National Museum of Korea

So on... Saturday (the real Saturday), my family plus my cousin's mom and grandparents went to the National Museum of Korea. It was actually really cool. 

The interior of the museum. 

There's no entrance fee to the museum, which is awesome. Getting an audio player thing is less than $3, which is also amazing. Even though it was a weekend, it wasn't busy at all. There was lots to see. I posted a few of my favorite pics below. Enjoy :)

I want these earrings. Look how intricate they are. No idea when they were made, but yeah. So pretty (and heavy)!

A shell mask. Cool huh? Made by some of the earliest settlements on the Korean peninsula. 

Part of the 한글 or "Korean Language" exhibit. Showing the 11,000+ character combinations that you can use in Korean. Lucky for Koreans, most of the combos don't even exist. Korean is actually pretty easy to learn; really systematic. The grammar is very different from English and the pronunciation is difficult, but reading is easy peasy. 

I was reaaally excited to see the celadon-ware. This was one of my favorites. A teapot. Check out the intricate design and the beautiful green color. They don't know how to make that color anymore =\ Lost over time. 

I think this was a bronze incense burner. 

A 10-story pagoda. Ridiculous, yeah? That's my dad looking up at it. SO TALL. 

These are my parents :) We're on the 3rd story of the museum. 

Yay end!

I love the subway.

I'm sure you've all heard of the terrible driving that takes place in Korea. And trust me, it's pretty bad. Cars cutting each other off with inches to spare, making completely illegal U-turns, parking where there really isn't a spot, more cutting off with inches to spare, etc. But they're surprisingly good parkers. 

Every time you go into a parking lot, you notice that they always park head out. It's never (well, rarely), head in. They always back into a spot. I'm guessing it's so that they can get out more quickly and because then you can see if a car is whizzing around the corner and about to hit you as you pull out. Very interesting. 

I went to a Home Plus for the first time. Think a really compact department store for cheap, like a Wal-Mart. 

Korea does not have Wal-Mart. Because Wal-Mart pulled out. That's right. Korea defeated Wal-Mart (Click here for a NY Times story). My cousin's husband explained to me that Wal-Mart didn't connect with Korean shoppers. They had a sprawling store with high ceilings, sort of in the American style, but Koreans didn't like it. They prefer the compact, multi-layered store. But yeah. Koreans are tough to please, apparently. 

On Sunday, after church, we went to Lotte Department Store again. Now last time I told you it was this gigantic department store. It's also attached to a giant hotel. And it has its own amusement park inside. And it has something I didn't know existed until yesterday — a folk museum. Not like an art gallery. But like a museum with replicas of buildings. What the heck. And inside the "museum," there are restaurants. Not a restaurant. Plural. So we ate at one of these.

This was my lunch. Rice, veggies, and spicy squid. SO SPICY. SO GOOD. I love that stuff. 

This was my dessert. I don't know how to explain it. It's like hardened sugar, but not crumbly. It's like hardened caramel but not chewy either. 

This is part of one of the replicas. Cool lighting, eh?

Me and Hyunjoo in front of a store replica. 

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Eventually I went out on my own to try to find this other church, so I took the subway for the first time since I got here. Man, last time I went out less than an hour after I moved into my dorm, but this time it took me 4 days. This is the Seoungnae subway station. It's one of the rare outdoor ones.

So I never actually found the church (long story), but it was fun walking around for 45 minutes around small stores, apartment buildings, 5 other churches, and tons of schools. So I'll end this entry here. Miss you guys!