Fall, School, Palace, Lanterns, and War Memorial

Hello everyone! I am going to share some pictures with you! Some are connected to the previous imageless post from Friday night, but others are from events after.

It's fall! I'm really enjoying the changing leaves. The ginkgo trees are always my favorite. There are a ton of them along the street on the way to work. I have been bringing leaves to work occasionally, to keep on my desk. I am considering trying to head out to Ganghwa-do next weekend, and I'm sure my favorite temple would be great with the changing leaves.

This is just a picture from school. It's the view from the B Wing, towards the dorms, and with the space between them.

The fitness center at the school. I have started to go somedays after school. I am hoping to get back into shape, and with the free access to these machines it shouldn't be all that difficult.

BBQ place I've been to a couple times. I need to eat at cheaper places more often. I am good at eating cheaply, but I've been eating relatively more expensive stuff recently. I have to be more careful with money this month since 500 dollars were taken for my apartment deposit, and I foolishly sent 900 back to put against my loan. It won't be a huge deal, but I should be more thrifty for a bit. :)

Morning near work. There's been some pretty strong yellow dust the past few days. I'm sure part of the obscurity is due to that, though it may be partially fog as well this morning.

A photo at the palace. As I mentioned, I visited Changdeokgung (visit their website if you want) for the first time with a group of students from Seoul Global. It was interesting, though I didn't really get to spend the kind of time I would normally spend at a place like this. It was a good time, though. I'm sure I'll be back sometime. I might try to catch one of the English tours. This makes 3 of 5 Seoul palaces visited for me.

As much as I'd like to avoid advertising how much of a dork I am, I can't help but post this picture as well. Here's me at the palace. Oh, I got a haircut! It looks a lot better, and it a lot easier to manage than the long hair that I was getting.

Also at the palace. I learned that because the king that lived here was old and had joint problems, they built bridges between buildings that were on different levels so that he wouldn't have to go up and down stairs. This is a picture of one of those bridges. I assume there's a ramp inside, rather than stairs to make it easier on the king.

I mentioned that I went out for coffee and visited the lantern festival on Friday night. This is the hot-air balloon that was repeatedly raised 10 or 20 meters into the air, and then let cool so that it would lower itself. There were a lot of people there, and my friend and I had to constantly vie for good spots to see and get photos.

Turtle ship lantern. These lanterns were just as cool as the ones for Lotus Lantern Festival back in 2007. There were a lot of them and they covered a wide range of themes. Some were cute kiddy cartoons, others represented participants in the G20, and others were more traditionally Korean. It was great.

One of my favorite of the lanterns. It was very colourful and beautiful, and very detailed.

On Saturday I helped to administer the SAT tests at our school again. I really quite enjoy the job. It's simple, easy, and gives me time to read. Afterward, a group of us went to the War Memorial (more info. here). It was good to get back after 3 years absence. Much was the same, but they had put in a boat that wasn't there before. It is a replica of a boat that was attacked by the North in 2002. There was red paint to mark where damage was taken. Six men were killed in the attack. It was very interesting and touching to be able to walk on the ship and try to imagine what it would have been like to go through an attack like that.

From the ship I was able to get an interesting shot of some of the other machinery. As always there were a lot of other visitors to the museum. We wandered outside for a little bit, and then went inside and managed to see quite a bit of the inside stuff.

After the War Memorial, a few of us went for food, and then went out for a couple of drinks. It sure took a lot of time to actually get to a place, but once we finally did it was worth it. We went to a place called Traditional Korean Sound, where they played a lot of classic Korean rock. It was good; I might wander back at some point.

Well, that's all. I've gone back to the smaller pictures, and I'm not formatting the text below the photos as I used to. I've realized that the extra-large photos will sometimes interfere with the stuff on the right, so this will be better I think. You can always click on the photos to see larger versions.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I hope you're all having a good fall and enjoying the change in weather.