Saturday, May 14, 2011

Buddha's Birthday, Our Picnic.



Korea celebrated Buddha's Birthday on Tuesday. He was kind enough to provide a day off for Dan, and we'd planned a picnic at Seonyudo Park. It's an island. It's a park. It's great. But rain was forecast for the whole of the day, so we had to brainstorm other picnic venues. We decided to take advantage of our Lotte World year passes and lunch in luxury. I made some snacks, and we packed up some portable games and spent the afternoon walking around Lotte World and hanging out in Jamsil.



Dan got an accidental fauxhawk. The result of strenuous X-Boxing.


Rainy view from our window before we left for the day. I always like green and gray.


These flowers were hidden out in front of the Family Mart (convenience store), tucked behind some soju tables.


A little terrarium in the grid.


At our destination. The nice thing about theme parks in Korea is that you are totally allowed to bring in your own food. They even have eating areas set up for people who do. Of course, Koreans are usually bringing in kimbap and kimchi, but we had deviled eggs, saltine onion rings, sweet potater tots, and chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake. Oh, and soda and a giant bottle of ketchup.


The rain let up for exactly one second, and we took the opportunity to check out the outside of the park, which we've not yet done. Dan posed in front of their impostor castle.


You only get this kind of view in one place. Or maybe also somewhere like Epcot, but, even then, not really, since Korea has been neglected there.


This and several following pictures were of the "Music Theater", a walk around exhibit in one of the castle's spires that was neither theater-like, nor did it feature much music. Instead, it had creepy half-animatronic scenes set up depicting, I think, what was supposed to be the history of Lotte World. Mostly, we found it creepy. Pictures were actually prohibited here, and I think you can see why.


That monkey was this fox king's jester.


Here is the fox king's sad, scary dog.


This googly eyed freak was on the wall of a scene in which two suited fellows were negotiating in front of a throne, one kneeling, one equipped with a sword. Moments later, his eyes popped out of the wall down onto his face and then retracted. We don't get it. There was also something with a well and a sword hanging from the ceiling, but, by then Dan and I were retreating back down the castle steps and into the rain.


Having a belly pose in my new American maternity shirt, courtesy of a care package from Dan's mom (Thanks, Jean!). It smelled like Target (a good smell), which was very comforting.


We had walked the park trying to find somewhere to plant ourselves for puzzling, but everywhere to sit was sort of hot and not very atmospheric, so we went to one packed Starbucks after another and had to wait in line for a chance at a table, which we totally scored! But then we failed big time at assembling our puzzle. This was after hours of work, most of which by the dexterous hands of Dan with little help from me. I thought I was better at puzzles, so it was a pretty sad day for me.

-Serenity

No comments:

Post a Comment