Tiny Snippets

Since my first video montage of my stay in Korea was such a success (46 views, you guys!!!) I made another one. Here's some things I saw in Japan and then some things I continued to see in Korea.

Glimpses of Japan & Last Month in Korea from Milla Meikäläinen on Vimeo.

Sometimes We Just Go To The Park

..Or something else equally unexciting. I wish my life was an endless stream of Seoul adventures and twee coffee shops, but more often it's just hanging out with my #1, going out to dinner and watching a lot of films. Or going to the park.

Buddha's Birthday

Brace yourself, pictures from Buddha's birthday are coming.

This was one of those rare days we knew what we were doing in advance. Today was Buddha's birthday which is a national holiday. That means that George has a three day weekend. So today to celebrate Buddha's BD, we set off to visit our local temple, just a walk away from our flat.

Spotted this anarchist cat doing a dirty protest for the greedy oil industry. (Click to enlarge the photo and you'll see the cat is in fact poopin').

Also spotted on our walk to the temple was this random shout out to Finland (which in Korean is pronounced Pinlandu). 

As you can tell by all the squinting, it was a very sunny day, but as you can tell by the jeans, the weather was still pleasantly mild. The last photo was taken by a kind gentleman who offered to take it, I didn't even have to use the phrase taught to me by my phrase book! (REAL fans of this blog will recognise the reference!!)

Me surrounded by my blog readers. 

I've gone a little overboard with decorating George's flat. HAHA JUST KIDDING, THIS IS THE TEMPLE. 

After we left the prayer room, I sat outside to put my shoes back on and that's when I made a granny friend. She was very old and shrivelled, and refused to understand that I didn't speak any Korean. Throwing my only words around, such as "Hello" and pointing myself and saying "Finland!"she was considerably impressed and beckoned me to follow her (and ok, George too, but she was my friend first!). She led us to a big cafeteria, where the temple ladies were handing free lunches for members of the temple. We got a trayfull of delicious vegetarian stirfry, rice, bbq sauce, vinegary soup and seaweed soup. Natives successfully infiltrated! 

Adorable kids. 

 

Very pleased by our authentic cultural experience.

After the local temple, we decided to head to town because I faintly remembered reading a sign that there was another temple behind Tumuli park (check a few posts back to see Tumuli park). We had gone Buddha crazy, people!!

Nuns enjoying the free day off, despite recognising a different faith..!!

We got to town, and set off trying to find this fabled temple close to Tumuli park. Here's what we found: 

A pillar erected in the honour of a dude who mourned his parents for three years next to their graves, impressing the king. 

A very nice garden.

Tumuli park. Here George is making me laugh, how dare he?!?!

A wall of roses. 

But no temple. Oh hey wait. Maybe it wasn't a temple. Maybe I got it mixed up and was thinking about this shrine. Yup. I definitely was. Well it didn't matter, the day was beautiful and this shrine was peaceful. 

The shrine was full of tiny private rooms for meditating and prayer, but we just enjoyed a quiet sit down and a chance to not have to talk to each other all the time. We were on a roll and decided to continue walking. 

_Very_ close by (like three minutes) was one of Gyeongju's biggest tourist sights: this tower. No one is 100% sure what the tower is for, but it's believed to have something to do with astronomy because it has 366 rocks, 52 something and 12 something or the other. Man, I really can't remember. 

Little kings running. 

Next to the tower was a big field full of families and tourists and couples enjoying the nice day, and flying kites. Suddenly, I was approached by four university (probably) student lads, holding a kite. "Do you know this?" they asked me. "To fly one? Yes!" I said (proud member of Kitten/Kite Club). "Then it's your's!" Waaah, how incredibly nice! I immediately set of flying the shit out of my new awesome peacock kite. 

George was also allowed to try after he whined about it for long enough. 

We had already previously decided that after sight seeing, we would go to town for dinner and to catch Great Gatsby. I was very keen to bring my new kite home for decorating the walls, but suddenly realised why I was gifted it in the first place: carrying it was a pain in the ass. So we paid the good deed forward and gave it to a family with two very appreciative kids.  

Which I immediately regretted because I wanted to give it to these two bad asses posing by the entrance gate to the park. I strongly encourage you to click the picture to enlarge it, these two bad mofos look like they're in a middle of a photo shoot for their album cover. 

George can only dream to reach those levels of cool, although he pulls off shades and standing around pretty well, too. 

First Week Round Up

I've been here for a week, you guys! Here's a quick mishmash of things I've gotten up to this week that I haven't told y'all about:

We visited the Gyeongju national history museum. It was nice, apart from about 300 children who were visiting the museum at the same time. Their method of seeing everything in a timely and efficient manner was baffling. The teacher would lead them in one MASSIVE line around the museum, walking past every artefact. No stoppin allowed. So the kids basically walked in a single line, briskly around the whole exhibition and then left. They couldn't have been at the museum for more than an hour. I doubt they soaked much history or information in. I unfortunately don't have many photos from the exhibition, because no photography allowed. But here's the few we took. The day was cold as balls, by the way. I feel like I need to mention, so all of you freezing Finns don't have to be so jealous of me all the time.

We visited the Anapji Pond. It was pretty rad. There were speakers everywhere in the park that were playing flute music, super loud. George has told me that kissing in public is frowned up on, but I saw a total of two (2) couples kiss in the park. So what I've learned is that flute music makes Korean people mad horny. 

Done some shopping. I hope that mini header isn't misleading because the weight is on the word _some_. I've found that everything is really cheap here, and also that I saved a lot more money that I needed for this trip. Whoops x2. But the thing is, I was a student for three years, then followed by being broke for three months, and then followed by saving to come here for seven months. So in conclusion: I have no idea how to spend money. And any money that I do spend, I feel very guilty for, immediately. 

So what I've done is, I've paced myself. I'm allowing myself into a new shopping territory every couple of weeks, because man do these shops here have some incredibly cool but unnecessary stuff. Especially cosmetics. God bless this superficial nation. So, so far I haven't bought much, just stuff I've needed: hair accessories, some cosmetics such a shower gel, makeup wipes and contact lens solution (to my disappointment the last one was just regular contact lens solution and not *-_c00l @siAn_-* contact lens solution with apple flavouring and glitter), socks (because I left them all at home) and walking shoes. Here's photos of those. 

A fraction of the cute socks I had bought. I thought I had arranged them quite creatively, turns out I had arranged them quite nazi-ly. 

Ok so I bought these Nike Free Runs from Busan. I had already planned on buying them a month before I arrived, because Ronya kept flaunting her's around, saying how they were comfy as shit. These shoes in mind, I even took an extra Saturday shift at work so I could justify such an extravagant purchase. The day after I arrived to Korea, George and I proudly marched to the Nike store where the sales person insisted on manually putting my feet in different sized shoes until we found my.. Japanese?.. Asian?.. shoe size. We had this delightful tiny chat:

Him: Have you seen Iron Man 3?

Me: Yes!

Him: Good?

Me: Yes, so good!!

Him: How?!

Me: How did I see it? In Finland!

Him: Ohhh.. Finland. I can't see it.

Me: Why?

Him: Because I study. 

Me: Oh.

Him: You get 10% discount. 

Hurraah! Success! So I ended up paying 84€ for shoes that in Finland would've been around 120€. Hahahahahaa. And God damn are they comfy. 

Other than neccessary purchases, I've allowed myself to buy extravagant snacks. But I'll post about these later, hopefully in a video review form. 

Home making. George lived in this flat for four months without knowing that his washing machine is broken. He's just soaked his laundry for 40 minutes in cold water in a broken washing machine and then hung them dry. So I've had to wash my laundry in the bath tub, or in the machine, but stirring the drum with a broom handle. Other complaint: his fridge smelled like rotting cabbage patch kid corpses. Damn you kimchi! So yesterday I emptied the fridge and wiped it with vinegar and then with cleaning chemicals. 

Here's the paper crane lamp I made, and the photos George had taped up on the doors before my arrival. The red bird on the left door (MY cupboard door) is a card I got from a girl who works at George's school and to whom we ran into once in town. The next day when George came from work, he brought me a present the girl had given him to give to me. It was lovely makeup bag and this card. Don't worry guise, I've already purchased her a gift in return, and will wrap it this weekend. A beautiful friendship pending. 

George comes from a proud and long family of fridge magnet buyers. When I joined his family on a holiday to Scotland, we even bought a magnet from a sight we didn't even visit. Meaning, we drove all the way to the gift shop, bought a magnet, and left. It was the best of times. So, to honour his cultural heritage, we bought these two magnets from the museum. They're "the gentleman" and "the queen". Because.. you know. 

Domestic bliss.