Seoul!!!

Pohang can no longer contain us and all of our awesomeness, we've had to take road trips two weeks this month. That's not really true, I had to go to Seoul to take the Graduate Record Examination or the GRE. I don't know if I'm going back to grad school, but to even have a chance I've got to take the test. I studied for months and I am now officially ready for grad work once again. Now I've got to send out applications and wait. We'll see. If I don't go back to school, maybe we'll stay in Korea, maybe we'll move back to America, who knows. Until that stuff is all done there probably won't be as many pictures, but for now, here's the start of our trip to Seoul.

Because Seoul is farther north than Pohang and because the sun only shines like 3 hours a day there due to the buildings and some weird phenomena that says it must be cold there eight months a year, it was cold and rainy and not that much fun to be outside. That was fine with us as we bounced from restaurant to coffee shop and back again. Seoul's a real city with 12 million people and the services to provide for them. From shopping to eating, sports to entertainment, Seoul's got a ton of stuff to do, if you don't mind constantly being surrounded by people, cars, and grey buildings. We ate Mexican (which you can't get in Pohang), we ate awesome breakfast food (which you can't get in Pohang), we ate sandwiches (which you can't really get in Pohang), we ate hamburgers (which you can sort of get in Pohang) and we ate a ton of chocolate awesomeness which you definitely can't get in Pohang.

Overall it was a great weekend marred only by the two 5 hour bus rides and the four hour test in which I bombed the math part. As always here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

Zach and Sara

Dongguksa, right in the middle of Seoul, a beautiful park.  Sara and I were here two or three years ago, hard to believe it's been that long.

The Glass Hall

Seoul's crazy new city hall building.  It looks like a giant wave crashing over the old city hall building.  Very cool.

Paint

We went to the Seoul Art Museum because we thought there was a Van Gogh exhibit there.  We were very wrong and it ended up costing us a half day.  Oh well, we took pictures and we ate and we went to the Van Gogh on Sunday.

Old and New

Here's the old city hall and the new city hall.  The glass gets pretty close to the old building, it's a cool look.

Cold in Seoul

Seoul was cold.  Much colder than Pohang.

The Yellow Wave

One of city hall from in between the two buildings.

The Flying Pan

The Flying Pan in Apgujeong may be my favorite breakfast restaurant in the world.  It is awesome.  This is the bacon french toast, with a giant pile of ricotta cheese on top.  Incredible.  I would go every weekend if I could.

Eski-Poe

Sara's new coat makes her look like an eskimo.

Cafe Mama's

Behind City Hall is this place, Cafe Mama's an awesome sandwich and salad place.  It's unbelievable to me that in Pohang I can't get a sandwich that's anything more than two pieces of wonderbread, a Kraft single, and a thin slice of meat.  So this place was an awesome experience for the sandwich deprived.

City Hall

One more of the new city hall eating the old city hall.  This thing is brand new, as it only opened a couple of months ago.  My interpretation is that it represents the "Korean Wave" or hallyu, which is what Korea's cultural move into the rest of the world is called.  It started back in the 90's with the spread of Korean pop music into China and has continued with fashion, music, technology, and food and has spread out from Korea to China and southeast asia and America.  PSY's Gagnam Style is like the unstoppable tsunami that floods the world and leaves us all horse dancing.  This building to me is the glass-and-steel manifestation of that wave. They should probably put a PSY statue surfing the wave.