touristy and dorky things

last sunday, mark and i were feeling super touristy and took the subway to the myeongdong area of seoul, to explore namsan park, home of the seoul tower. visitors are able to take a sweet uphill trek to the tower (we had no rough estimates of how long this feat would take. 3 hours? all day? koreans are hard core). despite my recently developed hiking prowess, it was sunny and sweltering; we opted for the cable car. apparently there's also a botanical garden and a small zoo, but we didn't get that far. we didn't even get up to the observation deck of the tower, as the views from the base of it were breathtaking enough (and we didn't want to pay the additional fee ...)

the tower has adopted a romantic tradition similar to one the great wall of china has, and that's to attach a small key lock to the perimeter fence of the tower to proclaim your undying devotion to the apple of your eye. the great wall's ritual apparently involves throwing the key to the lock over the edge, but the korean version has hefty warning signs prohibiting key tossing, and many of the locks were combination ones anyway.

needless to say koreans really really love each other.


there wasn't a space of chain link that didn't have a love lock on it. it was view-distracting! i wish i could have read more of the love scribbles, but obviously most were in korean. i did come across handful of english ones; one that a teacher seemed to have dedicated to her class (and to god. errr ... ) cute.


sweet love lock jumps.

upclose and very very personal.

this weekend we were scheduled to go to a baseball game on saturday, but after a near two hour trek were disappointed to find it sold out. and scalpers scarce. instead, we hit up the largest underground mall in asia, COEX mall. as much as i wanted to go on a shopping spree, having an entourage of males (in)conveniently discouraged that. instead, we hit up the large english section in the bookstore, and went to the arcade. strangely enough, i am loving video games in asia. who would've thought? ... no seriously, who?

on a completely separate, and somewhat dorky, note, i've (proudly) become total book worm as of late. to bring you up to speed: as much as i hate to admit it, my former love of reading has dissolved in recent years into a terrible habit of starting and not finishing books, with at least seven "on the go" - meaning, on my bedside table with bookmarks halfway through them. ugh. however, not all is lost! in the past month i have quickly absorbed kate grenville's the secret river, khaled hosseini's the kite runner (long overdue, i know), and cormac mccarthy's the road. my dreams were most influenced by the latter. all excellent though, and highly recommended! our bookstore venture brought home paulo coelho's the alchemist and jodi picoult's my sister's keeper. ok, so the last one's girly, but whatever.

ok, total dork post complete.
xoxo