Dinner AND a Show! - Sunday Dec. 16, 2007

We had a 6:00AM wake up call this morning! I got ready and went to wake up my host mom. We went to breakfast; it was buffet style. We met up at 8:00AM in the lobby. Today we visited the Forbidden Palace. I had an English headset, so I was able to understand a lot more than I expected to. The headset was, however, worked based on geographical location. Since the tour guide moved faster than the information I was receiving, there was quite a bit of information left off.

After the Forbidden Palace, we headed to take carriage/bike rides. It's hard to explain. It's like a two-person carriage attached to a bicycle, and apparently we paid for someone to pedal around with us in these carriages. They actually took us to specific locations and waited for us to return. The first stop was a very traditional house. It is actually under protection from being sold or destroyed, because of how traditional it is. We were invited into the home, which was a little strange seeing as how someone is currently living there. I don't know the whole story, but basically he lives somewhere else and just owns the house. There are many tourists who come to see it though. After leaving the traditional house, we got back in our little chariots and rode to a traditional market. Oh, this market was so incredible!! There were rows and rows of fresh fruit and vegetables of ALL kinds! We were only got to stay there for a few minutes, but we managed to buy some star fruit, leche, and rambutan. I had never had star fruit before; I'm not sure if I liked it all that much. Rambutan and leche, I had a bad experience with earlier in Korea...didn't like it AT ALL, but I think they both have grown on me! The guides bought us some sunflower seeds and bread. The bread was like nan (Indian bread); oh so incredibly delicious. We were told that instead of popcorn at movies, people take sunflower seeds; sometimes because of the noise of the sunflower seeds being cracked open, it is difficult to hear the movie. I'm pretty sure I can never go to a movie in China; it would drive me crazy!

We got back in our chariots and headed back to the buses. We went to lunch at a Korean restaurant; I will never understand why people visit another country but still eat food from their own country; however, it was interesting to see how China does Korean food. When we entered the restaurant, there were people there to greet us in Korean, but they didn't actually know Korean. It's hard to explain the feeling of being in China. I've never visited another country while living in a different country other than my own. It was strange to see my host mom not be able to communicate with people; at one point I told her, "Now you know how I feel in Korea." I was mostly joking, but it's somewhat true. It's a good experience for people to be in situations where they literally don't speak the same language; it helps people grow and learn to become creative with communication. Anyway, it was a meat restaurant. Ha! There was no problem though; I found plenty to eat.

After leaving, we visited the second home of an empress. I'm not entirely sure what that means; whether she had two houses or if she moved to this house after the first house she lived in. I'm also not completely sure why it was only the empress' house; I think that back in the day emperors had multiple wives, hence, they each had separate houses. I occasionally wandered off to hear some of the English groups explaining the house. LOL!

While on the trip, we had to visit certain malls to help reduce the price of the trip. It wasn't bad at all though; all of the malls/shopping areas were interesting to visit. The trip was all under $500 except for what I spent otherwise. That $500 included the flight, my $110 visa, the hotel, and all meals. Crazy! The first "mall" we went to was actually a tea testing. We were then offered super expensive tea to buy. I suppose it was a fairly decent deal, but I don't like tea enough to pay $80 worth. The second "mall" we went to was not a mall but a silk factory. I again attempted to listen to an English group's explanation. We were shown the silk making process all the way from the worm and the cocoon to the the finished product of a blanket that took 9,000 cocoons to make. We were then invited to buy silk products; most of them were fairly expensive. There was a BEAUTIFUL blue dress that I was tempted to buy, but it was the equivalent of about $70. Instead, I bought 10 pairs of silk socks for 10,000 Won ($10). I'm slightly obsessed with socks...even though I hate wearing shoes! The last "mall" we went to today was...a bed factory. We sat through a spiel about how wonderful latex (not sure if it was actually latex; I didn't entirely understand) mattresses and pillows are. They were also super expensive! My host mom and her friend ended up buying two each though. They spent more on those pillows than I have on pillows in my entire life!

We headed to dinner afterward. It turned out to be dinner and a show; they were both amazing! The dinner was a HUGE buffet! There was sashimi, sushi, chopchae, all kinds of meat, spaghetti, salads, tons of dessert, etc! The show ended up being international dances! I didn't recognize some of the names of the areas where certain dances were from. For one of the dances, a woman came out with a snake wrapped around her; I felt so bad for the snake! It was shedding horribly, and I'm pretty sure that they had its mouth taped shut. >_< She also came off stage and was putting it around audience members; hopefully nobody was incredibly terrified of snakes. I'm terrified of spiders, and if someone had put a spider on me, I probably would have cried!

We got back to the hotel around 9:30PM, and I promptly fell asleep! I was so exhausted. I woke up at around 11:00PM when my host sis brought me part of a dragon fruit to try; it was pretty tasty. I had never had it before. It's quite interesting looking; look it up if you have never seen one. I ate a bit of it and then passed out again. LOL!