Chuseok!

Where to start?! Chuseok in Korea is absolutely INSANE! The best I can describe it as is Christmas in North America. Everyone goes to visit their family and they bring gifts. Koreans love gift sets so all the stores are filled with gifts sets the week prior to Chuseok and all weekend all you see is Koreans carrying around gift bags. My principle gave all of us in my school wine sets. So I have four bottles of Korean wine and a wine shot glass to go with it (yes...a wine shot glass). Laura got a huge box full of anchovies. It was rather funny. She gave it away to a Korean friend. Anyway, on to my actual trip.
Thursday night Laura and Amanda stayed over here and ate some cake for an early surprise birthday party for Amanda who's birthday is today. I just wanted to bake and making her a cake was a good excuse to do that! Like usual we didn't get to bed on time and regretted it the next morning when we had to drag ourselves out of bed at 5:45 am so we could make out 7:00 am train into Seoul. Three hours later at a speed of 304 km/h for more than a hour and we arrived in Seoul ready to rely on my directions to get to our hostel and hope I didn't skrew up while booking our rooms online or manage to get us stuck in a sketchy hostel. We only managed to get lost once and that wasn't my fault either so we ended up eating lunch before we went to the hostel. We decided we'd make the weekend an international one and eat a different country's food each meal. Our first meal was Vietnamese. Delicious! Then we made our way to the hostel which turned out to be very cute and run by really nice people. Our whole stay there was a very positive experience and about the only thing I could say was that the common area in our living section smelled gross. Though I think the smell was made worse by the British girl who lit this awful smelling candle to get rid of the smell and only made it worse. But we spend only our sleeping hours there so it didn't matter.
Soon after arriving we got started on our long list of things to see. We went to Seoul Tower which is basically the Korean version on the CN Tower. The bus ride there was beautiful. We drove up the mountain it's on the middle of the city and it was beautiful! At the top of the tower it had the names of every major city in the world in the direction that city was in. We found Toronto and I tried to picture Canada somewhere out there beyond all the Korean mountains. We also found Amsterdam and us three Dutch girls took a picture of us pretending to be a windmill, but it doesn't really look like one unless you know what we were trying to do! At the bottom of the tower there's a lock wall. People write messages on locks of all shapes and sizes and then put them on the fence. I'm not sure the significance of it or if it's just there for fun. They were selling cotton candy so we decided since we were all missing the Caledonia fair this weekend then we'd have our own fair. We walked down the mountain stairs and met a Korean man and his son and talked the rest of the way down. It was rather amusing because he introduced himself to me by asking if I was allergic to peanuts because he had some on him and had heard North American's were allergic. I assured him I wasn't and so he gave me some! I should point out here that Korean's aren't allergic to anything.
At the bottom again we met up with one of Laura's friends from university who has been teaching in Seoul for 3-4 years now. He showed us around Myong-dong market where we ate melon on a stick (I'm starting to think Korean's are in love with everything melon...) and, continuing our international meals, we made our way by subway to an Indian restaurant and ate warm Naam bread dipped in curry and some of the most amazing chicken and shrimp ever (actually, it wasn't shrimp...something that looked like it, but much bigger and better tasting. I just don't remember what it was).
Friday night we went exploring the market area around our hostel. I bought some stickers (go figure) and a shawl thing. I have refused to buy them until now. I figured it would dress up some of the more simple outfits I have and that way my co-teachers won't think I'm not dressy enough!
Saturday is Everland day! Again, bed too late and had to wake up at 6:30 to leave for Everland, which we weren't exactly sure how to get to since we were given three different subway stops for the bus terminal. On the subway we went above ground for a bit going over the Han River and the traffic leaving Seoul was insane! bumper to bumper traffic, whereas coming into Seoul was nearly empty. I thought people were joking when they said Seoul was nearly empty for Chuseok, but they weren't. When we got off the subway there was barely anyone on the streets. We found a nice bus driver who, after using a lot of Conglish words and hand gestures, got us to the right bus stop to catch the bus to Everland Theme Park. 9:30 and we were at the park where we found out it was foreigners festival weekend and we got $10 off our entrance tickets!
Everland is nothing like I could've ever imagine. Each section of the park is a different continent. There was American Adventure which was set as America in the 60's and 70's, European Adventure which had Holland Village, a gorgeous rose garden, and the worlds steepest incline on a roller coaster! 77% incline. It was like dropping on Drop Zone at Wonderland except on a roller coaster. Plus it was wooden, but smooth unlike the wooden one at Wonderland. There's also Zootopia which had a safari ride where we got to see white tigers, giraffe's, and elephant, lions, bears, and a liger (yes, no miss spell. The sign said Liger. We're not sure which one was the liger). Then there was Majic Land and Global Fair.
Everything about the park was amazing. It was like you were actually in certain countries. There's no doubt in my mind the best part of the park though. They had pony and camel rides for kids. Just to be able to smell horses again made me so happy! The smell of a horse is one of my most favourite smells in the world. Yes, I'm weird, but if you spend as much time around horses as I do when I'm home you'd agree with me! Anyway, the camel rides had a rule that kids under three had to have an adult so obviously adults were allowed on them too. So I stood in line with the kids and got to ride the camel. Not only did I have Kristen taking pictures of me, but so was every other person in the nearby area.
We went through Friendly Monkey Valley and saw some of the weirdest looking monkeys ever. What was sad though was that there was also an ape living on a man made perch. There were clear wires preventing him climbing down so that people could see him all the time. There were some lions and tigers in a very small area as well. The one's on the safari could at least wander around, but these ones had an area smaller than my apartment to live. Then there's the penguins in the tiny water cages and the seal just swimming back and forth and the polar bears... sometimes I just wish people would leave animals in their natural habitats. As much I as love seeing them, I'd rather they be able to choose their own lives.
Holland Village was one of my most favourite things. It actually felt like I was walking in a European village. While there a parade started with people dressed in crazy outfits doing this dance thing. There were a lot of white foreigners in it too which was cool to see. We ate lunch here and had sausages and sauerkraut - definitely European!
The whole park was a Halloween theme which was cool, but weird when they'd say happy Halloween and it's not for another month. So we spent the day on a couple rides and exploring the world while having Korean's, Filipino's, and others asking us to take a picture with us. Kristen and I were a bit of a spectacle at the park despite the fact there were a lot of white people there. At safari world we bought animal ears and wore them all day. Some people were brave and asked for our pictures, others would sneak a picture (but we always noticed), others would laugh and others would just talk to us about it. It made for an interesting day. Especially when we left the park and were back in Seoul, but still wearing the ears. Amanda and Laura would walk behind us because they found watching people's expressions as we walked past was funny. Made even more amusing when we started singing random songs down Seoul's streets. Eventually we made it back and decided to hit up a Noraebong. Noraebongs are karaoke bars basically expect not really. You rent a room with you and your friends with your own karaoke machine. We rented it for an hour, but decided to re-rent for another hour and by the end our voices were dead, but it was well worth it. I don't have pictures on my camera since the flash doesn't work so you don't get to see those.
Following the theme for the weekend we went to bed too late, but were then able to sing happy birthday to Laura in English, Spanish, French, and Chinese (thanks to Laura!). Since our voices were dead from singing all night I'm sure anyone listening was covering their ears!
Sunday morning we made it to Yoido Full Gospel church which is the largest church in the world with over 850,000 members. They have a church service ever two hours on Sunday's with translations in most languages. We went to the 9:00am service and got escorted to the section where we could wear headphones to hear the English translation. It was an interesting service and to be able to hear the way they evangelize in Asia. We even got on the TV screen! After the service they immediately converged on the foreigners section and practically dragged us to this foreigner debriefing. Somehow we were the only ones who weren't able to sneak our way out of it. So for the next 20 minutes we listened to a man talk about how we should go to this prayer rally where they parade the foreigners through Olympic Stadium, have skydivers, and treat foreigners like Olympians. It was weird. We did learn some interesting things about the church though. All in all, it was a good experience.
Our last stop before heading back to Gwangju was the war memorial museum. We didn't have the time to go into the museum building, but we got to spend a while admiring tanks, trucks, war planes, subs, bombers, and missiles. We could go in a couple of the planes as well as the tanks. It was awesome and so interesting!
After spending the whole weekend not seeing anyone from Canadian Connection we ran into a lot of them at the train station. Everyone apparently had trains or buses leaving around the same time and we were once again able to catch up.
So that concludes my weekend. It is now 50 minutes into Monday morning which means that here in Korea it's my birthday! Which means that in Korea I'm also 24 years old. The whole age thing is weird here. But since I don't want to be old, I'm sticking with my Canadian age and stay 22. Now I'm off to bed! ok, all the pictures aren't working. More later. I'm tired.

** ok. Picture explainations. The top one is in Seoul Tower through a mirror in the roof. The one below is a view of the Han River in Seoul. The first on the right is us Dutch girls making a windmill in front of Amsterdam (yes, it's a windmill!). The one below that is me on the camel. Then the white tigers. Then me in the drivers spot in a Korean Tanker which was clearly made for short Koreans! Next is Holland Village! and lastly is Kristen and I in front of the only Canadian made plane (although it was altered by the USA before coming to Korea!)