Wednesday, June 1, 2011

May 6, 2011 Seoul Temple, US Embassy, Japanese food, 교보, 명동, Overzealous Makeup Workers

I still can't get over the fact that we saw some celebrities yesterday!  WOO-HOO!  We couldn't sleep last night.  South Korea is amazing for having 48 million people and geographically smaller than Utah (it's somewhere close to 5/8 of Utah)!  Crazy!!!  So I have finally uploaded the videos from a couple days ago that I wanted to post!  I had to upload them to YouTube because the server for blogspot has been a pain.  So here are a couple videos that I wanted to show earlier!


This was from April 29 when I went to 인사동/Insadong and 영민 Young Min and I saw these funny guys singing and making traditional court cakes which I believe they are called 꿀타래/gurl-tah-rae.  This is the video that I really wanted to show because you can see the final product and they are even more hilarious in this one.  The guy on the left that you see for a moment was so hilarious!  I wish I could have recorded him too.  If you ever have a chance to come to 서울 Seoul, come to 인사동/Insadong!


This was from April 30 when I went to a 노래방/Karaoke room with 영민 Young Min.  So while we were having fun in our room, we heard some boys from another room which means they were REALLY loud.  The rooms are already loud and so hearing these boys made us curious to see what they were up to.  I'm assuming these boys are in high school.  We looked into their room and busted out laughing.  I wish I could have recorded everything but my camera died AGAIN!  Darn you camera!  My camera uses a lot of battery if I record video without rechargeable batteries.  But these boys made me laugh so hard!  I'm glad they didn't notice us recording them.  Remember what I said that this is when Koreans let loose during 노래방/karaoke, this is proof of that.

Alright now back to today's events.  We started the day off by doing baptisms and a session at the Seoul South Korea temple.  For a while they did the services in English but then we requested that they'd be done in Korean so we got to hear the prayers be done in Korean (which was really cool!).  Haha it was funny because the names we got were Hispanic names!  We looked at the workers and was like, "Really?" and they replied back, "it's a special!"  Haha okay I guess.  We did European and Korean names.  We got to do a lot because being the only temple in Korea, the temple is not as busy as some others in the world.  We met a BYU student from Russia at the temple.  Doing work at the temple was great!  What's not to love about the temple?


Entrance sign to the temple


Seoul Korea temple!

I wish we could have taken a picture in front of it but we couldn't (this next part frustrated me a bit).  Our session was supposed to start at 7 but we didn't get there until 7:30 because the boys were running late.  All the girls got up extra early because we thought we were going to be late but in the end it was the boys who were late.  :-(  Then at 9, we were supposed to be at the US Embassy in 서울 Seoul!  Yeah we were pushed for time because if we would have gotten there on time, we would have had more time to do work and to get ready for the day.  We finally get to the embassy and we had to fork everything over.  We pretty much couldn't take anything into the embassy (security reasons obviously).  We got to talk to the US Ambassador which was pretty cool.  He talked about life in the foreign services and politics.  However, I was so tired and so I was doing a little bit of headbanging.  Good thing though, I wasn't the only one though that was doing it.  A funny thing that happened was that as we were leaving, we had to pick up our passports from the security guards.  They ended up giving me Rachael's and Rachael got mine!  Haha you should have seen the panic on their faces; it was priceless!  The ambassador treated us to lunch at SODO, a Japanese restaurant.  I don't know the name of what I had but it was alright.  It was a pork cutlet on top of a salad pretty much.  It was good but I still think Korean food is the best Asian cuisine out there!  :-)




Clock at SODO.  Now that is just cruel!  I want a clock that tells me the time!!  A 1st grader would actually have to think about this one haha lol.


US Ambassador
After lunch, we stopped by the 교보 Kyobo Bookstore.  They have everything here from books, music, movies, a cafe and restaurants, etc.  Haha everyone has something they "nerd" out about, mine is bookstores.  I love them!  I don't know why, they're just really fun to look at.  Although it's underground, this place is huge.  I bought a vocabulary book that has been so helpful here!  Michelle bought Brian Joo's CD which has been lots of fun listenting to.  He has some good songs on there. 


교보 Bookstore. 


Isn't this bookstore cool?  I love the lights above.  Haha so I found out later by a sign that I can't take photos here.  Oh well! 

Dr. Peterson didn't have any other plans for us so he said that we had free time for the rest of the day.  Michelle and I decided to go to 명동 Myeong Dong which is known for street shopping.  Street shopping here is a lot different than what I thought it was going to be.  I thought it was going to be like Chinatown where everything looks cheap, everyone has the same thing, people constantly bartering, and workers trying to get you to buy stuff.  It wasn't like that at all.  Except for one part, at all the skin/beauty stores, those workers are so determined to get you inside, look and buy something.  At least they give you free samples of their products but man you really have to ignore them or avoid going past their store or they will suck you in.  It's not a bad thing if you like shopping for makeup, facial products, etc. But after 20 stores, I was a bit tired of looking at makeup.  In fact, one store I just looked inside briefly and then the lady gave me a basket and literally pushed me inside the store.  Intense.  Michelle and I tried really hard to find idol socks but because it was raining off and on, we couldn't find them because I'm assuming the workers who were selling socks didn't want them to get wet.  Lame!  :-(  We'll have to come later.  Aside from street shopping, they have name brands there as well. 


명동 Myeong Dong




Makeup/Skin stores with the notorious, over zealous workers.  But at least the stores are cute haha.
Nature Republic:  미키 유천 Micky Yoochun, 김재중 Kim/Hero Jae Joong, 시아준수 Xiah Junsu.  OH BABY!!
It's skin:  닉쿤 Nichkhun.  OH BABY!!!


The Face Shop: 김현중 Kim Hyun Joong.  TRIPLE OH BABY!!!
Tony Moly:  가인 Ga-In and 송중기 Song Joong Ki.  OH BABY!

At first, the day started out pretty pressed for time, raining on and off, but overall, it was relaxing and low stress to an extent; an in the end, I went shopping!  I keep saying to myself each day, "man, can Korea get any better?  This place is incredible!"  :-)  Life is so good right now!  I think everyone in the study abroad gets along well.  Especially the girls; we haven't bitten each others' heads off yet.  :-)  I think we will get closer as the days go by.  If could rate my happiness right now on a scale of 1-10, it would be a 11!  Haha :-)