Park-a-palooza!

What a wonderful weekend we just had! It was unseasonably warm (mid-20's!) on Saturday, so along with about 10 million (well maybe just a couple) Seoulites we decided to go to see the cherry blossoms at Yeouido Park. This park is located on a large island in the Han River, where it cuts a swath of green through the otherwise sea of corporate headquarters, banks and other skyscrapers that blanket the island.

The park is nice: lots of trees, grassy areas, ponds and creeks, pagodas, a huge public plaza, and lots more. It is ringed by busy walking and biking paths (you can rent bicycles of all shapes and sizes). The best part of the park for our girls was the childrens' play ground, of course! Since the park was hosting the cherry blossom festival this weekend, we were surprised to find relatiely few cherry trees actually in the park. We found the prettiest walk was along the roadway between the subway and park entrance, where blossom-choked branches formed a dazzling canopy over the sidewalk. Cherry blossom season was nearing an end however, as blizzards of pinky white petals rained down on us with every gust of wind. We had fun playing in the drifts of petals! Here are a couple photos, but they don't do it justice.


Here are more shots of Yeouido Park and its attractions.



This is a statue of King Sejong the Great, who commissioned the creation of hangul, the Korea alphabet in the 15th century. And here are Jin and Lili "reading" about him.


The park has a number of barefoot pathways. Walking on these in bare- or sock-feet is supposed to be good for you. I don't think our intrepid tourists would agree! The blossoming spirea did make everyone feel better though.


We enjoyed the traditional picnic lunch of gimbap on a grassy patch in the shade of a bamboo grove. And it wouldn't be a park without the playground! Check out the interesting 2-pole slide!



Sunday wasn't quite so warm or sunny, but still nice at about 20 degrees. So we thought we'd brave the crowds and try another park. This time we went to the Seoul Forest Park, located few kilometeres east of our place, in Seongdong-gu district of Seoul. The park was recently developed in a former royal hunting forest. In addition to the young forest (the park is only a few years old) it has a number of small lakes, a wildlife area with deer you can feed, botanical garden, insect garden/museum, water park, sports park and of course a playground. This playground was the biggest and best yet. Two thumbs up from our critics!

Here are Jin and Deb walking along the walk- and bike-path that runs along the Han River through the city. The subway tracks we came on are on the left, with the Eungbong Station in the background. And here is a shot of the girls looking over the Han River.


We entered the park on an elevated walkway that overloked the forest and wildflife area. There were lots of deer there, mostly spotted Formosa Sika Deer and the tiny fanged Korean Water Deer.


Here are Lili and Deb feeding them special deer food. Check out the fangs on the little guy.

Can you spot Deb and Lili in the rainforest? And look who's happy we found the playground.

The playground is huge here!

This is something we dubbed "meshman". It is a giant mesh statue that kids can climb inside of - just the lower part. Too cool!

The Splash Fountain in the Waterpark was also a big hit. The water jets would pulsate at random, from off to full in seconds, catching people by surprise, much to the crowds's delight.



We've got to come back to this park! Especially when it gets really hot in the middle of summer. We'll bring spare clothes then too....just in case....

Well that's our park-a-palooza story. Today (Monday) it was back the routine: girls to school, Deb and I to the store. Jin and Lili are liking school a lot. I'll get them to tell you about it in a future post. And I have to get Deb to write a post about shopping here too.

Good-night all!

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili

p.s. check out the sidebar for some new website links you may find interest. I also fixed the clock gadget, so it should be right now.

School!

Hello everyone!

Yesterday Jin and Lili started attending Korean school. Here is what Jin wrote to her teacher and classmates about their new school:

Lili and I started at our new school here in Korea today! Lili is in one class and I am in another. Our teachers are very nice. They speak Korean and a little bit of English. We wear uniforms at our new school. Today we wore our yellow PE uniforms because we went on a field trip to a park. Tomorrow we will wear our new skirts and sweaters. My daddy attached picture of us in our PE uniforms in front of our shuttle bus. The bus picks us up at home in the morning and brings us home after school.

And we have new backpacks too, with special lunch trays. Today we had gimbap (Korean sushi) for lunch.

We really like our new school, but we miss all of you at R.L.Beattie School.

LOVE JIN XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

The second photo, taken today, shows them in their regular school uniforms.

We found the school, a kindergarten, through our building manager. Her youngest son is 7 years old (in Korean age, but 5 or 6 in calander years) and attends this school. When we were viewing the apartment we mentioned our interest in having the girls attend a Korean school during our stay. The manager said she would enquire at her son's school to see if there was space and interest in taking on 2 non-Korean speakers. We set up an appointment at the school this past Tuesday to check the place out and meet the principal. She was very nice (could speak some English as she had lived in Canada and the US for a couple years) and they were very accommodating to us. Kindergartens are not part of the public school system here, although most children attend them. They are privately run and for childern ranging from 2 or 3 years old up to 7 or 8 years old, so they are kind of like a combination day care-kindergarten. Being private the costs can vary, but the fees for this school (which includes uniforms, backpacks, lunch trays, lunches, shuttle bus, and all other supplies) were considerably less than day care back home. They also gave us a large discount in consideration of the purpose of our trip to Korea. The school is located in Oksu-dong, the neighbourhood "next door" and only 10 minutes away by shuttle bus when there is no traffic (which is alomst never!). Will take and send some photos of the school itself for a future post.

Today was their first real day of school, as they went on a field trip to Yongsan Park yesterday. So far they seem to love it. Hope the interest and fun continues for them. Deb and I are enjoying being able to travel around the city on our own. Still have some shopping to tell you about (there is a Costco here!) and hope to do some serious touristing as well. We are also going to look into language classes for ourselves. More about these adventures in upcoming posts - we've got some great shopping/food stories to tell you about.

I'll end off with a couple photos of the girls enjoying our local inner-city playground.

Bye for now,

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili

p.s. I've added a few links and photos to the sidebar. More photos to come. If you have any questions or requests or suggestions for the blog, just post a comment or send us an email at: deb.derek@yahoo.ca. Thanks.

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