Gyeongbokgung Palace

Today is the actual day of Chuseok, so a lot of things were shut down. I was toying around with the idea of striking out to explore the mountain that is near my house, but I was having a hard time working up the motivation to go and do that by myself. I was on facebook, and one the people from the "new teachers in South Korea" group had posted that he was throwing together a last minute group to meet at Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul. I decided that I'd head down that way, see the palace, and maybe meet some new people.

The subways were pretty empty, but I was surprised at how many people were at the palace itself. There was a procession of people dressed in period costumes from the era that the palace was built. It was originally constructed in 1394, then it was rebuilt in the 1800's. The name means "Palace Greatly Blessed By Heaven". All of the architectural details were pretty cool to see, but they didn't translate too well with my little point and shoot camera.

After we walked around the palace area for awhile, we all split up to go separate ways. One girl and I decided to go to Itaewon for dinner. Itaewon is commonly known as the foreigner's district. It is near one of the military bases, so it is a lot more international than the rest of Seoul. We ended up eating Mexican food. I ordered a fajita, and it was pretty good, but there definitely wasn't as much spice on it as I was used to. This surprised me, because a lot of the Korean food I've had definitely has some kick to it. We ended the evening by going to this really foreign place called "Coldstone Creamery". You should try it sometime ;-)

Here are some pictures from the palace. There is a picture of me in front of the palace, but it is on someone else's camera, and it hasn't been posted to facebook yet. Maybe I'll update this whenever that happens... Or maybe not.