'Occidental': Mr. Hillmer Goes to Gwanghwamun-gu

So it's finally come to this. After about a year of telling everyone "I'm 90% sure..." and "I plan to..." etc., I'm finally studying in South Korea! It still hasn't hit yet that I'm not just on vacation and that I won't be going home very soon. I think that will hit when I move into my dorm on Wednesday at Ewha Womens University (yes, I'll be attending a girls' school; No, that wasn't my choice, it's the only Korean school that UW has a formal study abroad relationship with *eye-rolls*).

So..after the 2am bus ride from Madison to O'Hare, and then getting lucky with an earlier standby flight to San Fran, then the 12 hour flight to Seoul (a total of about 24 hours of travel/downtime) I arrived in Seoul to meet my beautiful girlfriend of about a year, MiJin!

On Saturday, after I slept for 6 hours at the completely wrong time of day (jetlag) MiJin and I went out ot get some good street food, and in the most populous district of Seoul, Songpa-gu, we ran into one of MiJin's best friends, Doo! (or just Doodie, Doobie, or DooDoo to me) and her friend HwiYoung (the 'prettiest' man I've ever seen!). I missed her so much since January! :D We talked for a while at a kind of street food vendors tent (common hangout for young Seoulites) then went to play pool at one of about a million pool halls in Korea (or 'pocketball', as you have to be precise, since most koreans play the weird one with no pockets....)

After about 8 months of a distance relationship :S MiJin and I finally went on a real date (that didn't involve MSN instant messenger or facebook *more eye-rolls*) at a Japanese fusion restaurant called "So Yummy". I also got to see MiJin's workshop where she is preparing several works of art in textile design for her Senior gallery showing this winter.

After watching her painstaking weaving, we went to the Gwanghwamun district of Seoul , which is sort of the "Washington D.C." of South Korea. In addition to government buildings, the U.S. Embassy, and the Blue House (Korean 'White House'), Gwanghwamun has recently redone a monument to Yi Sun-Sin, a famous admiral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Sun-sin), with fountains, gardens, and lights. This was all just an extremely ugly construction site when I last visited in January. The statue of Yi Sun-sin glares down at you as you are humbled before the long stretch of road that leads to the palace of the last Korean dynasty, Choseon. There were little kids screaming and running through the fountains everywhere while I was surrounded by traffic on both sides, on one of the busiest streets in a city of 10 million+ people, with mountains and the palace in the distance.....I was quite overcome, and couldn't stop smiling! :D I'm in Korea!