Cherry Blossoms at Gyeongbok

So, I wandered over to Gyeongbok Palace, because I wanted to take pictures of the newly blossomed cherry trees. There was just a slight problem. They were either not yet fully bloomed or half dead. But I did what I could with what I had. I think my pictures turned out pretty well!

This one is definitely my favorite:

My adventure there involved me minding my own business waiting for the subway to come, but then suddenly a man's face was directly next to my face yelling "ARE YOU FROM ENGLAND!?" I was startled and said "No I'm not." He said "WHERE ARE YOU FROM!?" I said "America" and he said "oh" then looked disappointed and wandered off.

Then, while wandering around Gyeongbok, there were bajillions of Middle School students on various field trips to the grounds. I noticed because every single one of them felt the need to say "HELLO WHERE ARE YOU FROM!?" The joys of always looking like a foreigner! A small group of about four middle school students stopped me and asked if they could talk with me to practice their English. I said yes of course, then they made me take a picture with them.

So basically, I just wandered around on my own, saying hello to about a hundred strangers, taking tons of pictures of the palace with the blossoms. It was very beautiful.


























I took some other pictures as well.


I took pictures of more statues, because I think they are cool. and some of them are funny.
Like this one who is smiling broadly
and this monkey. because he's awesome

Then, I made a discovery. Apparently, when Elaine and I were exploring Gyeongbok, we did not see the whole thing. We missed just a small section. This included the following places:

















I'm not entirely sure how we managed to miss all of that, but I'm glad I managed to find it on Thursday! Oops. Perhaps we had lingering jet lag and managed to wander off in a fog without seeing half the palace.

After the palace, I went to work and taught a very small class of middle school students since they are all having midterms at the moment. Then this weekend had lots of fun, which I will blog about later!

This said: "caucus race" which I thought was pretty funny...wrong word person making Alice in Wonderland journal.