Our apartment and Lake Park

Last night we passed out at 7:30pm and slept until 7am.  Feeling refreshed after a good night's sleep, we decided it was time to cleanse our apartment from the filth of the previous owner, who was quite the shedder.  (We found her hair everywhere, even in the freezer).  GROSS!  We bleached the entire bathroom, kitchen, and fridge, and swept the floor.  Then Mrs. Kwon stopped by and dropped off our TV, some dishes, and she brought us 2 bags of apples.  She also had a maintenance guy come up and fix our heat.  The valve, located under the sink (who knew?), was turned off, so now we have heat.  Yay!  Then she gave us W 50,000 (=$50) so that we could go out to lunch and thank Jordan for all of his help.  
This is our clean apartment:

We ended up at this Chinese restaurant for lunch.  We looked through the menu and Kyle noticed that they had pictures of full prawns (head included) and mentioned that he wanted to try them.  We were able to find a 6 course meal that consisted of the dish.  The meal was W45,000 ($45) and had about 6 courses which for 4 people was plenty.  Jordan spoke with the waitress and ordered, but the waitress was unsure of what he was saying and instead of 1 meal for W45,000 we got 1 meal each.  Jordan of course felt bad for the miscommunication and how much lunch cost, but we forgave him because if he wasn't there we might have been eating monkey brains.  The meal was not the chinese food you get in the states though.  Jordan did his best to inform us about what we were eating: jelly fish, sea slug (Monica's face was priceless), squid, octopus, shark fin soup (Kyle feels guilty about that), and of course a fried prawn complete with head (Kyle and Jordan ate the whole thing).  Apart from the accidental cost and the uncomfortably full feeling, the meal was delicious, but something tells me we won't be going back anytime soon.
Eating  jellyfish (I was so adventurous with my food today!):

We also encountered a truly Asian experience as was were walking to the park.  We have all seen the American teenager go gaga over seeing Hannah Montana.  We found the Korean equivalent as we walked by a large TV broadcasting station.  Hundreds of Korean teenage girls and boys in school uniforms flocked outside the building awaiting a glimpse of their favorite celebrity.  They held signs and screamed as each car came out.  They chased the cars down the street and surrounded them at the stoplight and went as far as running through a busy intersection.  Their screams could be heard blocks away.  It was a truly unique sight.


After lunch, we decided to walk off all of the food we ate and we walked around Lake Park, which is the largest man-made lake in Korea.  We had visited the park earlier and saw the pagoda (below), we made this our first destination.  There was plenty of unusual art to be seen, mostly modern sculpture.  One sculpture that caught our eye was of 5 monks in praying position towards a TV set.  Kyle and Jordan were eager to join the monks in prayer to their favorite deity.  The park held a few other oddities: a barefoot walking path that was paved with different cobblestones and obstacles meant to massage your feet, a large hill with crude stone steps and a strange statue, a musical fountain, and some caged pheasants and chickens.  We also ran into one of Monica's coworkers, Mike, who joined us for the last leg of our walk around the lake.  At the park:

  

Now off to find a Korean equivalent of a birthday cake, even though we're still pretty full from lunch.  Midnight snack?


Love, K & M