The shuttle bus pulled into Seoul Tuesday morning around 10am. My first day in Korea was spent sleeping and eating, mostly. I didn't have to deal with jetlag, per se, but all the traveling and red-eye flying had shaken up my internal clock a bit. Plus, I was still recovering from cold #2 (or possibly #3. I kind of lost count after the first one.)
Wednesday morning, the family and I packed up the car and headed down to Jinjoo, the city where my grandmother, aunt and uncle (all on my father's side) all live. It was the second road trip we had taken as a family in maybe 10 years. Certain things were just like old times... Dad driving, mom in the front passenger seat, and me and Chris in the backseat, arguing over something stupid. But then an hour into the trip, we switched roles a bit. Chris took over the driving, I sat in the passenger seat, while mom and dad relaxed in the back. I guess it's just natural as children get older they start to take over more and more of the parents' responsibilities.
One of the interesting things about Korea is that a lot of the noises here are so pleasant. For instance, every announcement you hear is preceeded by a pleasant, soothing tone or three... and the announcement itself is made in such a nice voice that you think you must be receiving the best news ever, even if it's just telling you that the train is coming. We had several things talking to us in the car: the GPS navigation system and the radar detector. They'd say things like "*bing bing bing*, good morning!" and "*bing bing bing* there is a radar 500km ahead of you. please be aware!" I'm surprised they didn't start saying, "*bing bing bing* My, what a well-coordinated outfit you are wearing today!" or "*bing bing bing* Have you lost weight?"
Anyhow, we rolled into Jinjoo around 4pm or so, and met up with grandma. Now, the thing is, people in that area of Korea speak with an accent, kind of like people from the South in the US. So understanding my grandmother is twice as hard as understanding everyone else. But, thankfully, I managed to get through the evening with a minimum of embarrassment.
The next day was spent mostly on the road. We woke up early, had breakfast at grandma's house (mmm, gimchi for breakfast...) and headed out to the city registrar to get a copy of Chris' registration... the reason for all this was that he wanted to figure out how to write his name in Chinese characters. For those of you who don't know, there are a whole bunch of Chinese characters for each phoenetic sound... so the whole thing can get kind of confusing if you don't actually know Chinese. ANYhow, then after dropping grandma back at her house, we were off to the Korean National Heritage Museum. This place is pretty impressive looking... but it takes about 20 minutes just to walk from the parking lot to the museum (no joke). The point of the whole $500 million dollar compound is to remind us Koreans of the shit we had to endure during the Japanese occupation (apparently the textbooks began to just gloss over that part) and to also serve as a symbol for the eventual reunification of North and South Korea.
Really, the only entertaining thing about this place was the pictures Chris took of me screwing around inside the museum. But, once again, I can't get pictures to upload here, so I'll have to post them later when I get home :(
That night, back in Seoul, we met up with my dad's older brother for dinner, during which I finally learned how to write my name in Chinese (it's a long story). I would post it for you guys to see, but... yeah. the picture thing.
Alright, I'm going to raid the kitchen for food... I'll write more later!
-e
2 comments:
why would you want to write your name in chinese if you are KOREAN??
Beacuse Chinese is still used in Korea!
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