South Korea Part 1

We just got back from an awesome 6 day trip to South Korea!  All credit for this trip should go to my student from last year, Hatty Lee.  She is the one who started our crazy obsession with all things Korean.  Korean music and TV dramas are extremely popular in China.  Most of my students love Kpop (Korean pop music)!  Hatty Lee begged me last year to watch a TV show called City Hunter.  It is a Korean TV show, so I was very hesitant at first.  I thought to myself this is stupid, why would I watch a Korean TV show.  I live in China!  She continued to pester me about watching the show and finally broke me down.  Let's just say the rest is history.  Lesley and I love Korean dramas!  They are awesome!  (Don't judge me unless you have watched one) I won't even tell you how many shows I have watched over the past year because it's embarrassing. haha  Anyway, this is the background for the reason Les and I really wanted to go to Seoul!

After that long explanation, I am going to try to keep it short by just describing the pictures. 

Getting on the subway from the airport!

Flashing the Korean won!  These were 10,000 bills! Feeling rich! haha

Lesley's friend from high school is currently living in Seoul teaching English.  We stayed with her for 2 nights!  This is her apartment. We loved it because it reminded us of our TV shows.

Sleeping on the floor like the Koreans do!

Our first full day was jam-packed!  We hit up one of the palaces, a traditional village, and did some shopping!

One of the emperors...I don't remember his name.  Whoops! 

In front of the Gyeongbokgung Palace

One of the guards

Lesley and Kate inside the palace walls!

Kate and I standing where the common people used to stand when being addressed by the emperor.

Weird thing is Les and I were just common people in Korea.  No one cared that we were foreign.  This is the opposite from China.  It was strange not being stared at the whole time.  We were like, "Hello!  Look at me!  I'm special!" haha Oh no, what has China done to me!  

There were several of these cuties walking around in traditional Korean outfits that the emperors and queens would wear! So cute!

My favorite area of the palace!  It was gorgeous!

After the palace, we grabbed some grub at TGI Fridays and did some shopping!

This shopping area was so crowded!  For some reason, Lesley and I always seem to be swimming upstream when there is a crowd.

These socks were everywhere!  I loved the face ones!

When in Korea, act like the Koreans do!

We ate mostly Korean food, but we did indulge ourselves a little with some Western treats!  

 Pictures from the Traditional Village!

Lesley and Kate posing behind hanbok dresses (traditional Korean dresses).

Traditional Korean home

The door ways were so small!

Traditional Korean bed with a rectangular pillow.

How did anyone fit in there to be carried?

Kitchen area.  The pot on the ground was used to make kimchi (fermented cabbage), a famous Korean side dish.

These guys and gals were practicing kungfu while we were touring the village!

For dinner, we ate Korean BBQ!  It was delicious!  I loved all the Korean food we ate.  

Korean food > Chinese food

Every Korean meal is served with several side dishes, including kimchi (fermented cabbage).  

This is kimchi.  I actually really liked it.  Oh how my taste buds have changed since living in China!

We had to take our shoes off at the door and sit on the ground.  Pretty cool!

We went to a buffet style BBQ place.  This is wear we picked our meat to cook!

Day 2 included mostly shopping and eating!  

Kate's apartment is across the street from a TV station. Every Sunday morning they film an episode which includes famous Kpop bands.  These girls were lined up from the night before!  Crazy Kpop fans!

For lunch we ate bibimbap, a rice bowl with veggies, meat, and an egg.  It comes in a clay pot and is still cooking when it arrives on the table.  You mix it all together and the egg cooks into the rice.  It was really good!

About to try it!

This was a treat on the street.  It is in the shape of poop!  Gross! 

We went shopping for some souvenirs for us and our Chinese friends, who also love Kpop!  We ended up with socks and pens with the faces of our favorite stars on them.  Yeah, we are cool!

It's called a potato tornado!  Yummy!

Last picture of the day, obviously we did a lot of shopping!

After shopping, we saw a movie in English!  Ahhh...what a treat!  We saw the new Star Trek movie!  To top it off I got to eat real popcorn!!!!  I love popcorn!  It is easily my favorite snack ever!  I have to pop my own on the stove here in China, so to have legit movie theater popcorn was amazing!  Obviously, I was really excited about it and I'm still dreaming about the popcorn.  

This wraps up my first 2 days in Korea.  I will post about the rest of my trip soon!

Road Trippin'

Last weekend, we took a spontaneous last minute trip to Jingzhou and Yichang.  Both are cities in Hubei province, which is where I live.  We decided to make it a full on girl's trip with our two best Chinese girlfriends, Watermelon and Dawn.  These girls have been such a blessing to us.  They are the closest friends we have here.  I love them both so much and will truly miss them!

At the train station, we all realized we had on our TOMS. So of course we needed a pic!

Dawn and Watermelon snacking away on the train ride.  It was about a 4.5 hour train ride to Jingzhou.  Not so bad compared to the 17 hour train rides we have done before.

We made it to Jingzhou, where Mandi and Ryan teach!  They are two of our friends from Zhong Relations. Mandi is from Louisiana too!  Unfortunately, Mandi had to leave to go to Beijing the same day we arrived, so we only got to spend about 2 hours with her.  It was still fun seeing her and Ryan though!

Outside of the school where Mandi and Ryan teach

Dawn and her backpack are the same size! haha

Jingzhou is a really neat city.  It is full of character and history.  There is a wall that surrounds the city that we got to walk and bike around.  The weather was beautiful!  I wish we would have had more time to spend here. 

Part of the wall

About to go biking!  The bike was super cute, but surprisingly difficult to pedal.  We were worn out after an hour!

After biking, we headed over to the Jingzhou museum.  Dawn was so excited about this part!

A jade mask

Some beautiful pottery from the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911A.D.)

We asked a group of Chinese tourist to take a picture of the two of us.  This was how we posed. 

This is how the Chinese tourist told us to pose. 

There was also a corpse of a man from 167BC.  The boxes on the left are his insides.  It was  amazing at how well preserved everything was. 

Outside of the museum this lady was making sugar sculptures of animals. Dawn was so excited because it reminded her of her childhood!  

She got a monkey!

After a day in Jingzhou, we got on the fast train to Yichang, which only took 30 minutes.  We hung out that night and Les and I ate McDonald's, which is a huge treat for us.  There are no burgers in my city, so even a McD's burger makes me super happy!

Watermelon's high school classmate lives in Yichang and invited us to dinner.  We tagged along with Watermelon and Dawn, even though we had already eaten.  We went to a hot pot restaurant.  I actually really like hot pot.  Usually, there is a large bowl of broth over a that is boiling on the table and you order various dishes and cook them yourself in the broth.  It is really good!

Dawn, Watermelon, and Watermelon's friend

When I go to hot pot, I order vegetables, beef, pork, tofu, and chicken.  When Chinese people go to hot pot, they order cow stomach and duck intestines. 

This is cow stomach.  I have tried it before and don't like it.  It is super chewy and hard to eat.

This is duck intestines soaking in blood.  This was a new one for me.  I had never seen it before.  I didn't eat it, but I'm afraid at some point over the past 2 years I might have tried it on accident.  Without the blood, it looks like noodles.  Blah!  Gross!  

The next day we took a tour to the Three Gorges Dam.  It is the largest dam in the world.  To get to the best location to overlook the dam, we had to take a series of escalators.  This is one of them.

At the top. You can kind of see the dam behind us. 

Chinese people love their umbrellas, rain or shine.  They have to protect themselves from the sun, because it will turn their skin blacker (words from my boss, who also believes eating carrots will turn your skin blacker).

Here is a better picture of the dam.  It is 594 feet tall and 7,661 feet long.  It is a hydroelectric dam located on the Yangtze River, which is the third longest river in the world.  This is the same river that runs through my city.

After checking out the dam, we took a river cruise to go back to the city of Yichang.  This was my favorite part of the whole trip.  I did not feel like I was in China at all.  The weather was gorgeous with blue skies, plenty of sun, and blue water, all quite a rarity here.  It was a 3 hour long ferry ride! 

Look at that blue water!  I couldn't believe this was the same river that runs through my city, which looks more like the Mississippi River.

Selfie with a very pink face.  My skin isn't used to so much sun!

We also went through a dam.  It was really cool and really scary all at the same time.

We had a late train that night and didn't get back to Huangshi until 2am.  It was probably my last train ride in China.  I really have enjoyed taking trains and will miss traveling like that.  Overall, it was a fun, quick 2 day trip with good friends!