Sights of Seoul

On Thursday afternoon/evening mom, dad, and Daniel arrived in Seoul (at two separate times AND on the bus from the airport all by themselves)!  I had been planning for Daniel's visit since I came back in August and was a little sad that mom and dad weren't coming, but there wasn't a guest apartment free and all of us in a single apartment for 10+ days didn't sound like a great plan.  Miraculously two weeks ago the apartment opened up, mom and dad found even cheaper flights, and the plans for a James family adventure in Seoul were set in motion.


Daniel is serving as my guest blogger for the next ten days so you'll also get to hear some of his impressions of the city:).  Here's what he had to say about the journey over: "Man that was a long flight!"  He also realized that he is larger than the average Korean, "The guy who put my luggage on the bus said 'you big' and gave me a thumbs up."


The whole family came in to visit me at school yesterday.  I gave them a tour of the whole campus and they were quite impressed.  Daniel's comment: "This place is pretty legit."  Yes, Seoul Foreign School is definitely "legit".  I'm working on convincing Daniel that he should become a teacher and join me in this overseas adventure.  I was pretty surprised that the fam wanted to stay for my last class, but they did!  They got to see me in action in the classroom with my second year students.  Dad watched with some amusement as my students used bunsen burners and had some pretty large flames going!


After school mom, dad, and I went with Ruth and Sophie on our usual Friday afternoon grocery shopping trip to Homeplus.  Daniel played photographer and documented some of the "interesting" things he saw.  So, here is a typical grocery shopping trip through the eyes of a newly arrived traveler (the captions are straight from Daniel):

"I get the 6,550 won but what the heck does the rest say?"

"Look, it's TIDE...I think"

"What is down this aisle?"

"Hey look, they actually do sell apple juice."

"You thought advertising in America was funny...'Oh my, big sales!'"

"Octopus anyone?"

"My dad said, 'take a picture of the hanging fish,' I thought he was crazy but here it is."

"Adam, if you thought you had it bad at Safeway look at the checkstands here.  By the way, there's no courtesy clerks."

"Even far from home you can always find something familiar."  By the way, Orange Dream Machine tastes exactly the same in Korea:).

"Holy crap, there's a lot of people here."

I don't know why Daniel took this picture, but thanks for driving Ruth!!  

After dinner we continued our day of exploration by walking down the front of the hill into Yonhi Dong (my neighborhood) and Daniel continued his photo exhibition...

This is the high school building at twilight.

There's the cafeteria, Robb Hall, and part of the Elementary School.

Heading down the hill.

For some reason Dad and Daniel are obsessed with the traffic here, although in this picture there's hardly any!

So, if you look sideways you can see the approaching traffic from a bridge over the road.

Being a golf fan, Daniel had to get a picture of the big golf ball in front of the driving range.

And back up the hill to Seoul Foreign School we go!

And thus concludes the first day in Seoul.  Tomorrow we're off to the DMZ for a look at North Korea!