A Week In Seoul

Here are some pictures from the past couple of days!!! :)

The first and second one is from one of a palace in Seoul. It is called the Gyeongbokgung palace. Originally it stood as the main palace but was burnt down during the early 1900's during Japanese Imperialism by the Japanese.

To date, several buildings in the palace walls have been reconstructed, but many have not been reconstructed.

The third one is from another side (I think. I can't remember. Everything blurs together) of Gyeongbok. But the story is that building behind me was where a Korean Queen, named Queen Min, who was killed by Japanese ninja soldiers. In fact, a while before, the Japanese had an assassination attempt to the Queen but failed because she traded clothes with one of her lady maids and lived. So this time when they assassinated her, they killed all of her lady maids to make sure that the Queen was killed. 

After her death, there was 3 stone monuments erected in her honor AND as a source of Anti-Japanese propaganda, but they were taken down later when they were reconstructing this area.

This picture is taken outside of a Buddhist temple. They were celebrating Buddha's birthday! :) There are a bunch of lanterns commemorating his birthday and we just happened to walk past a temple so...we took a picture. :)

This picture was taken outside of yet ANOTHER palace, this time outside of Suwon, South Korea. It is called Hwaseong Haenggung. This was a lot smaller palace but it had a couple games to play! Also they have this thing where you write a wish down on a piece of paper and then you tie it to the tree and it'll come true. So I did it. ;) But I can't tell you what I wished for or else it won't come true!! ;)

This was the reopening of South Korea's number one national treasure, called Sungnyemun. A couple years ago it was burnt down by a nutjob who was mad at the government and sought retaliation by burning this down. So they just finished it and had the reopening ceremony that day. But...I have never seen so many people in my entire life in one small area. ARGH moving is just impossible. But the president was there (not that I saw her) and a bunch of other influential people were there! :)

So that's been my adventures this past week! Sorry for the lack of posts. Where I'm staying, we actually don't have wifi. SAY WHAT?!?! haha. But yea. Just a quick update. We are leaving for Andong tomorrow and we will be there about a week before we move down to Gimhae for the last month!! :)

Love you all!!

Heather