Subways and Banana Milk

You read that right, I'm talking about banana milk. Banana milk, or in Korean 바나나 우유, is a famous Korean drink you can find at any convenience store and it tastes like banana pudding in liquid form. Aka: heaven. I was drinking this said milk on the way to see traditional Korean houses.

Mind you, this is 10am after jet lag times a thousand(Korea is 16 hours ahead) which will later play into my mental state as the day wears on. Anywho, Korean traditional houses are where the elite used to live back in ye oldie days because the houses were located near the king's palace. So basically if you were rich you got to be chummy with the leader of the country. 

The houses were beautiful, showing just how much history Korea has. That is one thing about walking around Korea, this place is old, and with age comes history. Speaking of history lets go visit 세 중 대 왕, or Sejong the great. Sejong the great is the fourth king from the Joseon dynasty and he is famous for creating the Korean writing system. Before the new Korean writing system(한글) Koreans used Chinese characters, which as you can imagine makes no sense and most of Korea was illiterate. So Sejong the great walks in and creates this writing system that makes it so virtually everyone can be literate(it's true, I learned the Korean alphabet in an hour).

During all of these traveling I am using the subway system. By some sort of miracle I managed to figure out the subway system all by myself. I must have been touched by some great wisdom because for all who know me, you know that I am extremely directionally challenged. Yet somehow, although I wouldn't call myself a pro yet, I have figure it out pretty well. The subway system in Korea is AMAZING. I mean if I can figure it out, anyone can. Most Koreans use the subway system because it's so efficient, cheap, and simply because cars here cost a fortune. However, this means that the subway cars are often hot and packed, but jokes on them because this time I'm only sweaty, and not confused. Speaking of sweaty, they claimed it was a "cold" day today?? I had to buy a mini fan I was sweating so much, the humidity here is ROUGH.

After visiting Sejong, Gregory and I made our way over to meet my Korean pen pal. My Korean pen pal has amazing English, so regardless of the fact that I am now living in Korea, it feels like I'm not here yet because I've only been communicating in English thus far. We met Nayoung(my pen pal) at exit 8 and went to walk around a traditional Korean market. A traditional Korean market is a huge space filled to the brim with vendors and shops, and is hot as hell. Que sweating. Stall after stall are filled with traditional Korean street food like Korean pancakes, dok bokki, and kimbap. But dang, these  ajummas can give any business man a run for their money. Ajummas(Korean word for old woman) stand behind every stall and yell at you to eat their food, going as far as waving you over and cornering you into their stall. I didn't take a picture of this moment because honestly I was too confused to pull myself together to do so. So here is a pic I pulled from google that gives you a good idea of what it looks like.

Next, in typical Korean fashion, we decided to head over to the Han river and take a walk. At the Han river we came upon a Buddhist temple floating on the water. It was beautiful and deathly quiet but we were out of there real quick as none of us are Buddhist and there were only two people there. Yikes. Farther down the river we found those little boats that you paddle with your feet. Lets just say we didn't get very far, that shit is tiring. 

I wish I could write more, as I really want to tell my whole experience, but I am dead tired at the moment. I've had a twelve hour day on jet lag and walked 10 miles. Tomorrow I will give you all a better post, but now I have to sleep and get ready for tomorrow. Stay tuned for my first night clubbing in Korea!