The Eye of Patrick

Hello,

So the first real day of Korea was the 29th as we were able to have a full nites rest and a chance to explore korea. I was allergic to the smoke in the room so I was awaken by the sore feeling in my throat. Rather then lay in bed and think how death would be much more fun then the smell of smoke i decided to go out in to the streets of korea and explore while i waited for the others to wake up. It is strange how things look different in the morning then they do when you arrive at night. The night before I was dark and quiet, but now it was full of people moving in and about their daily business. The place our hostel was located was an university area, i think within 15 minutes walk you could find the campuses of 3 differnet schools. So as i walked around there was many people who were off to school, many young people.

The first sign I saw was one for a Canadian college that decided to open a branch in Korea to teach english. It was my first time seeing my country name written in hangol the language of korea.

As I walked around I thought it was best that I return to the hostel so that I could regroup with the people that I was going to out and explore the local area. For some reason we were lucky to select a hostel that was located within 10 minute walk of one of the palaces.

The name of it was Changgyeonggung Palace, according to the Seoul Tourism website:

Changgyeonggung Palace was originally built by King Sejong as a
residence for his father, Taejong, and was called Suganggung Palace. It
was renovated and enlarged in 1483 by King Seongjong to be used as a
residence for three dowager queens, at which time the name was changed
to Changgyeonggung. It was also called Donggung, or East Palace along
with Changdeokgung, which stood on the other side of the wall. (These
two palaces played complementary roles.)

This was the entrance to the palace.

The only problem with visiting the palace was that it was in late in March so that everything was still suffering from winter, the plants and grass had not grown back yet. But even though, the beauty of the area was able to shine through. We decided to set a lesiurely pace to walk the area. The handouts they gave us were really not of much use as they did not give to much information on the palace. So i was sadly unable to learn to much about the history of the palace we visited.

As we went into the palace more we ended up on Myeongjeongmun Gate, the guide book did not say much about it, just that it was rebuilt many times. The last being in 1989, during Japanese occupation of Korea they decided to destory this palace. Also they changed the name of the palace in Korean from Palace to that of a Park and decided to build other things around it to diminsh the view of the korean royal family.

Here is a cool shot of my friend Mike taking a picture of us taking a picture of him behind the myeongjeongmun.

Here is the photo of the main entrance, I like this picture a lot as it shows the meeting of Old and the new. The office buildings in the back symbolize the progress Korea has made in such a short time, while the palace is a symbol of the past and all the hardwork that gave way for the modern Korea.

Here are some more pictures of the palace.

This picture below is another 3 people that were part of my travel crew. They are Mike on the left, Josh in the middle and Jimmy on the right. If it were not for the 3 of them I probably would not have set foot on the shores of Korea as i would get to scared hehe. So i was happy that I went to Korea with them. I really like this photo for some reason, they just look so cool in the photo.

While we were walking around the park, we noticed some people playing a game, being the curious Gaijan we are we decided to get in and investigate. As we were watching them we were amazed at how vocal and animated they got regarding the game and then when it was all over they were so happy again. This reminded me of Brazil, where people could be screaming at each other but then go back to being friends so easily.

Here is another of my travelmates, Aisha, she was the only girl on the trip, which made her then one of the guys hehe… she is tired in this picture as we had done a lot of walking that day and she had sat down to take a rest.

The place we went was a large palace so it also had a secret garden, but with our trusty map and the signed that directions, the secret garden was not so a secret after all.

There was also a garden there.

I will end here, so i can have a update, and i will update more soon.