Last weekend's sans-internet adventures

I've tried to post these pictures literally about ten times. For some reason, Blogger doesn't want to let me post them, either directly from my computer or from the internet site where I keep a lot of my pics. So that's awesome. But apparently now it loves me so here's my post from last weekend, with pictures.

Saturday morning I devoted to getting strips for my glucometer/trying to fix my internet myself. The strips were sucessfully comandeered (pretty much the easiest thing EVER in Korea...I was shocked) but the internet was another story. After and epic journey and several trips back and forth the same strip of road on a bus, I bought a new cord and discovered this was not in fact the problem. NEAT. And I couldn't call the people to come fix it because hi, they speak Korean and I don't so I kept buggin Karen and then the people were stupid and the whole thing made me so pissed I cleaned the crap out of my apartment. It happens. But it's super sweet to have it squeaky clean. :)

After an epic morning, I went shoe/costume shopping with SeetaandJames. The shoe shopping was totally unsuccessful because the shoe store we went to (I heard it sold big sizes) was in fact an evil lie. NO big sizes. My heart was broken over a pair of boots... I still can't talk about it. Then we went to 남대문 (Namdaemun) Market, which is one of my favorite places to go, to see if they could find a Halloween costume. I had to buy some yarn. Both missions were somewhat successful. Excellent. I also managed to find some silly things to put on and take pictures of. That's always fun.

Wow, that's hot. Tee hee. Halloween stores in Korea are fun!

After that, I was pretty beat so I came home, ordered dinner (my first time and it was AWESOME... they bring it to your house and take the dishes back again. Hot.) and watched Slingblade, which I bought in China and have never seen. Uh huh. Not what I thought it would be, but a good movie. Uh-huh. :)

Sunday I got up early and went to church. After that I went with Mark and 인석 (Inseok) to see a palace. 경복궁 (Gyeongbukgung, The Palace of Shining Happiness) to be exact. Turns out, I'd been there before for a school fieldtrip but this time I was sans kids and got to see a whole lot more of the place, which is really beautiful. I love this time of year because all the leaves changing just makes everything look so great. Everyday trees become so much more amazing. Anyway... it was a great excursion and of course, here are some pics. This palace was destroyed by the Japanese in the late 1800s and has been rebuilt, and is still being rebuilt, so we couldn't see everything. But we did our best.

This one is the part of the palace where they would have royal feasts. All the water was man-made, not natural.

Next is the throne room of the palace.

Couldn't get any closer than that, but still cool. Next is a pagoda the king comissioned. He liked to walk on the dock that lead out to it, apparently, but it doesn't seem like it would be a very satisfying walk 'cause the dock was about 100 ft. long. The king was clearly a fan of short walks.

My favorite thing about that picture is the crane in it. He's down by the stone wall near the water, near the middle of the picture. Can you spot him?

Finally, here's me with the pagoda in the background. A nice pic, if I do say so myself. That Mark's a good photographer.

Overall, quite a satisfying weekend. I'm proud of myself for seeing something touristy, which I haven't done in ages. I need to get on the ball, though, 'cause I'm leaving Korea in a mere 3 months...

I can't believe it!

Much love.