Hike, eat, hike some more (Seoul Part II)

This Seoul city vacation has been great! I have one more day in Korea, and I've gotten almost everything on my to-do list of Seoul site-seeting accomplished. I've gotten to share all these experiences with Jon Yang, who's studying rare earth elements in ocean/hydraulic fracturing sediments at Oregon State, and Kelsey Caetano-Anolles who's studying bioinformatics related to favorable muscle tissue and meat traits at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dan Eisenberg (risk management in power networks for improving overall sustainability practices at Arizona State) and his brother, Brandon (plays in a band called Deep Fried in Oakland, CA) have also been joining us.

Day one: Palaces!

Jon and I ventured to two of the five palaces in Seoul on Saturday: Deoksugung (the newest of the palaces) and Gyeongbokgung (the largest, oldest, and main palace currently). Deoksugung is located next to City Hall, right in the center of Seoul, and gave us a concise view of what Seoul Palaces are about. There are several living quarters (one for each of the royal family members), one receiving building for state affairs, and various other buildings for entertainment and business. Deoksugung in particular has two very western style buildings made from grey stone, which were used for foreign affairs. In every palace, the main receiving building has a throne within it, placed in front of a painting of the five guardian mountains of Korea. The walkway out front of these buildings also always has the plaques with the names of the officers stationed at the particular palace (as you can see from this picture, taken at Deoksugung).

The palace grounds are kept nicely, with lots of flowers blooming at this time of year.

The colors are always similar on the outside of the buildings ---the temples, shrines and older buildings I saw everywhere in Korea were all painted in this scheme, with mainly bright red, green, blue, and gold.

This building at Deoksugung was particularly important for me: it was the first place where coffee was served in this part of the world.

This chimney is an original structure. You can see the symbol of the king in the center of the brickwork. It's certainly been well maintained. The palaces have been burned and destroyed multiple times during occupations, fires, and war.

The second palace we visited, Gyeongbokgung, is just in front of the current president's residence, nestled into the mountains, and at the end of a major road in the center of the city. (If you've been watching the news recently, you might recognize this spot because it's also near where the pope visited in Seoul).

Gyeongbokgung is a much larger palace, with many receiving buildings for official affairs, and this building, built on the water for entertaining guests of the royal household.

The heating in the living quarters was a point of interest for John and I: they actually had fires going near/under the building, and allowed the heat to flow under the floors to the rooms (thus the reason why Koreans often sit on the ground in formal situations --I never really got used to this--and also, I think, why they have slept on the floor until recently). This picture shows some really beautiful chimneys outside of the queen's living quarters. These are decorated in a much different way than the rest of the buildings, and have lots of symbols around them in mosaic patterns.

This is a beautiful pagoda on the palace grounds ---they really enjoyed spending time outdoors in gardens in ancient Korea (I appreciated this, too!). The bridge is going over a pond full of lily pads, which had small yellow flowers.

Another of the more interesting parts of this palace was the area where soy sauce (and soy bean paste and chili paste) were made. These clay pots contain something that looks like tofu, which is kept in there for a long time to ferment...

You might be able to make out on this sign that it takes ten years before the soy sauce gets its black color using this fermentation method. I'm not sure how long it takes via modern methods.

Here's the library building, which contained a collection that's now housed at Seoul National University's library. This might be one of the reasons that non-permanent students and visitors aren't allowed to use the S.N.U. library (or at least, we couldn't figure out how to get in).

The living quarters in the palaces are supposed to be kept uncolored, according to Confucian ideals. We saw this in most cases. This wall is outside of the concubine residency at Gyeongbokgung. This area was one of the most popular for having your picture taken in front of that I saw in all the palaces.

Jon and I also ventured outside the palace walls to see the current president's residence (from a distance). You can't see it from my picture, but there are also guys dressed more casually with ear pieces standing on each corner across the street. I hope the guard in the middle of the road here has a short shift because I don't know if I could stay awake for long just standing and watching like this...

We enjoyed some nakchi bokum (octopus stir fried in chili sauce) at a restaurant in Hongdae for dinner on Saturday night --yum! The restaurant had some very odd art:

We also found this art piece that I liked the next day before our adventures ---I really like this solid metal ball that's shaped so that it looks like it's squishing out over the edges of its frame.

Day Two: Han River Ride

We decided to go for a bike ride on Sunday through the waterfront of the Han River (I wrote about this a bit before, too --sorry for the redundancy). Jon, Brandon (Dan's brother), Kelsey and I rented bikes for an excellent price and took a nice Sunday ride past all the masses of people in their mesh tents on this not-so-sunny afternoon. We finished our ride just in time to avoid heavy rain from a nearby typhoon.

Here's us at our next stop (we were pretty wet from running to this one!) ---the pub on the floating island.

Day Three: A City Mountain Climb

On Monday, I left Kelsey's goshiwon a little early and hiked up Gwanaksan, the mountain behind S.N.U. It's one of the guardian mountains that are pictured behind the palace thrones. The path was nicely laid with rocks and very nice wooden or stone steps. It was a perfect morning for a walk --I definitely recommend mid-week visits to the mountains in Seoul since there are lots of people who also enjoy hiking in this city.

The path I took followed a stream most of the way up the mountain - lovely! It was a bit hard to follow, but I somehow managed to make it through to the correct trail the entire way up.

Once I reached the top of the stairs in the picture above, there was a small sign that pointed in the direction of some boulders (a trail?). It turned out to be a really fun little scramble up the ridge on top of Gwanaksan to get to the actual summit. You can see the rocks you have to climb just below the radar (the big white dome) in this picture.

The view from up there was absolutely incredible! The city of Seoul is so much bigger than I could ever have imagined from the ground. White buildings sprawl in every direction around the foot of the mountain.

There are also several temples built onto Gwanaksan, one of which is right up at the top of the stairs I showed above. You could faintly hear the sound of the drums, maybe from an afternoon chant service, from the summit of the mountain.

When I reached the peak, there were several other hikers up there --a few of whom wanted to talk a bit about where I was from, and one who was even a former PhD student from Colorado! There were also --this is so weird --cats. Lots of calicos and white-and-grey-spotted tabbies, just milling around and looking a little scraggly and hungry. We saw one kitty up in the next mountainous area we hiked in, too... seems like an unlikely place for a cat, but I guess they can subsist on scraps and the other critters that feed on scraps. Here's the big rock at the top of the mountain --I made it!

Keep watching for more.... coming soon!

Eat, bike, eat, walk around, eat some more... (Seoul Part I)

My final week in Korea is here! I'm both excited to get back home to go hiking in the Rockies again and also sad to leave the people, foods, and cultural aspects I've gotten to know this summer. I'm spending this week in Seoul, staying with my friend Kelsey in her Goshiwon near Seoul National University (thanks, Kelsey!). We've gone exploring in several parts of the city, and got to spend some time with friends from our EAPSI cohort before they left for home or other adventures. There was also a closing ceremony for our program in which we all gave presentations about our research projects and cultural experiences while we were in Korea, and talked with the group coordinators about any issues we had while in Korea so that the program could be improved next year. 

One of my favorite views we've seen in Seoul so far is this amazing array of rainbow umbrellas that are hung up above a courtyard outside the Hapjeong metro station --so pretty!

Kelsey took some really great pictures and lots of me while I've been in Seoul, which she's given to me to use on this blog ---thanks again, Kelsey! We had a full day of presentations at the Seoul Finance Center on Friday (about 24 ten-minute talks). It was a long day, but we had a wide variety of research projects in our group, from language learning to robotic hand grasping technology to algal biofuel studies. One girl was able to even find a new species of copepod (a micro-critter found in water) and named it after her family. Kelsey has been extremely successful as well, and will be publishing about 11 papers from her work here, including two first-author papers and one that will be in the prestigious journal, Science. Wow!

This was actually a week before I left HUFS, when I came to see everyone in Seoul: here are Nicole, Shawn, and Dave after a tasty meal of deokkboki (rice sticks in sauce) and ochingeo (squid) that we cooked over an open flame at our table.

Kelsey took me out for some delicious nakchi bokkum (or something like it --stir friend octopus), and we happened to get some of these funky, crunchy anchovies on our plate as well. There were mini squid mixed in, too. Salty!

Here's me and the tasty octopus meal. Although some restaurants in Korea may not look like much from the outside, appearances can be very deceiving here. This place in Nokdu is amazing!

Seoul is a great city for traveling around as a tourist because you can get pretty much anywhere during the day using the metro/subway system. This is a picturesque shot from the train on our way between the south and north parts of the city, going over the Han River.

We  end up spending lots of time in the subway stations because this is such a great way to get around (also, we stop and browse the very cheap clothes and goodies that are in the stations).

One of my favorite places in Seoul so far is Hongdae, since there's so much to do for people our age --shopping, eating, dancing, and of course drinking. It's expensive and usually very packed, but Dan (in the hat on the right in this picture) is a local here and takes us to places that are a little less expensive and very cool. He plays the pandero and other percussion instruments, so he's made some friends here who play music, too. Unfortunately, Dan got a terrible case of appendicitis this summer, which was discovered last week. He had an appendectomy and has been in the hospital for almost a week now, eating only rice gruel and somehow entertaining himself... he's getting out today, though! We're going to go to Insadong, an area with good traditional item shopping and tea houses. His brother, Brandon, is also visiting and has been going with us on little adventures around the city.

Dan showed us this great kettle corn ice cream place --yum!

And this makkoli place with tasty little popped corn treats that I can't get enough of (me, Kelsey, and Dan are in this picture).

Kelsey and I also spend a lot of time in coffee shops, working and drinking the various amazing treats they have here. They make juice drinks by blending fruit and ice --that's it!

One of the other EAPSI students who's with us in Seoul this week is Jon, who's going to OSU (go Beavers!). He's a great travel partner.

Although he's already gone home and he hates having his picture taken so I don't have any photos of him, Deekei from our EAPSI group has been a great friend as well. He's Korean and has gotten me out of some tough spots, including when I didn't have an address to take a cab back to Kelsey's goshiwon. He took us to this beautiful tea museum in Insadong on our last night together --we tried some absolutely delicious fruit teas that were so think they were like juice! We talked about the beginnings of universes and cosmology since he works on associating background light sources in the universe with major events such as the first stars.

This green ball is a shaved ice dessert, green tea flavored and soooo good!

...And of course we do a lot of sitting around reading guidebooks and looking at Google maps to figure out our next activity...

Jon and I went to the main palace and the newest palace in Seoul on Saturday of this past weekend. These are collections of buildings that had specific uses for the royal families in Korea: the receiving hall with a great throne showing the five important mountains in Korea, living quarters, and even chambers for the courtesans.

On Sunday, we went biking on the Han River --again, some pretty flat tires, but really fun!! In this picture are me, Brandon (Dan's brother), and Jon.

There were lots of people out enjoying the mostly cloudy, not-too-hot day along the Han. Many of the people have tents to sit in, and the kids were jumping around in the water and sliding down into the pools. You can also see the north side of Seoul in the distance.

Here's me on my little purple cruiser bike, and the 63 building in the background (it has an art gallery on the top floor, cinemas, and even an aquarium inside somewhere).

From the riverside, it actually kind of looks like Portland!

After biking, we re-emerged from the subway to find it absolutely pouring outside and ran for cover in a building on a floating island that was built and anchored to the bottom of the Han. Inside there are restaurants and cafes --we ended up going to this pub with some beers from the US and very tasty but expensive french fries! What a view.

Here are Jon, Kelsey, and Brandon at the island pub.

...More to come soon!