재미!!!

The Korean word of the day is 재미 pronounced jeh-mi. Jehmi means FUN!

Yesterday (Friday) was an insanely long but fun day. We woke up on the earlier side of the morning (not a regular habit with us these days due to David's fluctuating work schedule) and hopped on the subway to visit the Seoul Immigration Office near Anguk station. Since the military and weather had joined forces to make getting my visa as difficult as possible, we decided to head straight to the immigration office where it took a grand total of 10 minutes to get my visa. So now I'm an official, legal resident of Korea. Hooray!

Since Changdeokgung, a palace built in 1405 during the Joseon Dynasty was nearby, we decided to enrich ourselves culturally and visit the large palace complex. We waited until 11:30 for the English tour but it might as well have been in Korean because I could only understand about 1 in 3 words that our Korean tour guide said in "English." David actually understood the guides better in Korean than in English. Oh well. At least we got a brochure in English that explained everything. And I've only found a few grammatical errors so far.

Here's the main gate of Changeokgung where we began our tour. Various parts of the palace complex were destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again by the Japanese and fire. It was fully restored in 1991. It's a much bigger complex than I thought it would be.

Here we are all walking along toward Injeongmun, the gate (on the left) that opens into the courtyard to Injeongjeon, the throne hall. As you can see, it was raining. Because no Korean day is complete without rain. Luckily for us, though, it drizzled through the majority of the tour and only started to really rain at our last stop.

Here's the throne hall. The guide said something about why they used particular colors on all the buildings and what they mean but I stopped trying to understand her at about this point in the tour.

And here's the interior of the throne room where coronations and state events were held. I especially liked the interesting light fixtures and the interesting blend of Western and Eastern aesthetics.

I don't remember what part of palace this was, but this is a picture of the ondolbong furnaces underneath the floor of one of the rooms. On means warm, dol means rock and bong means room. Basically it means that the floors were heated. Most Korean homes--including ours--still has heated floors. Except we don't have to light a furnace to heat ours. Thank goodness.

And here's David by the king's bed chamber. Or maybe it was the queen's. I forget.

I really can't remember where I snapped this picture, but I loved the look of all the pillars. I just wish it hadn't been such an overcast day so that the colors would have really popped.

The final stop of our tour (right before the rains started pouring down) was the "Secret Garden" where no one could enter unless the king gave his permission. It really wasn't much of a garden in the western sense but it did have a pretty lily pond and terraced walls.

After our tour was over, we found a Korean restaurant near the subway where we stopped to eat. It was a beautifully crafted place, full of wood detailing and open beams. I love that rustic, hand-carved look. I took a few photos of the meal, but I really wish I had taken more so that I could show you how elaborate Korean meals are. Perhaps another post. Suffice it to say, there are only so many choices at a Korean restaurant and unless I'm feeling adventurous, I generally order bulgogi. However, David greatly complimented me by saying that he's been very surprised by how well I've adapted to Korean food since he didn't expect me to like any of it. Sure, some of it is weird, and I don't like how hot and spicy a lot of it is (I'm still not convinced that kimchi is all that great), but some of it is pretty dang tasty and I'm trying to be as open as possible. If I eat enough of it, I'm sure I'll grow to like it.

After lunch, we made our way home. I attempted to put a few more things away (our house is still a disaster. I have no idea where most of our stuff is going to go) and then we called our friends to see if they wanted to brave the Korean cinema and see the new Harry Potter movie with us. But I'll talk about that fun adventure (and my disappointment with the movie) in the next post. Right now, I need to clean my kitchen!