For those of you who don't know, my brother Tom and his best friend Mike have been visiting me in Gwangju for the last two weeks. It's been busy, and I hope they've enjoyed their time here. They have been keeping up with their journaling, so they probably remember everything we did better than I do! It's their last night tonight, they'll leave at 3:15 am tomorrow morning to go to the Gwangju bus terminal, then catch a bus to the Incheon Airport. We're taking it easy at home tonight, watching Dante's Peak and I'm thinking they'll probably lay down and rest pretty soon, even though it's only 6:45 pm.
Tom and Mike had some difficulty getting here. There was confusion with their airline carrier, and eventually found out from Pavlov the courrier at the MSP airport that it was Korea Air, not Delta. Due to the heavy storms in Seoul/Incheon (the most in 70 years!), they were delayed about 6 hours, and that pushed back their arrival time into Gwangju to about 2 am!
They were pretty jet lagged the first few days, but I made them get out and do things in hope that it would help reset their clocks. I think they saw all the main highlights Gwangju has to offer, and were semi-courageous when it came to trying foods out of their comfort level. We did lots of eating, I wanted to make sure they got to experience a variety of cusine.
Some of the fun sites in Gwangju we saw were the CGV Imax Theater (Avatar 3D!), Downtown, May 18 Park, Sangmu, Suwan MS, Lotte Mart, Shinsaegae, Keun Beol Elementary School for my EIC camp, the virtual roller coaster, and the insides of a few bars, cafes, and restaurant. Mike did get to meet his pen pal partner, YeoChan, but unfortunately Tom's partner was out of town in Seoul. We never made it to the Noraebang, PC bang, or DVD bang, but I guess there's always next time.
Here are the boys at one of our lunches out:
The highlight of our trip was our weekend in Seoul. We were there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Friday, we were downtown in the skyscraper district and looked at the stream running through the city. It was so pretty at night with the Christmas lights. We had a simple dinner of Kimbap and went back early to our hostel in Hongdae to rest for the early morning DMZ/JSA tour.
Sunday we saw Gyeongbukgung Palace (which I'd already seen in the fall with Alli) and Seoul Tower. Here we are at the palace:
We didn't actually go up in Seoul tower because we had a good view of the city from the base (it's on a mountan) and it was somewhat cloudy anyhow. In the afternoon, we met my friend Kenny from Gwangju in Itaewon, the foreigners district in Seoul. We spent some time at a bar, got Thai food which was amazing, and then had after dinner drinks. I had originally planned on leaving at 2 pm, but because we were out in Itaewon, we didn't get a bus back until 9:45 pm. The four of us crashed on the bus on the way back, and got back to Gwangju around 2 am!
Overall, we had a great time. I was worried that the boys would be bored in the morning when I was working at the EIC camps, but I think they were happy to have some rest time and watch Entourage. I got lots of wonderful presents/cards from my parents (thanks for the food!) and it is so nice to have some more clothes here! I'm not sending much back however because I think I'll wear most of the clothes again next season/year when I resign :) I'll worry about sending things home much later on.
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Great report! Love the pictures.
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