A Day at the Parks

Greetings,

Here it is already Tuesday evening here and we haven't told you about our Sunday trip to the parks. Funny being a half a day ahead of home, around dinner time here we tune our computer to the CBC's broadcast of "Morning North", coming to us live from Sudbury where it is Tuesday morning. How cool is that? We like to catch the news and listen to the weather. Heard that school busses are cancelled in Parry Sound due to snow. It is in the low 20's and sunny here! Anyway, it is great to hear, all these miles away, familiar voices and news of home on the radio. Thank you Marcus and everyone at CBC!

So, back to the park story. Jin and Lili made us promise not to go shopping for the day and desperately wanted us to find a playground. So, being Sunday, we took a day of rest from shopping and went to Namsan Park, a large park in downtown Seoul, centered on Namsan Mountain. The Seoul Tower is located there, but it was hazy out so thought a trip up the tower would be wasted. Instead we visited the reconstructed traditional village called Namsangol Hanok and wandered around the park enjoying the scenery, climbing on some big rocks and having a picnic snack.

Here (above) are photos of some of the old structures with Seoul Tower in the background and the girls in front of cherry trees in full bloom. In the cental area of Namsangol village there were people playing traditional games (standing teeter-totter, big swing, spinning tops, and a board game called yut).

Many of the buildings in the hanok are reconstructed aristocratic houses of the Joseon period (1392-1910). Here are a couple of views (kitchen and bedroom) of upper-class life in the past.

There were people demonstrating traditional things like making rice cakes with a large wooden hammer (they pound it and fold it over, then repeat, many, many times). And of course you've got to have the big characters dressed in traditional clothing (called hanboks).

Here are a couple pictures of our favourite characters.

Despite all this fun, we still had to find a regular kids playground (regular sized swings, a slide, etc.). So we jumped the subway and went down to the Yongsan Family Park. This park is located closer to our neighbourhood. It used to be the golf course for soldiers (more likely officers) from the nearby American army base. Some of our friends on the 2007 Motherland will remember this as the place we hung out on the first day of the tour. It was considerably busier this time, being a Sunday afternoon. There were familes picnicing and playing all over the park. The hit with our kids - seeing as, sad to say there were no swings or slides - was the exercise area. Check out some of the fun we had there....

So that is our saga the parks. Looks like the little urban playground next to our neighbourhood subway station is our best bet for some slide and swing fun. Soon the fun will be over though.....we just registered Jin and Lili for kindergarten! Will report on that and on their first day of school tomorrow.

Good night!

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili