Day 8 in South Korea: Two Girls Journey to Insadong

 Today, Sandra and I went to the Insadong area to see a traditional village and to purchase souveniers. We decided to go on a Monday; I'm not sure why, but a majority of stores and such are closed on Monday in South Korea. As a result, our touring was a very quiet, relaxing experience for me. The entire afternoon was spent simply walking around in the hot sun. Sure, we were sweaty and exhausted by the time we got to Insadong-gil (Insadong Street), but somehow I didn't feel as tired as I had on all of the other days before that. The breeze that day was less humid and more refreshing (or perhaps I was growing used to the climate), and the village was sooo beautiful. Since I don't know much about the village (no tour guides!) I can't tell a lot, but I can show a selection of the 50 something pictures I took! :)

Just off the subway and refreshed from icecream-on our way to the village!

The girls in Korea were always dressed so prettily. I wonder how they manage it; now that I'm back in the United States, I never try to dress up.

Colored class in a concrete wall. I bet this is extremely beautiful during sunrise and sunset.

Aren't the walls pretty? We were entering the village at this point.

As we walked through the village, we saw even more wall paintings and many kids returning home after school-or on their way to the hagwon, I suppose.

Shops were mostly closed or very, very quiet in this secluded neighborhood.

Spicy peppers! I put my water bottle next to it for size comparison. This was a small produce store.

I especially liked how as a solution to lacking a large yard (or a yard at all), the Koreans would grow plants in flower pots. I saw many flower-pot gardens of vegetables, herbs, or flowers.

This house had their courtyard fenced-off from the public (as most do, I guess). I thought their fence was very unique, though!

I was standing at the last house. What a steep climb every evening after work! The area was mostly really steep hills.

I took a video of our walk down from the houses and the surrounding area! The cafe is so cute. :)

And this is a K-pop shop! It was outside of a school. The lady inside warned us we couldn't enter the high school-I'm guessing it's a special school for rich kids? But I couldn't really tell and didn't ask her. After all, I had was too busy looking inside the K-pop shop! Hahaha

This is what I call extreme fan love. I mean really?

Okay, I'll admit, these were cute. Look at all of the celebrities of past generations?

Kids walking home from school everywhere!

Elementary school children in their little yellow and white caps for identification. We actually ran into a boy who was lost. He asked if we lived in the area and if we knew where his house was. Poor kid, we told him no, we didn't. But we were reluctant to leave until a few locals came over to help him out.

The way this man stood quietly smoking his cigarette and staring down at his cellphone in the pathway amongst the greenery was so peaceful.

This is after climbing a hill that Sandra and I thought we would never scale. It was quite steep!

I don't know what kind of people live in this house, but when we walked by the thing that struck me funny is that there were figures of animals everywhere. I thought it was the twelve Zodiac until I saw this cat. Interesting.

As you can see, it was later in the afternoon when we left this area and went on to Insadong. It was right about here that a little boy just randomly said 'hello~~!' to me. He was with his mother and siblings. It seemed that he didn't expect me to reply because when I replied 'hello!' back to him in Korean, he looked shocked.
We then wandered away to Insadong Street, a long street that has become a big place to sell antiques, arts and crafts, and just about anything related to Korean culture.

This guy posed for my picture. I would have bought their dumplings but they are made with walnuts sometimes.

They filled these things with icecream! Very fascinating.

Traditional clothing.

More traditional clothing.

The elderly man selling ice cream  looked so friendly I wanted to buy some. Apparently the ice cream had to do with Turkey-but the relationship between Korea and Turkey is another blogpost entirely.

There were so many interesting things I couldn't stop taking pictures.

This was a brush shop.

These were sticks with pencil leads in them.

Blurry picture of the brushes inside the shop. I would have bought one, but I have no idea how to use it, and then I would need to buy ink, and then I would probably not do anything with it!

Giant brushes outside the brush shop. That's a Korean Vitamin Water bottle, by the way, for size comparison. :)

More candy/sweet-treat making guys.

When we walked past the ice cream shop again, a young man was standing outside. He also looked super-friendly!

There were lots of side streets I wanted to go down, but it was getting late, so Sandra and I stocked up on our souveniers and headed back to Hanyang-we still had to stop at a store called Daiso we had seen in the subway on the way there. This store is the Korean equivalent to Dollar General-not everything is a dollar, but most of it is pretty cheap. You can also find almost everything you need for living that you couldn't find at a convenience store.

When switching subway lines at Wangsimni, I went to find the clothing store that I had seen the day before. Sandra and I parted ways while I tried to find the store without getting lost-and I did!

I bought these shirts for myself and a few as souveniers, however, I wanted to buy several more! They were all soooo cute in their English expressions and patterns. $4.75/₩5,000 each is quite cheap for clothes in Korea AND America.

The souveniers+some things I bought for my own use (laundry soap in the blue package, a butterfly headband, and a miniature version of the Radish Doll from Rooftop Prince).

Also, at the very top of the above picture near my pillow you can see a shrink-wrapped package of red stuff. That's more ddeokbokki, everyone! Sandra recommended it after I came back to the dorm to show off the clothes I found, so I bought some. It was delicious, but a little spicy for my taste. While devouring ddeokbokki, washing clothes, and chatting with my mother, I received a phone call. At first I wasn't very surprised because earlier that day I had received a call while touring from a number I didn't recognize and it turned out the other person dialed the wrong number. Experience teaches you interesting things-I was somehow under the idea that all calls I would receive on my phone would be like this and so you can imagine I nearly had a heart attack when it was actually someone I knew! Imagine that, someone you know calling you! Wow! Okay, but honestly, I don't normally get calls in the U.S., so it did strike me as strange that Chris from church the day before was calling me. I answered in Korean-I'm not sure why, but I get excited when I can say '여보세요 (yoboseyo)' on the phone! ^^ The phone conversation amounted to him wanting to know if I'd thought about the movie (Yes?), if I had someone to see it with (Uh, no...), if I wanted to see it (Well, yeah, maybe!), and if I wanted to see it with him (Sure!). So now I had something to do on Wednesday instead of just lazing around in the dorm all afternoon. Nice! 
And that's all for this day! I know it's kind-of a short post with few words compared to my normal ones, but it was a quiet day in retrospect. Sandra and I talked a lot, but aside from that, we didn't do much, which was actually very nice.

-Argentia