Seoulo Journey: "결혼하자" "하지, 뭐"

"Let's get married." "Sure, why not?"

That's how our teacher described how her now husband proposed to her when we asked whether he got down on his knees and proposed in a romantic fashion haha. Not sure whether to believe her, considering she also told us she had many many boyfriends at the beginning of the year haha.

But before I get to the wedding, I'll recap a trip Henry, Kana, Xue Qing, and I took the day before it to Incheon. One great thing about vacations is taking advantage to go to farther places you probably wouldn't go otherwise. The place we chose was Incheon--on the northwestern coast of Korea and where the international airport is. Also where there is a Chinatown with authentic Chinese food, woo! (The main reason why we went there) We almost ended up not going because Henry's friend cancelled on us but in the end I convinced everyone to go anyway! When else would we have the chance to go again??? One thing about groups is that you just need someone to say "Let's do this!" and everyone will. I've definitely experienced a lot of that here. Not to mention after you go you really think "I'm so glad I came here!" Definitely what I felt about the Incheon trip.

Henry takes a picture of Xue Qing, Kana, and me in front of Chinatown.

Kana walks in the sunlight of Chinatown.

Delicious delicious food. Three plates of jajangmyeon 자장면 which is 炸醬麵 and one of jajang rice (because Henry is allergic to flour). One of sweet/sour/spicy shrimp, mapo tofu 麻婆豆腐, and spicy chicken. Mm mm!

And after stuffing ourselves we decided to do some sightseeing nearby.

Interesting structure.

Pretty!

Ahh how I love scenery!

So cold!!!

We're a fun bunch.

Because there was an exercise park nearby. By the way, in this exercise park there was this crazy (and by crazy I mean crazy strong) ajusshi doing all kinds of exercises and watching us amusedly.

And the pretty lights come on as it gets dark!

In front of the changing lights, with Kana looking like a ghost haha.

Trippy!

Pretty night scenery.

Superheroes!

Chinatown lit up at night!

Dumplings and jajangmyeon, the symbol of Chinatown?

After visiting the Incheon Chinatown, we then went to meet up with my old friends from Level 3 last year, Chikae and Min Jie! As well as Jonathan (who isn't in this picture though)!

Now as for the wedding, it was my first experience going to a Korean wedding! In fact, it's my first experience going to a wedding I can actually remember, since the only one I've been to in the US was my mom's friend's daughter's wedding, and I was really young then. Exciting stuff ^^, and VERY rushed! We met up at Seoul station at 9:50AM to catch the 10:20 train to Daegu 대구, in the center of Korea and its third largest city, as well as our teacher's hometown. After arriving, we took a taxi to Nine Well, a restaurant where we ate a pre-wedding lunch that was really delicious and consisted of a lot of small dishes that stuffed us...not to mention when the last dish came out we were told we only had 5 minutes left to eat before we had to leave for the wedding, ay! The service was at a place called "New York New York" (yay New York pride :D) and basically about 5 minutes after we got there the service already began! Our teacher looked beautiful as expected so of course our whole class went crazy with picture taking, especially during the kiss! Our class had prepared a song (half Chinese and half Japanese) to sing for our teacher together. Our classmate Yukiko had also prepared a slideshow to go along with it which was really touching! Unfortunately since they didn't have a projector or any screen there, we couldn't show it along with our singing, which would have been really nice! Ah well, our teacher will see it anyway :). While performing the song, we must have looked like preschoolers...maybe kindergarteners? Hahaha, with our swaying arms, and our clapping arms while moving from side to side, etc. Ahh, I'm gonna miss our class ^^. After that, we took pictures with her and then took pictures with her in a hanbok outfit with her newlywed husband. And because we had to catch a train at 3:55, we didn't eat at the reception. But at that point, it was already 3:45, so after a rushed attempt to get a taxi and the taxi driver speeding through Daegu to get us to the station on time, we got to Dong Daegu Station 동대구역 with two and a half minutes to dash to the train in our dress shoes and suits. And by 6PM we were back in Seoul. Felt like it all went by in a blur! Oh yeah, I've also realized how small Korea is from the fact that by train it took less than 2 hours to get to Daegu...about the same as a trip between New Haven and New York! Whew.

After a quick dinner, Xue Qing and I met up with Henry to just wander around the Cheonggyecheon 청계천 area (a beautiful manmade stream in the middle of Seoul that's fun to walk around and often has events). If you followed this blog from when I was here last summer, you'll see some pictures from it ^^. One thing I've really come to love to do with my free time is to just walk around a city and really explore it--connect the dots in the mental map in my mind. Not to mention, it's free! An interesting experience I often have is how my mental map of an area is skewed as I visit it at different times. It's a hard feeling to explain...but for example when I first went to visit Yale on a tour, it felt like a completely different area from when I actually began to attend it, and then it felt slightly different again as I went up to sophomore year and my center point became not Old Campus, but Morse. In a weird kind of way, my "north," or mental compass (?) re-orients itself. It's a hard feeling to explain...I'm sure I'll have a similar experience when I go back again. But for Seoul, because last year my center point was Sogang University (as I lived across from it, so I was very near Daeheung Station), it was very different from this year, where my center point is now Hyundai Department Store (very near my place, which is near Sinchon Station), so I've become very familiar with the "maze" near Sinchon Station (an area where there are a lot of restaurants and bars and which is flooded with people on the weekends) and the area near Daeheung Station has become more foreign to me. Last year, I once went with Andrew McTernan (a former Light Fellow) to Hongdae, an area that's only about 10-15 minutes from where I live now, and somehow we took about 40 minutes to an hour to get there. I didn't understand how we took so long but yesterday, as Henry, Xue Qing, and I went to a Kimbap Cheonguk 김밥천국 (a chain of kimbap stores that is like McDonald's of Korea, but probably more healthy, by a lot) near the Sinchon Rotary, it finally clicked in my head and the mental map was connected--duh, we had walked in a perpendicular direction to Hongdae, which is why it took so long, and why the road to Hongdae seemed to unfamiliar when I walked it this time!

Okay, that was a completely useless ramble, haha, so here are pictures from the wedding!

As we descend the stairs to take KTX. Xue Qing was excited to be taking the KTX for the first time so she said "take a picture!" (in Korean of course).

Half our class sitting at the other table.

An example of the yummy yummy food.

Kana, Yukiko, and Xue Qing with our teacher just before the service began!

구은미 선생님 walks with her father.

Bride and groom at the altar.

Parents of the groom.

Parents of the bride.

We prepare for our song.

Relatives maybe? Singing another song.

Bride and groom's families take a bow.

For some reason, the announcer had bride and groom do silly actions haha, I'm not sure why...

Then the groom picks up the bride and says "오늘밤 우리 사랑하자!" "Tonight, let's love!" Hahaha, I wasn't aware weddings were supposed to be funny like this ;P.