The height of fashion...

"A girls should be two things: classy and fabulous."

-Coco Chanel

     I was so excited for this weekend, I had plans for the entire weekend.  A first since being here.  Saturday I met up with Micah, one of the fabulous ladies who also volunteered at the Vin home last week.  We had planned to go on a subway tour.  The Seoul Tourism board has created these really cool subway tours  where for each line they tell you where to get off and different things to see.  We followed it for two stops and then got side tracked because Micah wanted to go to the poop cafe, its a crowd favorite.  

 The first stop on the subway tour for line 1 was Namdaemun Gate (officially Gate of exalted ceremonies). The gate is one of eight in Seoul's fortress wall and was built in 1398.

Next to the gate is Namdaemun market, a 24 hour market selling everything under the sun.  I am sure this place would be fun to explore, if there were not 5 million people squashed in a very tiny place and very pushy store owners who do not know the meaning of browsing.

 

 After walking through(escaping) the market we decided to head towards Insa-dong which is where the poop cafe was.  For those of you who know me well, you know that sometimes I may pretend to know more than I actually do.  I thought I knew how to get to Insa-dong, but I didn't really.  We might have gotten a little turned around but in the process we came across this amazing flower display at a temple.

 It was like the Rose Bowl Parade but with mums!  That whole tree is made of mum plants.

Then this gorgeous hand holding a lotus flower.

 The flower arrangements just kept getting more and more gorgeous the farther into the park we went.  Here we have another tree of yellow mums.  It reminds me of the Trufalla trees in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  Each mum plant had a name tag on it.  We are still not really sure what was going on here but I am assuming that people dedicated a plant to a loved one.

There were even little flower monks!

And then we got in even farther and found flower animals! Like this cow pulling a cart.

Besides pretty flowers there was also some sort of Buddhist ceremony going on including chanting and people walking around in a circle holding papers on their heads.  

 There were really pretty gold Buddhas in the temple but apparently you are not supposed to take pictures of Buddha.

Walls and walls of flowers!

 See the rope on the ground?  It was in a maze sort of pattern and all these people were following it with the papers on their heads.

More animals! This time a tiger.

 Sheep!

I'm thinking this is a dog?

 Seriously walls and walls of flowers.

Once we finally found Insa-dong, turns out I did know where it was we just kind of walked around it, we were greeted with this cool calligraphy brush sculpture.

 I really wish I could read what this guys sign says.  Who protests with a stuffed husky?

This is Insa-dong a pedestrian shopping street.  This is the place to go if you want souvenirs or trinkets.

We went back to the poop cafe and this time around I had to take pictures of the "enjoy only with your eyes" sign.

Here is where the fashion title of the post comes in.  About a week ago I first read this article about China's newest fashion craze.  And what did we find being sold in Insa-dong?  Thats right hair clips that look like plants growing out of your head.  I don't think Coco Chanel would think these classy or fabulous.

 Everyone was super excited about these and since there were only about $1 each we decided to get two.

Micah went with a mushroom and curly cue.

I love the murals throughout the city.

Look at this cutie with a daisy!

More street art, a fisherman sitting on top of a roof.

 While wandering the streets we noticed this building.  I would love to know what happened here and why it is abandoned.

As soon as dusk hits bus loads of police officers invade the city, I don't know where they come from but when I say bus loads I mean hundreds of police officers.  From what I can tell most of them work at directing traffic.  Apparently an aggressively blown whistle is supposed to make cars listen better than traffic lights.  I think the shields might be overkill but that is just me.

Today I had planned on going to the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition, an airshow  showing off the Korean and American air forces.  Unfortunately my three co-workers who were had planned on going with me ended up not being able to go.  So I chickened out and decided not to go.  Ever since I made the decision not to go I have been kicking myself.  I was really looking forward to going and should have just gone.  Over the past couple of years I have proved to myself that I am capable of going places myself, now I just need to learn how to enjoy going places myself.

 While I am disappointed that I didn't go to the air show, I did meet up with another one of the girls who I met volunteering and two of her friends in a new part of Seoul.  The best part of the day was getting Mexican food!  Korea is severely lacking in food diversity.  In my city I can choose from Korean food or lasagna, not many choices.  The enchilada still burned my mouth with the spiciness but somehow it was a good burning.

The neighborhood we ate in is Sinsa, nicknamed the Beverly Hills of Seoul.  This neighborhood is full of designer stores and sports cars driving up and down the street.  One of the stores had this giant teddy bear which we of course needed to take pictures with.

There was also a display of pandas advertising the brand Guess.

We then found a very fancy cake boutique, yes the sign said boutique.  We felt super fancy eating our fancy cake and drinking our fancy tea.  Nihara is on the bottom right, she is the girl I met volunteering.  The other two are sisters from Texas who are teaching in Seoul.  

This picture was taken as I was getting back to my apartment.  Its hard to tell but the two bright headlights in the picture on the left are from a fire truck.  The fire trucks lights and sirens are on yet not a single person moves out of the way.  The same thing happens for police cars and ambulances.  I really hope I never get in a serious accident here because I don't know that I would make it to the hospital on time.

 This weekend is not what I had planned, which turned out ok.  However from now on I have decided that I cannot cancel my plans just because another person doesn't want to go with me.  I know its not January but my new resolution is to enjoy doing things on my own.  So this week I am booking my tickets for my Christmas vacation to Borneo, if my coworker decides to come or not I am determined to enjoy myself.

Occupying my Time...

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

    For so long I have have easily filled my time.  Since I was 11, I have spent most of my weekends bababy sitting.  Then in college I worked 18 hours every weekend.  Here I have been sort of lost, my weekends were free and I did not know what to do with my time.   Most weekends I would just sit in my bed and watch movies, not exactly a good use of my time.  After last weekend's outing with Beth I decided that it was up to me to find things to occupy my time.  So this weekend I did just that.  First, on Saturday I decided to go to a movie by myself.  I was so proud that I figured out the bus to get to the theater.  That pride was shortly lived when I couldn't figure out how to use the ticket machine even though the instructions were in English.  

 When I started university my goal was to earn my degree in social work and work with international adoption.  While researching teaching in Korea I came across a blog about an American girl living in Korea who volunteered in an orphanage.  That pretty much sold Korea as the country I wanted to teach in.  Since being in Korea, I have found it much harder to actually find an opportunity to volunteer as I live in a fairly wealthy area.  Through Facebook I learned of an American woman who organized volunteers to visit a home for single mothers.  So today I figured out buses and trains to go two hours South to go along with this group.

The Vin Home is a home run by an order of nuns for single women who are expecting.  The women can then stay at the home until their babies are 6 months old.  Besides organizing the volunteers, Christine also collects donations from all the military bases here in Korea and in the US to give to the women and babies.  Today we had two cars packed with baby clothes, maternity clothes, diapers, and everything else the women might need.

   Currently there are 5 moms at the home and 3 babies.  It was so nice to visit and share a meal with these women as they never have outside visitors because they have been shunned by their families.  Not only was it nice to be able to visit for the sake of the mothers and babies, selfishly it was really nice to be able to meet and talk to some other women. I even made plans with two of the women for next weekend, yeah friends!

The rest of this post is going to be very random.  A collection of random photos taken since I got here.  

Korean's are obsessed with skin care.  The best part of their obsession is that they love face masks.  I bought this one because it was an animal face mask.  I think I look like Scar from the Lion King.  The package said monkey, I don't see it.

 Then I tried this lovely pore reducing mask.  I'm not really sure if the masks have done anything but they are fun to try.

This one makes me look like the guy from Silence of the Lambs.

 While there are many things that don't quite makes sense in Korea, there are a few things that makes me wonder why we don't have it in the U.S.  This is one of those things.  In the convenience stores they sell these pouches of beverages this one is lemonade but there is also coffee drinks and other juices.  So you buy the pouch and then you get a cup of ice and a straw.  Its kind of genius.

I found a pizza place, which may have not been such a good idea as now I order at least one pizza a week.  The bow just makes the pizza look sophisticated.

 A couple weeks ago I attempted to make pancakes.  As I cannot read the directions on the mix it was very much trial and error.  I never quite got the mixture right but oh well.

The last mask I bought was this very sophisticated mask mask.  

 I forgot to post this after Chuseok but my boss gave us all a present of shampoo and conditioner.  I'm still not sure if the boys got the same present or not.

 These were gift sets that were for sale for Chuseok as well.
Who wouldn't want 9 cans of spam?

I got so excited when I found these in the grocery store.  These are Australian cookies that I was introduced to by my Australian friends in Copenhagen.  We could never find them in the US, but for some reason they are in Korea.

Sometimes I am just bewildered as to why someone decided to write words on things.  Its even more trouble as they had to find someone to translate the words into English.

This is another of my amazing finds from the cosmetic store.  At first I really thought that these were pore strips for baby acne.  Then I found out that it is saying that you can get baby skin by using this.

 In college I had a slight addiction to snapple peach ice tea.  Korea is not helping that addiction as they have an equally as good substitution in Lipton peach ice tea.

 So this week's post is not super exciting but I think that is what makes it good.  This is the first post where I could actually write about something normal that was positive.  Hopefully as time goes on I will continue to find constructive ways to spend my time and continue to find new friends.