Day 2 Seoul

We have had some real adventures here with our lack of ability to communicate. Last night we got into a taxi and asked the driver to take us to Dongdaemun Market which is considered the center of fashion shopping here. It was hard to tell whether the cab driver didn't know where it was, didn't think we would like it or refused to take us there for reasons of his own, but his remarks and gestures seemed to imply refusal. The comedy was amplified because everyone here, including this cab driver, expects Jake to speak Korean. The man went on and on while talking only to Jake. We quickly gave up and offered an alternate destination of COEX where we had been earlier in the day.  Unfortunately, I wrote it down as COET instead of COEX which made it completely unrecognizable to our driver who finally hailed a pedestrian who was bilingual and we sorted it all out. Even when Jake says he only speaks English, people continue to talk away directly to him in Korean.

Today we went on a bus tour, the kind which allows you to get off and on at any of the stops. We figured this would be a good idea since it didn't require us to communicate with anyone at all. We did make it to Dongdaemun this time and enjoyed the experience of shopping in a completely different way than  we are used to. The entrances are called gates and this entire, huge shopping area has tons of individual vendors selling absolutely everything. Even the underground passage that allows you to cross the incredibly  busy street is crammed full of merchandise for sale. Every so often you encounter a booth wedged in where people are cooking things that look pretty interesting, but we weren't quite that brave. The most intriguing one to me was what looked like a mound of french fries stuck together on a stick.

After shopping, if you can call it that because we only bought one shirt, we got back on the bus and went to Changdeokgung Palace.  Now I thought we were going there to watch the changing of the guard at 2:00, but it turned out the changing of the guard was actually at Deoksugung Palace. If you remove the "Chang" don't those words look about the same? I thought "Chang" might be some type of palace prefix since the other palaces in the tour book seemed to begin with it. Anyway, we were so pleased to arrive at about 1:45,  just in time for the changing of the guard or so we thought. The ticket taker tried to shove Jake into the palace and to shove us out. We later realized this was because the tour guide was narrating in Korean and the English tour was later. I can't tell you anything about this wonderful, ancient palace because we couldn't understand a word of it, but it was beautiful and the grounds were lovely. We are attaching some pictures!

Any of Jake's teachers who are reading this will be pleased to know we are about to do some homework! Tomorrow we will be able to say that "day after tomorrow" we will get Gage!!