day 35: the 2 kingdoms

they said it was at SoeDaeMun. i checked the adress again and we kept asking people where it was. it wouldn't have been a big deal if it hadn't of taken us over an hour to get there. then i heard someone say, "are you lost?" i turned around, and there were the missionaries. i explained how it had taken everything in me to get Jean to go to the temple with me, and then i couldn't find it. turns out we went to the wrong subway stop, but still got what we were looking for. Jean said, "that is so strange that we were looking for your church and then your missionaries were just there." that little Jean has so much to learn!

we showed up to the temple and i knew that since it was monday that there wouldn't be anyone inside. i was atleast expecting there to be someone there in the visitor center. well, it turns out that they don't have a visitor center, nor do they have visitor center missionaries. the only person that was there was the head of security. he was a nice guy and let us walk around the very small grounds and take some pictures. (pretty much what you see in the picture is all of the temple grounds.it is extremely packed in.) Jean was highly disappointed that we had come this far, and that was all there was to see. I think its a good thing since it will just raise a lot more questions in his mind.

Then we hopped back on the subway and rode it to InSaDong. We got out and were completely astonished by the difference. we had arrived to the king's palace. the buildings are massive and there was a lot of history. unfortunately, a lot of it is under renovation and some archaeological digs, so we didn't get to see all of it; leaving me with a lot of questions in my mind. (mostly because we missed the english tour and jean had no idea what anything was for.)

we finished up our day by shopping at the art district. they have these streets that are lined with people's drawings, crafts, costumes, statues, etc. I think adam would have loved some of the interior design stuff, and matt would have loved the artsy stuff. you would go for a couple of shops, then a couple of restaurants, then there would be a little art gallery. then it would repeat. the streets were packed with foreigners; our stomachs were packed with korean candy; and our shoes were packed with swollen feet. (we had been on our feet for almost 10 hours.)