Photographers and Fish

A few weeks ago, my friend Eve needed a couple people to accompany her on a tour for her job. She said that we would probably be interviewed for the newspaper, since it was for a tourism article in a Korean newspaper. So Heloise, her French friend and I went along and went on the tour of Gangnam at 8 in the morning. So I woke up bright and early in the morning at an hour rarely seen by me and headed to Gangnam about 45 minutes away.


Our first stop was Bongeunsa, which is a Buddhist temple in Gangnam.


Little did I know that we would be constantly followed by a photographer, which was uncomfortable.


Also little did I know that those pictures would not end up in the newspaper. And I was not asked any questions. So I just had a spontaneous free tour on the Gangnam City Tour Bus.


Bongeunsa was founded in 794. We first went into the main area, where people were praying and there were a lot of Buddhas. The photographer asked to take a picture of us looking upwards at the ceiling.

I didn't get a lot of time to take pictures, so I'll have to go back to the temple sometime in the near future when it's not horrendously cold outside.

We walked over to these lanterns hanging from the ceiling. I'm not sure if they're always there or were just there temporarily.

Here are Eve and Heloise

This is one of the largest Buddhas in Korea, or the largest one. I don't remember exactly.

This is the bottom of the statue.

Eve

Here's an elephant on the outside.

We then went to Eunma market, which is a market that sells traditional foods. We also ate lunch there, which were some Korean pancakes (not pancakes) and dumplings.

Here are some fish.

Here are some more fish, they are hanging this time.

Rice cakes

Dumplings/mandu

A live octopus.

A dead octopus.

Some vegetables

Dried fish.

We then went to Samsung tower, which sells electronics that we didn't really look at since we didn't need electronics, so we went to a coffee shop. We then got lunch at a Japanese restaurant.








Also Elaine visited at the end of November and we got these delicious lamp kebabs. It was fabulous.

Elaine and I had a great time wandering around and shopping. I was very happy she came to Seoul!

Fireworks and Vampires

Over the summer, when it was really hot outside, Carrie and I went to a Louvre Exhibit, which had items from the Ancient Greece and Rome exhibits, which was fabulous. We couldn't take pictures, but here's some pictures of the outside. And a picture of a brand of wine, which is called Vampire for some inexplicable reason.

This summer, Shola was in town. We met while studying German in Austria and finally saw each other again. I had slight communication issues, due to the fact that I was mixing German, Korean and occasionally French into my attempt to speaking. Luckily, she speaks both German and Korean, so it worked out fine. It was great to catch up with a friend from Vienna! Hopefully, I get there this summer so I can see everyone again!


Here's a picture of an incoming typhoon. The one that turned out to be extremely boring and uneventful in Seoul.

Hye Jin and I went to see a fireworks show. It was an international fireworks show, where countries such as France, the US and China gave fireworks shows, which were pretty awesome. I tried to take pictures, which was a bit difficult, but some of them turned out well.

There were a ton of people, as is normal at any event in Seoul.

Here are the people.

I enjoyed taking some night pictures while we were watching the fireworks.

We walked a lot to see all the fireworks, then walked some more to go back to our neighborhood. Hye Jin said, "Don't worry, it's very close!"

5 miles later, we made it back to the bus stop. She underestimated a bit.

That black spot was completely invisible, but then showed up in my picture and shocked me.

I asked what it was...Apparently it's an island. It was just too dark to see it.

Traffic because people were watching the fireworks.












The people again.

More people

Traffic again.

That's the main government building.

A cool bridge at the end of our super long, but very nice walk.