My Feet are O So Weary
But my soul is doing fine

Crikey, I've had a busy week plus. My dad left me yesterday and is currently visiting Joleen in Napa. I heard it took you guys 1.5 hours to find each other at the airport...what up with that? I hope you had a nice visit, Dad...I very much enjoyed having you here. Can't wait until I "visit" you back home in Rochester in 3.5 months. Brighton arrived last Wednesday and will be here another 2 weeks. Busy, busy, busy!

Here is a picture of my dad and I singing in a noraebang...actually, we're fake singing because our time had run out by this point (hence the 'Insert Coin' message on the screen...even though you don't insert a coin anywhere. you just pay the man at the front desk). But anyway, you get the point:


On Friday me, Dad, Brighton, and my friend Colleen stayed at a hotel in Seoul as the next day bright and early we had to be at the Seoul USO office for our trip to the DMZ. I'm not including a lot of pictures of the DMZ because I did a pretty comprehensive job of that the last time I went there with Joleen. So if you're re-interested in it, look back at that post. However, there was one difference this time compared to last time that I was very pleased with. Last time, we could only see a North Korean soldier standing on the stairs of his building pretty far away. This time we got very close views of many North Korean soldiers. They were lined up on their side of the line and were taking pictures of themselves. Which is funny because we are all in the background of their pictures. Haha. A North Korean Commie has a picture of me. So I included a picture of the North Koreans. It was pretty sweet. I also have a picture of a North Korean outpost with a North Korean soldier standing there looking through binoculars. "Hi!"

On Saturday night we (sans Colleen) went to Namsan Tower (Seoul Tower). It's a tall tower in Seoul that gives you a good panaramic view of the city. Pictures don't come out that well. Here's one where you can see the city, but also an overlay of Brighton inside the tower.




On Saturday night we spent another night in Seoul. On Sunday we went to Gyeongbokgung palace, Changdeokgung palace, Insadong, and Namdaemun. Below are pictures of Gyeongbokgung:

Changdeokgung is another palace. Here are pictures from it:

Insadong is a street that has lots of traditional Korean artsy stuff. It's a very cool street. I enjoy it. Namdaemun is a big market. I'm not its biggest fan. Since we were there on a Sunday, all the inside buildings were closed, so only the outside markets were open. Which was fine by me.

On Monday (I had no school on Monday. It was Teacher's Day and lots of schools get Teacher's Day off) we went to Namhansanseong Provincial Park. It is SE of Seoul. We hiked around an old fortress wall. It was pretty neat, but we got slightly lost and ended up hiking double what we intended. Not a big deal, however. We also visited Mangweolsa Temple, which was (possibly) a part of the park. It was very pretty.

Then on Tuesday (no school again...my school's anniversary) Dad went home. :( Brighton and I just chilled a bit. We went to the Osan Air Force Base area near Songtan and had Subway and Baskin Robbins. Today my special English class started for the smarty-pants kids. I really enjoyed it--I think I'll have a good time with those classes. Brighton came for those classes, so they got to meet her and she them. I haven't talked much with her about what she thought. Maybe I'll try to make her write something here about it. But that may be like pulling teeth. We'll see. I will leave you with this picture of someone moving in (or out) of an apartment across from me. They use these giant ladders with a platform that moves up and down to lift furniture onto the balcony and then into the apartment. It looks a bit scary. They're moving in (or out) of a 12th floor here. Crazy.