Miso Musical and Deoksu Palace

Today, instead of normal Korean intensive class we had a cultural experience class. So the whole language school (around 100 people) went to the City Hall area to a theater to watch a traditional Korean musical called Miso. Miso is about a tragical lovestory which finally of course has a happy ending :) The most amazing thing for me was the live music (on traditional instruments) and singing. The musical includes many traditional art forms like fan dance, samulnori (traditional percussion group) and drum dancing  .The guys get extra-points from me for skillfully embedding the Mission Impossible Theme once ;)
Afterwards we could go outside and take pictures with the performers:

Nihan, me and the percussion group

Only four other people from my class came and we decided to head out for lunch after the musical and picture taking.

My classmates and me :)

Our group included from left to right: Miji (from Japan), Dongkang (from China), Angelo (from Cote D'Ivoire), Yolim (from China) and of course me :)
We were walking around for a long time until we found a nice place where everyone wanted to go. I don't know the name of what we ate and I can only say that it included chicken, some kind of weird noodles, potatoes and carrots. And red peppers of course ;)

Angelo and me preparing to dig in

After lunch we walked some time through downtown Seoul together and then everyone went their own ways. There is a small stream going through the area and it is starting to look really beautiful now in spring.

In the middle of downtown Seoul...

...there is a beautiful small stream...

...and me :)

So you are walking through the busy and crowded streets, which often look like this:

Streets of Seoul

It's noisy and crowded, there are many people, the traffic is heavy...but you just need to take two steps through a palace ground gate and you can find a quiet and beautiful place with a peaceful atmosphere:

The palace I went to today is called Deoksu Palace and is located directly at the City Hall subway station. Even though it was originally only an aristocratic villa it became a palace in the 16th century. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch a tour there, but I didn't mind wandering around by myself anyways. Spring is finally arriving here and everything starts to look really beautiful. Spring and fall are really the nicest seasons here in Korea.

Solitary atmosphere

Many bushes started blooming and even though the trees and everything else is not really green yet, the flowers make the grounds really colorful.

The weather was incredibly beautiful but still not many people were around. That's the good thing about going sightseeing on a weekday, I guess.
Only the skyscrapers in the background remind you of the fact that you are in an incredibly busy city with more than 10 million inhabitants.

With skyscrapers

Without skyscrapers

On the palace grounds are many smaller and some bigger buildings. There is also a Western-style building but because it is being renovated at the moment I couldn't take any nice pictures of it. Otherwise the mixture of architectural styles looks quite interesting. Here some more impressions from the palace grounds:

For me old looks even more beautiful than new

Beautiful weather

Old & New

Do you remember King Sejong? I've been blogging about him before. Here is the great inventor of the Korean alphabet again.

I wonder what book he is reading...

You can also see a Singijeon Launcher Carriage. The singijeon is a weapon which was invented in the 15th century. Singijeons are iron-tipped bamboo arrows with some kind of paper gunpowder rocket attached to the end. These kind of arrows could fly 100 to 150 metres far and with the Singijeon Launcher Carriage around 100 of them could be lit and shot at once.

Singijeon Launcher Carriage

After walking around the palace grounds once and looking at all the buildings I decided to stay there for some more time and enjoy the sun. So I found the most secluded benches of the whole palace grounds behind a small pond and sat down for an hour to read and take in the warm weather.

Waterspout

That's where I was sitting

At 4 o'clock I went back to Hanyang university to meet my language exchange friend Mini like every Friday but today we only met for one hour instead of two because she is really busy due to the upcoming midterm exams. 
For dinner I went to Hansot and got a takeout foodbox. It's really quick and cheap and quite decent but of course proper restaurant food is a lot better.

Hansot Lunch/Dinner Takeout Box