Wednesday

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Well today was busy, very very very busy. I had an agenda when I came here of where I am going each day. Todays agenda had five places on them. I have a budy/tour guide with me who is the son of the family I am staying with. He is twenty eight and his name is Yoon Ji Jung. He speaks the most english and can roughly carry on a conversation. I gave him a copy of my agenda as well as a copy in Korean. He was totally in controll today navigating and choosing when to go to each destination. He also decided to make a four destination day into a nine destination day. Some of the locations I had on other days were moved to today. I set the pace stopping when I needed to and telling him when it was good to leave and such. He was very patient and very helpful throughout the entire day. Today, according to my agenda, we were supposed to go to Gyoenbokgung palace, Jogyesa, Dongminmun, and Seodaemun prison. We actually went to Deoksugung Palace, City Hall, Chung Kye Chun, Dongdeamun, Buk Chon Folk Village, Meongdong street, Nan Dae Mun Market, and Seoul Tower. This was a ton of walking and pictures. I estimated that I would take about 200-300 pictures. Well I ended up killing one of two batteries, filling up a memory card and taking 869 pictures!!! WOW. Well I wasnt planning on taking that many but I planned ahead. I have plenty of storage space and enough time to sort everything out. Now about my day, I loved it. I was extremely cold and misrable most of the morning. I had on three layers topping it off with a ski jacket. We walked alot of the day taking the subway for major distances. I love the culture, the people, and just the way of life. I was not treated as an outsider often and greeted positivly everywhere I went. Coffee is huge here, thus being the reason we had three cups today. I is a very defined culture that is just interesting to observe. There are common similarities but each individual seems to define themselves so way or another. By taking pictures I have to view each moment as a picture. Thinking how the "shot" would look. The great shots I take, and hope that they turn out well. The food here is awesome, I havent had anything I dont like yet. The food of the day is Sam Kye Tang, this was lunch, it is a Korean chicken broth soup ish. It was very good and served with kimchi and rice. I am now sitting in my room going through the hundreds of pictures backing them up on CD's. It is the New Years and I have no idea what I will be doing for it. Hope yours goes well and I will post again tommorrow.

Andrew
19.40