Busy! Monday, August 12

Oops!  Monday was the start of the 4 day excursion outside of Seoul.  It included a lot of traveling and very little time to write, as well as very dodgy internet connections.  I'm already back, but I'm still going to write about everything that happened over my last week in Seoul.  If I have enough free time, I will probably go back and refine my older posts and try to add pictures specifically to each post :)

So on Monday, we departed the Vabien II hotel to head out to a traditional Korean folk village.  This actually happened to be one of the better excursion destinations.  There was a Korean dance, which was really, really neat.  It involved a small "orchestra" of music, as well as hats with long, windy tails on them.  Disks balanced on sticks were also flung through the air.  I really liked the traditional Korean performances.  Most "traditional" performances tend to be kind of boring, but these were exciting and aerobic.

Here's a video:

They also had some really nice shopping prices for gifts here.  And one of the better gift shops in Seoul that I went to.

From there, we went to a pottery making class and King Sejong's grave.  King Sejong was an important king in Korean history, because he was the one who designed and invited Hangul, the Korean alphabet and writing system.  His grave was pretty huge and expansive, and very serene.

That was all for Monday.  We checked into a hotel, and at this point we were north of Seoul.