Korea's got a lot of Seoul

So Rachel and I arrived in Seoul yesterday (5pm local time) following a long, long plane ride. We left my house at 4am on Sunday morning to get to DFW and then we flew to San Francisco. Once we were in San Francisco, we met Rachel's grandparents and they drove us to Fisherman's Wharf where we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Pier 39. We walked around for a while, saw the sea lions, and then had a super early lunch on the pier (clam chowder in sourdough bowls...yum!!). The weather was so good! By the time we got to the pier all of the fogginess had burned off and we could see the beautiful blue California sky. Rachel's Grandparents then dropped us back off at the international terminal of San Francisco airport and we waited for our flight to Seoul. I am so glad we got to get out of the airport for a little while and spend time with Rachel's fun grandparents before our 11 hour flight.

When we boarded our plane, talked to the guy sitting next to us for a little while. He told us he worked for a high tech company and for the past two years he has been traveling every other week for his job. Crazy - I couldn't do it. We had lunch again on the plane and then I got around to the very important business of catching up on sleep. After a few hours of sleep, two movies, laughing hysterically with Rachel, disgusting mystery noodles, 4 cups of black tea, and 11 hours of being forced to remain in my seat with my seatbelt buckled, we both arrived at the Seoul airport. We met her friend, Sua, in the airport and she brought us to her apartment. We were both deleriously tired, so we went and got some food for dinner and then came back and went to sleep.

Today was a lot of fun! We woke up late and then lazed around Sua's apartment for a few hours while she was in class. So much different than last semester in med school! It was great be able to sleep in without needing to study or feel guilty because I'm not studying. Haha. We then got ready after a lunch of dumplings and took the Seoul public trans to this little neighborhood of traditional Korean houses. They were so cute! We found a tea place around that area and had some Korean tea. We had lotus flower tea, 5 flavor tea, and some icy pumpkin stuff that was really good. (I think the pumpkin was Rachel's favorite). The tea room was beautiful, peaceful, and had a great view of a couple of the mountains that surround the city.

Next we went to Insadong street, where there were a bunch of souvenir shops. We wandered around for a while after a ridiculously long search for a global ATM and looked at all of the Korean stuff for sale. We stopped at the tourist information center for directions to this place we wanted to go to for dinner and saw that they had traditional Korean outfits for rent if you wanted to take pictures. Rachel and I donned the dresses and had a lot of fun posing for some pictures. I'm not sure exactly how to post pictures on here if we're on a different computer, but I'll try to later. After we were finished with that, we wandered a little bit more, then went to this restaurant for traditional Korean food. It was so much fun! We had a private room and there were several different courses of food. Sua explained what all of it was and told us how to eat it. I am so stuffed right now, but it was definitely worth it :).

After dinner we walked around and found this stream that runs through the middle of Seoul. We had perfect timing and caught the last part of a light show and a virtual flower garden. It was beautiful, but it started raining pretty hard. After a trip to a book store to buy a journal for Rachel, we came back to the apartment. All in all it has been a great first day in Korea!!