Monday, June 14, 2010

Weekend 15 of 52.


Mario Party 8, Yoido Full Gospel Church, W18000 Sushi Buffet, Yeouido Park, Lemonways

This was our first bust of a weekend. Dan had to work almost all day Saturday, and our plans for Sunday fell through because our destination, a Doctor Fish Cafe in Hongdae, didn't exist anymore. Even still, we managed to play Mario Party 8 with Korrine and Dave, watch Korea take its first World Cup win (and hear the nationwide cheers from our open window), visit the largest (by member mass, not land mass) Protestant church in all the world, eat sushi from boats, and drink lemonaid from a street side cart.



Korrine readying herself to party like a Mario brother.


Dave buying candy.


Dan bristled when I asked to take a picture of him eating popcorn and he thought he was being so clever making this dumb face, but I've put it here on the internet, thereby trumping his sabotage attempt. Who's clever now, Clever Dan?


Sunday morning we subbed over to Yeouido to visit Yoido Full Gospel Church, boasting 830,000 members. Our directions weren't exact, but we saw these churchy ladies at the subway and we pretty much followed them all the way to the church.


The building itself only holds, according to wikipedia, either 12,000 or 26,000, and they have seven or eight services every Sunday. Any overflow membership watches from satellite churches.


We had to walk a load of steps.


Industrial cross.


Secret picture I took during the service. From our vantage point, we never even saw the preacher in real life. We were sat behind one of a handful of pillars.


The church provided us with interpretation headphones, and a fast-talking, fast-reading Korean guided us in English and ended her duties by thanking us for the opportunity to translate. Yay Koreans!


The pipe organ, choir, and the altar. This was after the service. Playing on those screens is FGTV (Full Gospel TV), the Korean version of TBN.


Lights.


This man was corralling foreigners for a briefing session. We don't know what that means. We remained de-briefed.


Here we are with some sheep.


Korean bug while we were trying to find the advertised sushi buffet.


Boats on a moat carried the fish across the water.


After I had taken my third picture, the sushi chef nearest us posed for me. His job was to replace and announce the trays of sushi. When we left, after having eaten something like 15 rolls each, along with soup and fruit salad, he admonished us for eating too little.


We walked through Yeouido Park on our way back to the subway. Here are all the things you cannot do there, chief among them - hunting rabbits. The lowdown from top left: No camping with fires, No putting dirt into piles, No sawing down trees, No boozing and cruising, No vending from carts, No scattering, No vending from vehicles, No flower caressing, No parking cars head-on, No letting the dogs out, No parking cars or motor bikes sideways, No leashed dogs pooping on the ground.


Yeouido roses.


Yeouido has a lot of interesting buildings, but I am a lazy picture taker, so here is only one.


Meters? Bins? A row on an apartment building behind our own.


Lemonways. Our impromptu citrus barrista squeezed and sliced the lemons, crushed the ice, and mixed us a bitey lemon squash all right here on her rolling lemonade stand. So, yes, we are still enjoying our time in Seoul.

-Serenity

2 comments:

  1. That church is crazypants big! And that sheep wall is incredible...love love love! Did the sushi boats actually float by you? Is there really a big issue with rabbit hunting in Yeouido Park? And I can't believe that Koreans can trump everything American...even the old fashioned lemonade stand. Well done, Korea...well done indeed.

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  2. The sushi boats did indeed float by us, like that conveyor belt sushi. I have never even seen a bunny here. Nor have I seen any magicians, but they all must be lurking around Yeouido.

    And Korea definitely does do Americana better than Americanans.

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