Not sure he would choose the same picture to introduce himself but that is neither here nor there. My connection to him was that a friend of mine had met him at school in South Africa and said grade A. He was. We met outside of the Wang Jang Market and took a look around, there was the usual food court.
On Jin's recommendation we had soup for lunch. If I am honest soup is one of the foods I like least about Korea, for the most part they put seaweed and red pepper paste in hot water and call it done. While it was still Korean soup it was better than most I have tried.
In the same area, down a bunch of unmarked, poorly lit hallways Jin brought me to a clothes market of sorts. I was told that all the clothing was used, but most of it looked hardly used. It was quality stuff. I didn't have a list else I would have definitely picked up some things.
Down another dark hallway they were selling rip-off designer hand bags.
With very little direction we wandered our way to the Chongyecheon Restoration Project. It is an stretch of river that the current President of Korea turned in to a river walk hang out area. It was a real nice area.
Along the way we saw an old palace/house(?) and a building that looked like this. Cool, eh?
From there we wandered to Deoksugung Palace. It was very similar to all the other palaces in Korea except that they had a lovely welcoming committee waiting for us.
This is where Jin told me that one of the Korean emperors, King Sejong, created the sundial. Having been in Korea for a few months already I know that this is impossible, the sun comes out at most every other day and so this would not be a very useful way to keep time. Based on that my gut tells me it was invented in Egypt, because it is always sunny in pictures of Egypt.
To prove it to me he took me to a museum dedicated to King Sejong. It was free and actually kind of cool. We did some calligraphy, saw a(really cheaply made) movie in 4D and did not find any information that he invented the sundial.
Upon my return I have done a little research and found that the Wikipedia page on Sundials does not mention King Sejong, or Korea at all. It does however mention Egypt, and I quote, "The earliest sundials known from the archaeological record are the obelisks (3500 BC) and shadow clocks (1500 BC) from ancient Egyptian astronomy" Eat it Jin.
At about this point we found out that this was the weekend that the Lantern Festival was occurring in Seoul which is supposed to be a big deal. It was fortunate as we found out about an hour before the parade started and we were only a few blocks away from where it would be passing by.
Once we had our fill we continued on our way, which turned out to be heading to Jin's area of town. He lives in Anyang which for a non-Korean speaker like myself sounds a lot like their word for hello, "anyong". This entertained me for most of the subway ride. We ended up going for supper and watching some Champions League, before calling it a night.
The next day was Sunday so I attended church with him and made my way back in to Seoul to meet some others for lunch. Stay tuned for Seoul much more.(Seoul many more where that came from)
That photo of you doing Calligraphy is gold! That looks so fun! Great post!
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