Goodbye Jean!

For lunch on Wednesday ELP took the staff out for lunch as a farewell for Jean (who just moved back to Edmonton after teaching in Korea for several years). We enjoyed a wonderful meal at "Bird's Hill"- a restaurant that has a beautiful view, sweet house wine, and comfy couches :)

Gyeonbokgung

On Saturday we spent the morning exploring Seoul's biggest and most extravagant palace: Gyeonbokgung. Most the the buildings have recently been restored (historically, they were destroyed twice during both of Korea's Japanese invasions). The highlights of our visit to the palace included seeing the changing of the guards, and sitting by the water enjoying the fall colours.

National Folk Museum

After we went to the palace, we took a look around the National Folk Museum (admission to this museum was included in the price of the palace ticket). There were numerous exhibits on all aspects of Korean culture, including art, calligraphy, pottery, embroidery, food, clothing, history, furniture, architecture, and education.




After we had our fill of touristy sight-seeing, we met up with Adam and his wife Elisa (friends of ours from the Toronto ICS crowd). We had coffee together at Starbucks, perused What the Book, explored several antique shops, and enjoyed some Indian cuisine together. Unfortunately, we were having such a good time catching up, exploring, and talking together, I forgot to take any more pictures that day!

Hangul

On Saturday afternoon Dan and I were exploring downtown Won-ju, and a small calligraphy shop caught my eye (actually, we had passed by it on the bus several times, so I was already interested in taking a look around). The store was full of traditional calligraphy brushes, paper, ink, stamps and every other kind of art supply you could think of. I decided then that I wanted to try to learn hangul through calligraphy. Although the proprietor didn't know very much English, and I know even less Korean, she managed to show and teach me a lot about getting started in calligraphy. She outfitted me with ink, a brush, an ink-well, paper, a felt mat to go underneath the paper, as well as a paper weight to keep the paper smooth while I write.
Today I had my first self-directed hangul lesson: I copied all of the Korean characters, and then wrote four words: hong ch'a (tea) kam (persimmon) bap (rice) and sup'a (soup). Right now my goal is to learn Korean well enough to put it on my CV... we'll see how it goes!