Sunday in Seoul

Only one more day before we meet Madeleine!

We woke up at the usual 3:30 am, read the Holt board and found that the Morning Tomato was closed Sunday. Decided to go to church! I found the International Lutheran Church which has services in English (it's near the Spanish embassy), and we went. It was great! We met a woman who teaches middle school at the Seoul Foreign School, and she gave us ideas for where to go and what to do. She would have invited us for dinner, but school just started back last week and she has play practice every evening. She did give us her email and phone. We talked with lots of people, and had lunch at a nearby Korean restaurant (behind the Harley Davidson dealer). Sat on the ondol floors and had kimchi chigae (soup) and pollock (koldadi?).

Everywhere we go, Audrey attracts attention. Lots of people, mostly girls but not all, say hi, wave at her, pull her pants leg down to cover her ankles, ask her name... It makes the subway much more enjoyable than the typical "look down and pretend you don't see anyone" experience.

Our "guide" thought we might like to shop at Insadong because she thought they might have more there on the weekend, and it was near the Korean Folk Museum (indoors) and Gyeongbokgung palace. But since it seemed like today was going to be the warmest, sunniest day, we decided to do the Itaewon/tourist shopping thing. It was fun. We bought some typical touristy stuff for us (chopsticks/spoons, a sweater for me, a really cute hanbok for Audrey) and as gifts (dolls, tassel ornaments...). Audrey collapsed about 4:00 and fell asleep in my arms, so we had an early dinner of Korean BBQ pork ribs, stopped by Starbucks for a mocha--a happening place, 3 stories, warm, crammed with young people chatting, playing scrabble, studying (Chinese, I think), etc. And here, we were able to communicate because lots of English was spoken, or the vendors had cards with prices on them to point to. Tip: don't buy at the first place you see, and haggle!

We meet Madeleine tomorrow! This process has been almost a year and a half for us, but it hasn't really seemed real to me until we arrived in Korea. I'm so glad we came, even with the early stress.

{I forgot... we took someone's sugestion and bought the subway cards today. Since we obviously were not communicating what we wanted, a young man who spoke some English came up and tried to help us. However, we still had to basically argue with the attendant for several minutes to get him to sell us the card! He even gave us paper tickets and change, which we made him take back and give us the cards. BTW, they cost 2500 won to buy, then we had to add 5000 won to the card at purchase time... well, I guess we had to. So it was 15000 won for the two cards, but you get a discount of 100 won on each trip}