Hello!
I'm back with a blog post that I can't wait to get done and published for you all. I had so, so much fun with my class this Friday. We had another field trip kind of thing, and we decided to go to Korean folk village. It was a lot more fun that it might sound. It's a living museum type of huge park that has also been the filming set of, to name few of them, the Korean famous dramas called "You who came from the stars" & "The moon that embraces the sun". I am a huge sucker for history and it was my absolute favorite subject at school, so I was really looking forward to going there.
Immediately after stepping through the gates it felt like you had traveled back in time for a couple of hundred years. The feeling was pretty absurd when you think about how incredibly advanced Seoul nowadays is. But this day made me appreciate this country's history and traditions even more. It was a nice eye-opener after a day in Gangnam between skyscrapers and high technology.
In addition to being full of pretty traditional houses and gardens there were also actors playing as regular people living their lives in there. My personal favorite was this one funny looking "local drunk" who was all around the place, carrying a bottle of alcohol with him at all times. Later we were playing games on this empty field, and he decided to join us because the park was almost empty by then. He was hilarious. There was also a local courtroom and "a judge" that kept picking random guests and started interrogating them out of nowhere. These actors made the whole place really lively and I felt so out of place in my black jeans, lace shirt and a light grey cardigan while it was just hanboks (traditional Korean dress) and other traditional clothes everywhere.
They also grow / make and sell traditional medicine & ingredients over there and have this traditional market place. We never went there, but there were small booths all around the village as well. There were also all kind of other goods and souvenirs to buy home along with traditional Korean snacks & candies.
They had quite many happenings and performances around the village going on about all the time, so it was impossible to see all of the place in one day. We watched a horse slash acrobatics show, people standing on their heads on the back of a horse while it lopes around and just basic stuff like that (That was obviously sarcasm and it means the show was pretty amazing). Then there was this one guy jumping, walking and running on a rope. We also attended a real Korean traditional wedding that was held at the park that day. That was a pretty magical moment, to be honest. I had no idea who the people were, but it looked so beautiful I almost teared up, hahaha. The third show we watched was, oddly enough, a B-BOY show. I love dancing, hip hop music and all that jazz so needless to say I was having a good time. The guys were talented and the weird mixture of traditional Korean music and hip hop / break-dance music was intriguing. I wanted to record some of it but by that time my battery had run out from both, camera and phone.
Otherwise we were pretty much just walking around, taking silly pictures and being fascinated. At the end of the day we had about an hour of time left before our bus came so we spent it playing a very nostalgic childhood game called "statues" ("peili" in Finnish, "무궁화 꽃이 피었습니다" in Korean. Pretty sure you all have played this one!) and then a bunch of Korean games like "Baskin-Robbins 31" and few other speed games that got us all cracking up at the mistakes we made.
For people who visit or plan to visit Seoul, you should definitely use one of your days at this place. There's so much to see and learn about Korea and its culture that you definitely won't be disappointed. I am not a big fan of museums and stuff like that, in my opinion they are pretty dry, so this was definitely a fun, casual way of learning new! Look at me sounding savvy and all.
Yesterday I spent the morning and afternoon having some quality shopping time all alone, and then hung out with my friends, ate Japanese and went to Noraebang to sing and dance our hearts out. Today I'm gonna work on my Korean speech and do some hardcore studying.
On a completely another note though, being the coffee / cafe hopping addict I am, I'm planning to start doing a post series about cute, unique cafes around Seoul. Also I might have few reviews coming up in next few weeks ~
That's it for now. I hope you guys liked this post and make sure to drop a hi on the comments or if you're curious about something just ask away ~
xx,
Julia
