These past two weeks were a bit hectic for me because I had two group presentation that were worth 30 and 40 percent of my grade, and an exam worth 25 percent of my exam, but in between study sessions and group meetings I had the time to meet up with a friend I met my first day in Korea, in my hostel.
She’s a graduate student at the university across the street from mine, but we had only met up once before since she always has to study for her classes that are all in Korean. Since she’s studying most of the time, she hasn’t had much time to explore Seoul, so I decided to take her the City Hall. The City Hall area in Seoul is where most of the palaces, museums, corporation headquarters are located so, it’s a mix of the past and modernization.
Our first stop was the Seoul Museum of Art.
Now, I’m not a big art follower because for the most part, I don’t understand it at all, but this museum was fun because the exhibitions were very interactive. It felt more like a playground for adults than a museum.
Next was the walk from the Museum to Deoksu Palace.
The walk is from the museum to the palace is about two minutes, but since we kept taking pictures it took us about 10. It was a rainy day and the gray sky made it feel very serene. The picture above is one of my favorites because on the left you see the palace walls, but you can see the tall modern building on the right side.
The second stop was inside the palace. It’s one of the smaller palaces, but it’s the only one to have western architecture in it, because a new Western palace was being built for the King in the 1910’s, however, he never got to use it because the Japanese took over Korea. It was restored to look like it would have looked almost 100 years ago and the annex was turned into a museum.
Afterwards, I said goodbye to my friend since I had to go to a group meeting for one of my presentations. The good thing is that I only have two classes to focus on the next to week, so I will have more free time to go explore new places. There is only about three weeks until I leave now, and even though I don’t want to think about it, I know I have to spend my time more wisely now.