We stayed at the JW Marriott hotel in Seoul. Here's a panoramic view from our hotel of the area in front of the hotel. On the far left is what is called Dongtaemun which means Great East Gate. It was one of the four main gates around the original city. If you click on the picture you should be able to grow it and look at it in more detail. This is a huge whole shopping area as well. It was busy all night. Thankfully, they had good sound proofing. Terri's favorite part of the room was the automatic curtains. We could lie in bed with all the lights off and watch the world go by below us. It is one very busy place. Many stores open until 4:30 in the morning.
At the hotel was a nice buffet of Korean, Japanese, and western foods. They had a spicy baby octopus salad that was a very tasty and included a baby indeed.
For dessert they had what every little girl would love to see, Hello Kitty!
They theme of the restaurant for the evening was the same:
In the morning I went for a run along the water runoff canal. I found a ladies' Zumba class.
We did some shopping at Namdaemun, which is the great south gate, another huge shopping complex. One of the mission presidents and his wife from Busan will return to the US this summer and they don't have access to this market or anything like it. It was good for them to find a few things. If you want to check it out, look here: Namdaemun Market
Here's a picture from our venture:
As for interesting finds this week, we found a little boy shopping with his dad at Costco that looked like he'd been working with our missionaries all week. He was in the midst of chaos in great peace:
For Mother's Day, we wandered into a huge market for plants of all kinds. Terri found what is called a clock flower. You can see the one we purchased. It has three hands, one for hours, minutes, and seconds. It's pretty stunning. It is a climbing plant.
We finally have some clear air. This morning during my run I was able to get this shot of the Lotte Tower some four miles off in the distance. Normally, it's pretty hazy.
Finally, we had a nice visitor. We always like it when some of our missionaries come by. We had a wonderful visit catching up on the good things in her life. We feel bad because we had a sister come back a few weeks ago and didn't take a picture. We really wish we'd have captured her and her fiancé for the blog. We won't make that mistake again!
We start interviews again this next week and expect to have some photo-moments to share.
We are learning so much.....
