TDay Dunch - Saturday Nov. 17, 2007

We woke up around 8:00AM, because none of us could stay in bed any longer. Meghan, Alison, Jen, and I met Lindsey and we all hung out at a bakery for a while. Jen and I were going to meet up with Ray to go to the art museum near the embassy, but he kind of took forever. So, instead, we went shopping in Dongdaemun. There are a few large markets in the area. By large I mean one store is about 7 floors; you can also bargain with the shop owners. I ended up spending too much money on a few shirts and a scarf, but oh well. Jen was my fashion advisor but none of them were my financial advisor.^^

We headed out at about 1:00PM to go over to the embassy for what has lovingly been deemed Thanksgiving dunch (It is after lunch and before dinner). The ambassador and his wife were there to greet us. I sat at the table with the ambassador, and we exchanged Korean experiences. He and his wife were quickly moved into this position, because the guy before had to abruptly leave after only a year. The current ambassador has been in this position for two years. Surprisingly, the ambassador had a few....interesting comments. Besides those few comments, he and his wife enjoy this placement the most out of all the placements they have had. He went to Yale, and they are originally from Massachusetts.

After eating entirely too much, I ate dessert. Tony played a song on his guitar and sang to Mrs. Shim; it was the highlight of the dinner! We promptly were kicked out around 3:30PM; I believe the ambassador had an appointment to get to.

A few of us headed to the museum that we hadn't made it to this morning. Let me tell you about this awesome museum (sense the sarcasm?) Ok, I'm sure this is an incredible museum...when it actually has paintings in it. Because they are currently setting up for a Van Gogh exhibit, we paid all of 700 Won (70 Cents) to get into see ONE room of Korean paintings based on American novels and movies.

After our exciting museum visit, Jon, Jen, Tom, Meghan, Amy, Jeremy, Lindsey, and I decided that we would walk to Seoul Tower instead of taking the subway. Well, see, we weren't exactly sure where the tower was, but we could see it. So we walked in its general direction. It was pretty darn entertaining. We formed a human chain as we oddly got lost amidst an enormous shopping area, we created chants to psych ourselves up when we went in the wrong direction (Tower Power, Tower, Tower Power Flower, etc), and we nominated a leader. When we came to a dead end at the base of the hill that the tower sits on, we asked for directions (this was after about an hour of walking...AND it started raining.) A woman told us the directions of how to get up the mountain, but then explained that it was a very long climb. So, instead, we took the cable car that she pointed to. It ended up being $14 with the tower included, so only Jeremy, Meghan, Tom, and I went up. The tower was a good experience, but because it was raining, the windows were quite foggy and we couldn't see much. We met everyone else, including Lily (Jon's...friend) at the bottom after we were done. We met Alison, Jenna, and Ray at Myeongdong station, but lost Ray and Jen. People were in and out of the group all night. Jenna left a little later too.

We were going to see a movie, but since Beowulf was the only movie out, we decided to pass. We, instead, ended up in the Lotte cafeteria for dinner and then a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. We managed to fit 9 people into a round booth.^^ We sat there talking for a few hours. Tom and I got into it a little bit about politics. THAT was a fun discussion! We talked about how our awesome president still thinks that we can win the war in Iraq, about war in general, about pacifism, the Vatican, etc. It was hard to start other conversations, because I was continually being asked questions about what I thought. Normally, I'm perfectly fine talking about how I feel about American national politics, but we were in such a massive group, that I thought maybe it would best be left for another time. BTW...Lily is amazing! She is such a sweetheart, AND she helped me deal with Tom. LOL!

We headed out so we could back to the hostel from hell before midnight before the subway stopped. Even on the subway, Tom was asking me questions...I believe something along the lines of how I would feel about war if another country bombed New York and 4,000,000 people were killed. Hmm...

I waited for Jen at the final subway stop to help her get back to our hostel. Alison and Meghan headed back to make sure that we could get our key before the office closed. We did a short fashion show of the clothes we bought earlier and then headed to bed.