Seoul Arts Center

November 20^th, 2010

Today didn’t go quite as expected, although it turned out well enough! The plan was to go with Sean and Sacha to Insadong, which is the arts/crafts/souvenir district of Seoul, and then go see a photography exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center. After getting dressed, I ended up Skyping with Emily for over an hour, which was totally awesome, except I definitely wasn’t ready to go when Sacha came knocking on my door, lol.

After a bit of a mixup regarding which bus station to go to, we ended up at Express Bus Terminal, which took us into Seoul. From there we started to head for Insadong on the subway, realized that the Arts Center was closer, changed directions, and went there instead.

The Arts Center is huge, and kind of looks like the Western SSC, in that it is concrete and somewhat hideous. Once you get inside, go up the elevator, and see the veranda, however, the Arts Center becomes much nicer. It’s a huge complex of galleries, and there’s even an opera house! We bought tickets for the National Geographic Photography exhibit, and had to wait... I’m going to say 3 hours to get in? Possibly a little less, but it was around the 3 hour mark.

While we waited, we checked out all the free exhibits, including some rather delightful modern art, and then went into this Design show where various artists were selling their wares. I picked up a sort of emo-looking passport holder that I love, and Sacha got a hoodie and passport holders and buttons and various other paraphenalia.

The photography show was fantastic – some of those pictures, really, you have to see to believe. A lot of the landscapes, you have to do a double take, like you’re asking, “Wait, this is real?” And the animals shots were cool too – I swear there was one of a beheaded narwhale (or whatever those unicorn whales are called), but Sean thinks it was just poking its head up through the ice. My favorite was this image of a bear standing at the edge of a waterfall, mouth open, while a fish flies out of the water and straight towards his jaws. The fish has that classic, “Oh, s**t” look about him. Brilliant photography.

After that, we judged there wasn’t enough time to go to Insadong, so we went to a Vietnamese place, where Sacha and I had our first experience with Pho soup. It was really good – they give you broth and noodles and meat, basically, and then you add beansprouts and lemon and such. And it was also really healthy, which is a good change for me. Of course, we also had lots of deep friend spring rolls and such, so perhaps not so healthy after all.

Once I got home – took the bus back, which is about an hour ride – I ended up Skyping with Jesse for... I’m going to say an hour and a half? We started out on normal enough topics, but when I mentioned that I’m thinking about foraying back into WoW, Jesse went off on a tangent and started looking up characters specs and builds and stuff that left me flummoxed and amused.

So I didn’t actually end up going to Insadong, which means I don’t have Christmas presents yet, but I figure that I’ll just send all the gifts home with my mom when she comes up in February. I wasn’t sure about this at first, until I realized that any package I send will get there mid-January anyway, and that’s practically February, so why not send it home for free? Ahahahahahahaha.