Monday's Palace Tour

Monday morning started rough for us. We got up and out the door at the time our driver told us too. (Saturday night we were picked up at the airport by a driver sent from the adoption agency. He gave us directions about Monday morning). He told us to leave the hotel at 9am to be at Holt for the tour 10am. He also gave us a packet of info that contradicted those times. The packet said Tuesday at 9am. The packet had other incorrect info in it so I figured it was an out of date printing. After talking with the front desk, we decided to take a cab to the offices of Holt so we could get dropped off right in front and not figure out the subway. As is custom, the lady at the front desk wrote down the address for us in Hangeul (Korean characters) so the cab driver could read it.

Problem #1: she wrote down the wrong address. We didn't realize this until after the cab left us. Mind you, the building had a lovely banner on it giving directions to the current office. Since this was written in Korean, it did us no good. However, a nice lady passing by gave us directions to the current office.
Problem #2: she and I weren't able to communicate correctly. We tried 3 different streets before we asked the police for help. They drove us to the Holt offices. We were still able to laugh at this point.
Problem #3: the tour was for 9am, not 10. I pointed out that the driver had our name wrong, I should've just assumed that the other info he gave us was wrong too. At this point, that got them looking through their files and realizing, oh yes, they did have the wrong info down for us. Jim and I say it is fine, we can do a tour ourselves. What matters is we didn't screw up meeting Ty. They insist that they will have their volunteer tour guides meet us downtown at the palace.
They help us get onto the subway, holding our hands the entire way to ensure that we don't further screw up.

In short, we make it to one of the palaces without further event. The only situations that arose in the subway was that a 60+ year old Korean veteran kept insisting to Jim that he find a seat and sit down. I think he was afraid Jim would fall on him. Jim wouldn't sit as he didn't want to. The older man kept pointing to all the open seats that Jim could sit in. Finally, a lady sitting next to me moved so that big dumb American would sit down.

Without further events, we met up with our volunteer tour guides. A female high school student who spoke excellent English, a male financial college student who is hoping to go the Miami of Ohio next fall, and a married young woman who wants to teach English to children. We fumbled around the palace and museum with them for a while. They then insisted on taking us shopping. Once we got to the market, I told the girls they were absolutely lovely and we had a wonderful visit and they didn't need to babysit us anymore. They had a lengthy conversation in Korean with the financial student and they left. He insisted that we needed him so he went shopping with us. So we did. I tried to barter with the vendors but he said he would take care of that for me. It was quite comical after a while; we gave in to his attempts at graciousness. After an hour or so, we pleaded exhaustion and went back to the hotel. I took a 2 hour nap; guess waking up at 4am will do that to you.
I think my favorite part of the day was when we got back to the hotel. We noticed a Dunkin Donuts was two blocks down. We practically ran there and had a coffee and some sugar delight. The coffee smelled like HOME!!! I could've bathed in it at this point.
Hopefully things will be a bit smoother this morning. We meet Ty at 10am, assuming we are still alive and not lost.
Some pictures of the day...

There are many, many people living in Seoul...these are the ones we could see from the hotel window.

Old and new, side by side.

One of the palaces rebuilt in the old part of the city.


On a palace tour

Very feng shui with water in front and mountains behind.