keep in mind that contrary to popular belief, the area of Seoul is about the same latitude as Moscow (as in Idaho, not Russia…), so it wasn’t like SoCal here. The ride went on and the drop was so epic that I couldn’t even scream because I had no air in my lungs. I thought I might fly out of my seat. After that, the ride was far less extreme, give or take a few weightless drops. It was exhilarating!
We started to wander aimlessly about the parking and stumbled upon a “spooky house”. Apparently the Korean idea of “spooky house” is a house of ghosts that spin around (but they’re smiling), smelly socks and a music-making center…it was more hilarious than spooky. The best part was walking out of the house, there is a ghost that farts at you. I might be 20 going on 35, but fart sounds will always make me laugh. I got a video of this, too!
With our little time left, we started heading back to area by the main entrance where we were supposed to meet, but we were ushered into the safari ride. The park actually has a legitimate safari zone with real animals just freely hanging out. There were lions and tigers and bears (oh my! but seriously there were). Also, there were giraffes (my favorite animal ever J ) and a liger, even. Thinking the animals would go into hiding because of the snow, I was surprised to see them out and about as though they enjoyed the weather. It was quite the safari considering I was thousands of miles away from Africa and I wouldn’t expect that these animals would survive in Korea…
After our return to our original hotel in Seoul, I was exhausted, but knew that I still (somehow) had more shopping to do. So appreciate your souvenirs, folks, because I put some time and effort into them! Insadong is less than a 5 minute walk from our hotel so I ran over (in the sleet) to buy yet more things. After the purchase of 2 more purses, various accessories and more make-up (not all for me, mind you!) I headed into the cutest tea place I had ever seen. Adorned with dozens of sparkling strands of white lights, too many plants to count and Polaroid photos all along the golden-toned walls, I felt calm and happy as I slipped into my big cushy chair and sipped on some green tea. I tried to tell the waiter, in Korean, that it was a beautiful place. But apparently my pronunciation was wrong and he had no idea what I was saying, so I just had to point to the Hangul in the phrasebook and he thanked me. So much for speaking Korean…And unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of it because I opted to leave my Rebel at home, not thinking I would have any photo ops on my quick shopping jaunt. But if you’re looking for romantic ideas, I’m a big sucker for strands of lights, plants and tea. And most other girls are, too. So take a lesson in love from a Korean tea house.
No comments:
Post a Comment