A Visit to Seoul

Since our extra classes and daytime schedule ended on Friday, I decided it would be a good weekend to head up to Seoul. I ended class at 8 on Friday and didn't start again until 4pm today (Monday) so it was my longest weekend to date. It gave me the chance to see my friends from training last September, as well as to pay Shana a visit in Anyang.
On Saturday my friend Rachelle (my roommate during training) and I decided to head over to Seoul Tower for a view of the city. Oddly enough, I turned around after getting my ticket and I hear, "Hello Kendra Teacher!" Behind me in line was one of my students who was also visiting Seoul over the weekend with his family. I'd joked about maybe seeing him that weekend, but it seemed like an absolutely unrealistic possibility! We ended up getting a picture of the two of us in front of the window that told how far away Busan was from the tower. The whole thing was bizarre but pretty funny.
I really enjoyed the tower. We took the cable car up rather than walking, but today I discovered that the amount of walking we did over the course of the whole weekend was still enough to wear a hole into the shoes I wore for the trip! When we got to the top of the mountain, we found out that we'd arrived in time to watch a traditional display of fighting skills from the Joseon Dynasty period. It was amazing to watch some of the sword work and the hand-to-hand combat, and I was glad my camera battery lasted long enough for me to get videos of some of the performances.
After the performance we headed up to the tower. There is a very cool display on the first level where people have put up personalized locks all along the guardrail/fence, and you can purchase a lock to write on and leave there, so of course we did that before leaving. It was cool to see all of the locks covering the fence, and fun to be a part of it all.
On the second level, they have labeled the windows with how many kilometers away you are from various cities around the world. I took pictures in front of the ones for Chicago, Accra, and Busan, though I forgot to do NY/DC. I took pictures of a lot of other places as well, just because I thought it was really interesting to know those distances. Plus, they had decorated the windows with the snow paint stuff people use during the winter, and the designs were pretty cool.
After leaving the Tower, we headed over to Insa-dong and went to Jogyesa Temple. They were conducting their evening services, but I really enjoyed just walking around the area and enjoying the sounds of the services ringing through the night. It was very calming and the whole are had the heavy, comforting, and almost eerie feeling that I connect with most places of worship I've been to. I'd like to go back later in the year to see more in the daylight and talk to the volunteers there more about the temple. Rachelle filled me in on some things she knew, but it seemed like the kind of place that deserves more of my time in the future.
After the temple Rachelle and I joined up with the other two guys we trained with for an amazing dinner at a place called Butterfingers Pancakes in Gangnam, Seoul. I got a huge garden vegetable omlette that came with two small pancakes and rosemary roasted potatoes. It was so delicious, and the kind of treat that I enjoy stumbling upon here and there: one of those comfort food meals that remind you of home, and are so hard to find here. It was a great place for a reunion, too, and it was nice, though a bit surreal, catching up with my friends from training. It felt like that first week again, when we were all so unsure of what to expect, but now here we are, almost five months later, and all settled in to new lives and new routines. Pretty crazy.
After dinner I headed out of the city to Anyang, a suburban-ish city that's still on the subway line out of Seoul. There I joined up with Shana and we had a nice, chill time with some of her friends and walked around the city some. On Sunday, we headed into Seoul to Yongsan, where there is a huge electronics market - Electroland, as it's called. My camera had been eating batteries like it was starving. After a few months of wasting money on AA batteries every time I wanted to take pictures, and then having my camera die just before the best part of a sunset, or right when I wanted to get that funny moment captured...I had finally gotten impatient. It was time to invest in a new camera, and Shana had gotten hers in Yongsan and she has a great camera, so I decided to go for it. I decided to stick with Olympus, in part so I wouldn't have to change the kind of memory card I had, and in part because it seems like my family has always had an Olympus, so I figured I'd keep up the tradition. Besides, the guy let me play with the different cameras, practice taking pictures, check out the features, etc, and the one I settled on seemed like a wise choice for the long-term. So, I went home to Busan with a pretty new camera that will hopefully last me as long as (or longer than!) the previous one (6 years, I believe) and which has a battery that recharges through the wall or my computer - so no more money wasted on AA's.
All-in-all, it was a great getaway weekend, and, just like last time, it felt amazing to come back to Busan and feel like I was home.