Adventures in the Koreas

Korea is so fun. I am into my third week here and will be leaving next Sunday. It will be pretty hard to leave. It has been great hanging out with Cody again and my friends Erin and Isaac who are working in a nearby city. One of the most pleasant things about the trip though is that Kaeleen came in the same day I did in order to surprise Erin. It was quite impressive that we were able to keep the secret from Erin since so many knew about it except her. When Kaeleen, who was supposed to be in Portland, popped up in Cody's house to surprise Erin, it was one of the best moments ever! Erin was so shocked and confused. I was jumping up and down while Erin couldn't stop yelling and Kaeleen laughed the whole time. It was so great to be together again.

I really like so many things about this country. I can't tell you what a relief it is to be in a country who takes an interest in me again. There have been so many times here where I have said to myself or aloud "This would never happen in Switzerland". Every time Kaeleen and I would be walking around lost or looking for something, people would actually ask us if they could help us! When we were trying to find our hostel, we had a man come up to us and ask if we needed help. He then got out his own cell phone and called the hostel for us to get directions and then proceeded to walk us THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION HE WAS GOING to the hostel door! This would NEVER happen in Switzerland. We also had people come up to us and help us with the ticket machine for the subway. And at night we had several people try to get us to come have a drink with them because they like our blue eyes. People are so friendly and actually want to talk to us and ask us questions.

The food is really good here. The only thing is that I think I would get pretty tired of it if I was living here. I have been craving good bread and cheese and I have only been here a few weeks. But perhaps that is also because that was my main foods in Switzerland for the last 9 months.

Last week Kaeleen and I went to the DMZ (or Demilitarized Zone). We took a tour and rode on a bus to the border of North and South Korea. It was a little scary since there are so many tensions between the U.s. and North Korea right now. But it was very safe and there are so many rules that we have to follow that keep us safe. It was a really interesting experience. I can say that I have actually been to North Korea now. We saw a few North Korean soldiers as well as Propaganda City which is an empty "city" with unused buildings that were created just for the purpose of North Korea seeming outsiders to be a progressive country and look like a normal modern country, which of course it is not. I will post some pictures of the DMZ and that whole tour. Again, if you click on the slideshow below you can see the pictures better and slow down the show.



Some other pictures in this slideshow are from our visit to the Seoul Tower at night. It was beautiful and so so so high! There were locks all hanging onto the fence around the main viewpoint and around the tower. I don't really know the significance of these but it looked cool. Also, there were "love benches" we could sit on at the viewpoint. These benches, as you can see in the picture, were bent in the middle slightly so that the couple has to sit close together. There was a light show that was performed on the tower and loud music playing. It was really cool. The view of Seoul from the viewpoint was also amazing. We went up to this tower with some people we met who were staying at the hostel Kaeleen and I stayed in. We ended up going out with these people and some others later that night in Hongdae, a pretty hip and cool section of Seoul.

Also included in this slideshow are pictures of our Dr. Fish adventure. There are cafes here where you can order a coffee and a waffle and then spend 20 minutes sitting with your feet in a big tank of water filled with little sucker fishes. These fishes swarm to your feet and bite off the dead skin. It feels so weird. I actually was not really able to do it. I could not get both of my feet in the water, and when I finally did get one in, I could only leave it in for about 3 seconds. It was just too weird and scary for me. But Kaeleen and Cody both did it and they claimed their feet never felt better when they were done. Gah!!!

I have other stories to tell about my time in Korea as well as pictures to post but I will have to do this later!