Ever since I met Brian...13ish years ago and found out he served his mission in Korea, and with eating all of the Korean food and hearing missionary stories I have always wanted to go there! I still can't believe we finally made it! We have the coolest set of parents on earth that were willing to watch our three little rugrats so we could escape and celebrate our big ten year anniversary! We dropped off Sadie with Brian's parents and took Emmy and Bree down to my parents house and then flew out the next morning 6am to travel for 14 hours to Korea. I did some journaling while I was there so I am just going to insert those entries with some highlight pictures.
We were stuck with hundreds of Koreans on this huge jet. Poor Brian couldn't sleep the entire flight!
This is David who we rented an apartment from. Brian found a great website were we got to have a huge selection of places to stay and we ended up liking one in Gangnam. This was of course extra awesome and easy to remember because of the hit song Gangnam Style.
THURSDAY
Brian is wearing us out checking out all the places he liked
to go as a missionary. I keep thinking of the song from My Fair Lady
about the street where you live. too bad I don't really know the lyrics
so it's mostly the tune going through my head. We went to the mission
home where Brian lived for a year and there was an elder from Idaho
serving there. We ended up seeing six missionaries total. We are
planning on going there again for church. Brian is worried they are
going to have him speak. :)
We just got back from Lotte World
which is the biggest Asian mall\theme park. It is a total knock off of
Disneyland, but scaled down. It has a castle and everything. There is an
ice skating rink that Brian skated on when he was a missionary. We were
watching a bunch of kids practice their speed skating. There were
swarms of Koreans and it was a crazy busy mall. All of the couples like
to wear mating outfits here, but they seem to really pop up here at Lotte World. I bought a delicious korean cupcake that was
the size of a grapefruit which I ate half of and then woke up in the middle of the night famished and ate the other half. We are both still pretty jet-lagged and wake up at weird times.
Brian has been getting us around
the subways really great. We've never missed a stop. We went to a Buddhist temple today and it was
right around the time they were all worshipping so we got to hear a lot
of monks chanting. There was a lot of older Korean women there too. We
went to Olympic Park and chose our favorite abstract art. It was very
hot and we got a nice hot drink drink because it was one of Brian's missionary experiences. He showed me where he used to play basketball and told me a few of his missionary "pick-up lines."
This art piece was Brian's favorite. It was suppose to represent the family.
So far we have had
boondaecheegae for breakfast, bebeempop for lunch. I thought I could
handle an all Korean diet while I was here, but by lunch I was dizzy and
thought I was going to faint, so I'm already not fairing well. Good
thing I've still got a stash of fiber bars from my parents house stashed at the apartment.
Brian
didn't sleep last night. The sleeping pills don't work for him, so he
has been up since 1am and it's 630pm now. Poor guy. I have been using
the pills, earplugs, and an eye mask so I think I've made an okay
adjustment. We are both just a little sick, but all the spicy food helps
clear us up.
We decided we were going to walk to a Buddhist temple from our apartment, which took a little while and made us hungry. We
walked into the Buddist Temple area and there were cute little old
woman bowing to every figure on their way to worship in the temples.
There were at least 6 diff temples we heard monks chanting on
microphones. It took me back to my BYU-Hawaii world religion class
days, but I still couldn't remember much.
FRIDAY
Woke up at
1am and Brian was awake for the day. Everywhere we go in the city there
are Paris Baguettes shoppes which is pretty much a Korean bakery so the name is really misleading.
We never bought anything with a hotdog in it, but I had to get pictures because there were so many pastry options with hotdogs...nasty!
Korean War Memorial
Brian got pretty giddy that we were going to see a
replica of a turtle boat and actually asked me to take a picture in
front of it. Then he made sure I took a good picture of him. So cute.
Brian filled me in on the Korean War because he smart like that. I
drank my yulmoocha (warm rice drink) and tried to take it all in.
Namdaemoon Hyper Shopping
Brian and I found our souvenirs. Three cheap shirts and
Brian bought a turtle boat replica and a bday present for his dad. Brian was looking all over for some special Korean dish and this nice old lady took us to find tongsuyook and jajangmeon. It
was up some teeny tiny stairs in a place we never would have found on
our own. Brian is really great at making Korean food, but this is one
dish he said that he hasn't mastered yet, so oh boy was he excited to have it. I
sorted through a HUGE pile of $3 shirts with older ladies until I found a
few I liked. We found some small souvenirs for the girls as well.
Probably should find a few more.
SATURDAY
Myeongdong Shopping Center
I like Broadway type shows so of course when I saw a show in the top five
things to do in Seoul on Trip Adviser I was so excited. We went to Nanta and it was great. A lot of drumming, chopping, some slapstick humor (my favorite), and not a lot of talking so it was easy to follow. It was also in the same area Brian and I decided they had filmed the
bachelor episode the Juan season, so that led me into
pretending we were on the show and what would we do and say if they were
filming us. Pretend time is fun was fun and I was happy Brian was getting into it. :)
It was still early in the day so we hiked to the Seoul Tower. We took a few breaks and it was a good challenging hike. We
checked out all the cool l locks and decided we would take the tram up
later that night. After hiking back down we had a great BBQ for dinner and hung out with lots
of crazies in the shopping area for awhile. It was a busy day to be
there but I am guessing most days are busy. Then we hiked to the tower
again so we could see the city at night with the lights. We made it up
in under twenty minutes this time and just people watched until sunset.
An annoying group of Chinese people came over to take pictures with us....WE
ARE NOT AN ATTRACTION PEOPLE, but we just smiled and played along. It
must have been date night because so many cute young couples were there in their matching outfits of course.
I told Brian we got to be one of those and made him kiss me. He
wouldn't buy a lock to seal our love so I just took pictures of a few of
my favorite locks. There were so many cute kids running around in the
misted sprinklers. This was probably the very hardest day on us and we
were so beat by the end of the day.
SUNDAY
We went to
Brian's old ward today in Oryun ward and went to sacrament. The
missionaries translated the meeting for me with an earpiece which was
great to be able to understand it. They had a former Stake President/Bishop speak and he had a wonderful conversion story. He was so loud
though it was hard to hear the translator through my earpiece
sometimes. Brian said a lot of times converts come from other churches
that had had a loud pastor and they think that is how they are suppose to sound when they give a talk. It definitely kept us awake! After
sacrament they do a ward lunch and fed us bibimpop, my favorite Korean meal! We couldn't believe they did a big meal like this every
week, but the missionaries said they had every week since they had been
there. Korean meals anyways produce a lot of dishes too and when I
cleared my plate and brought it to the kitchen I felt bad for the women
that had been washing dishes for at least 30 minutes. Everyone was very impressed with Brian's Korean. Luckily a few of the
ward members spoke English so I could join in the conversation. This
is pretty much the only other people I've spoken to this entire trip
besides Brian. Brian has been
deep in thought trying to practice Korean in his head and get us where
we need to go on the subway so it has given me a lot of journaling time.
We came back to the apartment to
change and then took the subway one stop to the Gangum Subway Super
shopping center. We were planning on going to a Palace, but it was
raining pretty hard. Kind of a bummer because I'm pretty over shopping
in Korea at this point. As is Brian. But i do like seeing the shirts
with really bad English on them. They never make sense, but they are
funny now and might be a fun souvenir for a running shirt. After it stopped raining we left
the subway and walked all along a million restaurants. Brian really
wants a Korean buffet BBQ, but I guess they are hard to find the kind
they had when he was on his mission. Everything is more modernized.
We
ate pork bulgogi at a hole in the wall that I thought was just okay. We
then went to another restaraunt that we have walked by so many times
and got kimpop and mandu. The korean guy next to us stared at me most
of the meal and told me when I was doing things wrong. I could tell the
way I was holding my chopsticks was killing him. I gave him the stank eye and he left me alone. To be continued...
A little birthday lunch! 
