Our trip to Seoul

I am going to try really hard to keep this brief and interesting :)  We traveled to Seoul (population 10.5 million) for the weekend and had a blast!  Here are some highlights:

Mugunghwa - we took this train to and from Seoul.  All of our co-teachers were quite distressed that we were taking this "slow" train, but the KTX (the bullet train) was really expensive.  It only took us four hours to get to Seoul.  It was so fun to see rural Korea on our way there.  The rice fields are turning yellow.  It is so beautiful.  

Hostel - we stayed at Inside Backpackers Hostel.  It was sooo nice!  It my favorite hostel in the world now :)  You can check out their website (http://www.backpackersinside.com/) to see what the different rooms looked like.  We had our own room; it was so clean.

Sightseeing - (I can not pronounce the name of anywhere we went - hahahaha) we took in tons of landmarks including: 

Gyeongbok Palace - a reconstruction of this huge palace where kings lived a really long time ago - pretty awe inspiring

Blue House - we just looked, it is where the current president lives
National Folk Museum of Korea - the history of Korea, old artifacts

Myeong-dong - trendy shopping, some stores from America

Namdaemun - wholesale market (a.k.a craziness) we did not hang out there very long 

Insadong - touristy shopping it had some really cool Korean crafts, we also had toured an art museum here 

Itaewon - foreigner area, it is close to an American Army base, so lots of military people hang out in this area, lots of American restaurants, interesting place but not a must see in Seoul (in my opinion)

Cheonggyecheon - a fun stream that has a paved walkway.  It is dugout, so it is below the street, peaceful place to walk

Yeouido Park - a really cool, family-friendly park that we found on our way to church, they had tandem bikes to rent.  There were tons of trees that were just starting to turn for fall.  The park is located right next to the National Assembly, so there was a huge South Korean flag.

Speaking of church...we checked out Yoido Full Gospel Church, it is the biggest church in the world they have somewhere around 1 million members (I think)...they had headsets for us, so we could listen to the service in English.  

Friends!  We were able to meet with up two great friends while in Seoul, one was a college roommate of my amazing husband.  He did a great job of showing us some of the sights.  We also were able to see Keymoon, one of my amazing husband's friends from YWAM.  She is Korean and has lived in Seoul most of her life.  We saw Keymoon right before we left and she was able to help us get to the train station and catch our train (long story, but the subway system stopped working - which NEVER happens and we thought that we would miss our train.  But we learned to never underestimate a Korean woman who can run in heels and speak Korean really fast - praise God that she was with us!)

So I promise that I am almost done :) We had a great time in Seoul, but we were both glad to get back to our "little" less-crowded Daegu!