Homestay, palace, subways, shopping centers, zoo and even more

woo been very busy the last few days.  On Thursday, we had another city tour, where we went to the old palace of the last dynasty of Korea.  It was absolutely huge!  Their version of the white house  (presidential house) was also right next to the palace, which was called the Blue house because of the color of the roof I believe.  We also went to the Tienanmen square of  South Korea, which had a large underground museum under it.  (It was about the king of Korea who invented hanguel in the 1400's, and Admiral Li, who was a famous general from around the same time period.  We also went to the War museum, which was ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE and contained mostly information about the Korean war.  Huge, huge building.

The next day (Friday), we checked out of the hotel to go stay with our homestay familys for friday and saturday.  My homestay partner was friends with 6 of the other homestay partners, so we hung out both days.  We went to Myeng Dong, which is a shopping center in the northish middlish end of Seoul.  I had some of the best Korean food yet at lunch there.  The table had a stove right in the middle, and a waiter would come and cook right there.  It was meat and vegatables with a nice spicy sauce, which was eventully made into fried rice.  Very amazing.  and cheap!  only about $9.  From there, we went to a traditional Korean village, which had all manner of korean things, like old games and wells, and traditional clothing.

We came back to Myengdong for dinner, which was at a restaurant called "School Food".  I had the SPICIEST meal off my life there.  I ordered spicy rice cakes with pig intestines stuffed with noodles (^.^).  There was a few pitchers of water up on the counter from which you poured your own water, and I wondered why that was at first, but the food is SO spicy that I had about 5 cups of water.  Everyone did haha.  Even the Koreans were having trouble!  It was good, but it was like eating fire.  We ended up getting some ice cream outside, which was made to be about a foot and half tall.

From there, we were onto one of the homestay kids vacation house outside of Seoul, to the South east.  We took the subway all the way as far as we could, then got on the bus for another 30 minutes.  It was quite neat.  It was also the first time I had taken a subway, or even seen one before as well!  (We'd been taking it all day as well) Everyone mostly fell asleep at the house right away (was about 2330) and we woke up the next morning to eat a huge breakfast prepared for us by parents of some of the home stay kids.  It was quite good.  That morning, there was a huge, huge thunderstorm with lighting going off every few seconds and huge amounts of thunder as well.  It was a little terrifying waiting for the bus, but eventully, we got back into Seoul, where the girls of the group took everyone to go to a spa.  The main uncomfortable part of this was that the spa was seperated into the girls sauna, and the mens sauna and changing room, with a large unisex area connecting them.  Korean saunas apparently have all the men go completely naked inside of the them, so when we walked into the changing room there were naked guys EVERYWHERE.  It wasn't that bothersome, but still a little shocking...  We mainly hung out in the unisex area -.-.

After this, we went to see the movie SnowPeircer, which was directed by a Korean, but was filmed in English.  It actually featured Captain America and John Hurt (The next doctor).  It was interesting, about a train that holds the last life on earth.

That leaves today, which was a completely free day to do whatever you wanted.  I had questioned my homestay partner incessantly about how the subway worked and what to do etc, and also had miscalculated how much the subway costed, and ended up with 15000 won on my  subway card (after riding all around the city for 2 days!  only costed $5!) I decided to try the subway solo and went all the way across the city to LotteWorld which is an indoor amusement park.  I was worried at first, but it turned out to be incredibly easy to ride, so I looked on the subway map for interesting things to do.  I found about 4 things, and first was a short ride to Gangnam from LotteWorld.  It was actually really boring, simply was a business district. No gangnam style playing either!  (It plays EVERYWHERE else, and psy is super famous).  Then I went to a stop pretty far down a side train line called "Seoul Grand Park".  It had no other markings, but it turned to be an absolutely HUGE zoo.  Gigantic.  There is even an amusement park connected to it.  It took 20 minutes of walking to get to the main gate from the subway entrance, and 2.5 hours to get from one end of the zoo to the other.  It was so big that it had not one, but 2 tram rails (like seats on a wire that go up a mountain)  I was so exhausted afterwards, seriously.  I would have taken the tram, but I didn't want to have to muscle through a Korean conversation to buy a ticket haha.  I also would have missed the Lion pit, which had about 20 lions in it.

From there, I went to a stop called Seoul Racecourse.  I figured it was a horse racing track, and it was, but it was the busiest plce I have been to yet.  There were CROWDS AND CROWDS of people watching and betting on races.  I saw one, never seen horse racing before, before leaving but it was very cool to see just how many people were there.

From there, I caught the bus up to Dongdaedum, which is closer to my hotel.  I bought a very cool street drink, which had crushed lemons, sprite and ice in it, all in a ziplock back for $2.  Very good haha.

All in all, it cost about $8 to ride the subway literally all over the city.  That in itself was extremely fun.  I hope, on the last day, to go back to the amusement park at the zoo, which was called Seoul land haha.  thee 2 people from hawaii have it lucky, since our place leaves at 2100, so we have until 500PM to do whatever we want, whereas most of the students leave in the morning.  On the other hand, we have a day of stuff to do, then a 10 hours flight back, so ugh.

One more week of adventures, although it feels like I've been here for a month already!  so incredible!