Uploading 162 more pictures. Lots are from the museums. I may dump those into a separate album just to keep the size down. We'll see.
20 for the high today, 18 tomorrow. Wind chill is in the single digits. I now have a scarf and a big wool coat. Hopefully that will help. Busy Busy Busy. I'll post when I get a break (probably not until we get back hahah)
More snow on the ground today as well. Just a centimeter or two. Still, it's the first snow we've been in contact with, so it's neat.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Hooray for Korea
First pictures are up here http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/Korea
We've been to the old palace, the traditional market, and some of the shopping centers. We've spent about half our money, but we have about 90% of what we wanted to buy here. Andrea's gotten some clothes and some scarves, and a purse. Still looking for shoes though. Jeehyun's mom wants to take her to a nice store and buy her something, so she'll probably manage. I've gotten a set of 4 korean spoons and chopsticks, yes they're different. Spoons have very long handles and the chopsticks are flat, makes em hard to use. Real ones are silver but those cost 10x as much as the stainless steal ones. I'll let you guess which ones I bought. I got some matching celadon chopstick holders, as well as a very nice tea set. I bought a mug at starbucks covered in korean. Jeehyun mentioned she had to memorize it in school, but I'm not sure what it is at the moment. Andrea also got a miniture folding screen. Made of wood, like those giant screens people put up to divide a room, Randi has one and should know what I'm talking about. Its very small but very nice looking. We're going to go to at least 9-12 more places before we go, depending on how long we spend at each one. The subways here are very fast and are much cheaper than japan's trains. I'm not sure how they compare to the subways there, as I haven't taken any. We should be able to visit 2-3 places a day for the next 4 days. We'll see what happens. I wanted to visit the DMZ, but some of the tours are off limits to korean nationals (I would suspect it has something to do with the politcal implications of letting them into neutral locations that the north agreed not to let their citizens enter, but I can't find out for sure). We'll probably skip it though just because its expensive($50+ per person, depending on the tour) and really only interesting to me. We'll get to see some other cool things though, so it doesn't bother me. We're busy enjoying the food here, though we've only had one real korean meal. time for bed, we'll see what tomorrow brings!!!!
(SIDE NOTE: I found out 99.9% of sold celadon pottery is not real, but recreations using the originals as designs. They're made the same way, but the real ones cost thousands of dollars for even the smallest pieces. So they're "real," just not the originals.)
We've been to the old palace, the traditional market, and some of the shopping centers. We've spent about half our money, but we have about 90% of what we wanted to buy here. Andrea's gotten some clothes and some scarves, and a purse. Still looking for shoes though. Jeehyun's mom wants to take her to a nice store and buy her something, so she'll probably manage. I've gotten a set of 4 korean spoons and chopsticks, yes they're different. Spoons have very long handles and the chopsticks are flat, makes em hard to use. Real ones are silver but those cost 10x as much as the stainless steal ones. I'll let you guess which ones I bought. I got some matching celadon chopstick holders, as well as a very nice tea set. I bought a mug at starbucks covered in korean. Jeehyun mentioned she had to memorize it in school, but I'm not sure what it is at the moment. Andrea also got a miniture folding screen. Made of wood, like those giant screens people put up to divide a room, Randi has one and should know what I'm talking about. Its very small but very nice looking. We're going to go to at least 9-12 more places before we go, depending on how long we spend at each one. The subways here are very fast and are much cheaper than japan's trains. I'm not sure how they compare to the subways there, as I haven't taken any. We should be able to visit 2-3 places a day for the next 4 days. We'll see what happens. I wanted to visit the DMZ, but some of the tours are off limits to korean nationals (I would suspect it has something to do with the politcal implications of letting them into neutral locations that the north agreed not to let their citizens enter, but I can't find out for sure). We'll probably skip it though just because its expensive($50+ per person, depending on the tour) and really only interesting to me. We'll get to see some other cool things though, so it doesn't bother me. We're busy enjoying the food here, though we've only had one real korean meal. time for bed, we'll see what tomorrow brings!!!!
(SIDE NOTE: I found out 99.9% of sold celadon pottery is not real, but recreations using the originals as designs. They're made the same way, but the real ones cost thousands of dollars for even the smallest pieces. So they're "real," just not the originals.)
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Christmas (no X means its real, right?)
We made it to korea fine. The train ride to the airport was bad, had to be on the slow commuter trains during morning rush. We were packed tighter than sardines. When we got to our stop and started pulling our suitcases out of the crowd, Andrea was saying "excuse me" in japanese and the guy closest to her told her to "f-off" in english. Then proceeded to kick my bag (which actually freed it from the crowd, so I was grateful.) A great 2 hours. We had a reserved seat on the final train to the airport, so we got to sit in a nearly empty train and relax. Still, that was the worst first half of christmas day I've ever had.
We made it through customs and got food since we hadn't eaten breakfast that day. When I looked at the seat map I had printed out for our trip, I didn't see our seat number on it. 18H-J. Turns out since we bought them online and didn't have assigned seats yet, when we got to the airport they gave us the only two seats that were still together. Hooray for business class. We got a meal that economy didn't get, plus beer was free (though I didn't partake.) And talk about the leg room. I couldn't stretch out and touch the seat in front of me. Andrea was actually able to take a nap on a plane for the first time ever. Plus we got to sit on the upper level of the 747 we were on. Awesome flight.
Jeehyun picked us up at the airport and we had dinner with her parents. The restaurant we went to if right down the street from their apartment. Jeehyun's family knows the owner so we got some extra dishes that weren't on the special Christmas menu. Turns out the worst christmas ever could turn into the best one.
I'll never ride the train again during rush hour. At least not without a reserved seat.
We made it through customs and got food since we hadn't eaten breakfast that day. When I looked at the seat map I had printed out for our trip, I didn't see our seat number on it. 18H-J. Turns out since we bought them online and didn't have assigned seats yet, when we got to the airport they gave us the only two seats that were still together. Hooray for business class. We got a meal that economy didn't get, plus beer was free (though I didn't partake.) And talk about the leg room. I couldn't stretch out and touch the seat in front of me. Andrea was actually able to take a nap on a plane for the first time ever. Plus we got to sit on the upper level of the 747 we were on. Awesome flight.
Jeehyun picked us up at the airport and we had dinner with her parents. The restaurant we went to if right down the street from their apartment. Jeehyun's family knows the owner so we got some extra dishes that weren't on the special Christmas menu. Turns out the worst christmas ever could turn into the best one.
I'll never ride the train again during rush hour. At least not without a reserved seat.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Merry Xmas!
This will be my last post probably until after we're settled in korea. We're leaving monday morning for lyndsi's and we'll be in korea by 4 on tuesday. Hopefullywe'll have a smooth flight. We got our gifts for jeehyun's family today. We found a great tea shop that has about 20 varieties of Shizuoken green tea. I'll probably bring my brother there if he manages to make it next summer. We've gotten a few gifts sent to us, which is really nice of everyone. The random candies are the best, winter always has good candies. I doubt I'll post pictures until I get back, but if I manage to I'll make sure to put a post up here. If I don't manage to talk to anyone Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!!!
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Ever try taking pictures of random events?
The geminids peaked last night for us. I read that we could expect up to 120 meteors an hour. I had to settle for about 1 every 5 minutes but it was still cool. I tried to get a picture using a 2 second exposure (I know, "2 seconds"!!!!! it is the longest exposure I could get out of my digital camera) but failed miserably. You can watch the satelites moving if you tick through them fast enough. I managed to get a picture of mars though. I thought it was cool that you could actually see it in some real form. It was very bright last night. Just one more reason to stay up until 3 am.
I posted a bunch of new pictures. Gingerbread house, more of Fuji, and some of my stars.
For those who worry Jeehyun finally called us this weekend. Xmas is back on track.
Late edit:
It's come to my attention that almost no one reads this, or looks at the pictures I post(it happens every time I talk to my parents and they say, "It's been busy" or when Andrea's mom asks to see pictures of stuff). I'll be sending my family a cd of the pictures we have so far with their xmas box. If you would like a copy feel free to contact me or my parents. I have only a few cds, so I'm only making 1 original for people to get the pictures from. These are the original files, not the cut-down versions that google requires for space constraints. I'm not going to stop posting pictures or stories, since hopefully it will start getting read more often. That and I'm only going to send a cd once a year, so there's not going to be pictures for another year for the people who only want the cd!!!
I posted a bunch of new pictures. Gingerbread house, more of Fuji, and some of my stars.
For those who worry Jeehyun finally called us this weekend. Xmas is back on track.
Late edit:
It's come to my attention that almost no one reads this, or looks at the pictures I post(it happens every time I talk to my parents and they say, "It's been busy" or when Andrea's mom asks to see pictures of stuff). I'll be sending my family a cd of the pictures we have so far with their xmas box. If you would like a copy feel free to contact me or my parents. I have only a few cds, so I'm only making 1 original for people to get the pictures from. These are the original files, not the cut-down versions that google requires for space constraints. I'm not going to stop posting pictures or stories, since hopefully it will start getting read more often. That and I'm only going to send a cd once a year, so there's not going to be pictures for another year for the people who only want the cd!!!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Xmas is coming
My computer has been off for the last week. That would explain the lack of me being online. Lots of buying still to do (all of it actually). We still can't get a hold of jeehyun, so we might now be going to korea after all. We're still trying but she's avoiding every single call and email. We'll see. I'll post pictures tomorrow. Andrea built a gingerbread house. We've got some old pictures from China Town that lyndsi took while we were in yokohama. Laters.
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