South Korea

October 1 is National Day in China. It's sort of like the 4th of July in the U.S. On this day in 1949, Chairman Mao founded the People's Republic of China. So because of this holiday, Erik and I both had a week long vacation from work and class. We spent this first holiday in Korea. We had an awesome trip!

As usual, we had a little trouble at the airport, which was frustrating of course. We didn't get into Seoul until nearly dinner time rather then early afternoon like we had hoped. We spent our first two nights in Korea with a girl we connected with online. We met her through this great website called couchsurfing.com. This website connects you with other travelers from all over the world. You can look up any city and find other couchsurfers who live there and then stay at their home for free. It's really cool. We're anxious to host our first couchsurfer sometime soon.

So, we stayed with a girl named Gloria. She was really nice. We took her to a Korean resturant and got our first taste of delicious authentic Korean food. We tried a lot of new dishes while we were in Korea and they were all very good.

On the first day we went to Gyeongbuk-gong, Seoul's grandest palace and the seat of power for centuries before it was razed in 1592 by a Japanese invasion (and they did a repeat after 1910). Within the palace walls was the Korean Folk museum, which gave us an intersting look at traditional Korean culture before westernization.

Later that night, we enjoyed Korean BBQ. It was the first of many delicious cusines that we would enjoy on the trip.