Seoul

Seoul is an incredible city! Just walking through it the first night there we were overwhelmed by everything that was so modern around us. The city looks almost exactly like New York City, except even more up to date on technology. The billboards are TV screens and highrise apartments stretch into the skies everywhere. We arrived in Seoule at night and the whole city was lit up. The horizon was filled with red lit up crosses everywhere. At one point when I looked out the window, I counted 34 crosses in the sky. Korea has been very strongly evangelized in its past and Christianity is everywhere

One of the distinguishing factors of Korea is its food. With ever meal with ate a HUGE bowl of rice that HAD to be finished plus Kimchee (fermented cabbage). We ate red Kimchee, green Kimchee, Kimchee soup, dried Kimchee, fried Kimchee, Kimchee with beef, etc. There was a lot of seafood everywhere in Seoul. Some of the stuff that I ate that was very different was chunks of raw fish, whole dried sardines, octapus head, street fried squid, pressed fish, fish intestines, and boiled silkworm larva. The fish intestines were definately the worst.

To the right is what we call Kimbop and is sort of what we would consier a snack like an apple or something. It's all sorts of vegetables, ham, and egg placed on a bed of rice and rolled up in seaweed. Everyone liked it, but I couldn't get used to the texture. Just about all the fast food places,which fill the streets of Seoul, serve Kimbop. One day my team left the hotel early without our interpreter to get some breakfast. We had to mime everything we said to the ladies cooking the food in the restraunts. We were all laughing by the end, but we managed to order the dishes that we wanted.

All our meals we ate sitting on the floor, which were heated by water pipes. We had to eat everything with chopsticks. At first we thought we were doing a really good job with the chopsticks, but the Koreans kept offering to get us forks, so I have the feeling they were probably laughing at us inside. Oh well, it was fun.

Our Tour Bus Stopped at a Traditional Village

Jumping Down a Brick Wall at the Village

Sunday, after going to Dr. Cho's church, we took a tour bus around the city. We saw several palaces, but more interesting was this traditional Korean vilalge. We saw the native houses, stores, wells, and even got to see part of a wedding. There was a huge time capsul about 20 feet across that I believe was supposed to last a hundred years. Several leaders of other nations signed the capsul on the top.

The Seoul Tower was beautiful!! It stood 32 stories tall on top of a mountain that was one mile in the air. Seoul surrounds the whole mountain, so everywhere you look you can see the solid buildings of the city stretching hundreds of miles into the distance.