Hello~ Nothing too exciting to report today. I've been taking it easy all month - May started out with midterms for the kids, which meant no teaching for me, then we had a week off for holidays. That was followed by a day off for the presidential election and then my birthday. I had plenty of time to get ahead with lesson planning and make some games for the kids to fit into future lessons.

After exams were finished all of the teachers went to a nearby agricultural park for a few hours then we had dinner together in the evening.

We had off on May 3rd for Buddha's birthday, so I went to Seoul for the day to see the lantern displays while they were still up. I was glad that the holiday fell on a Wednesday because one of the things I wanted to do while I'm here was join a Wednesday demonstration. These demonstrations have taken place every week since January 1992. People gather in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul demanding that Japan acknowledge and apologize for war crimes - specifically the sexual slavery of Korean women during WWII. There are about 40 victims still alive today, so it was meaningful for me to be able to attend a protest for the women who survived.

I included a picture in my week 6 post of Gwanghwamun gate in front of the palace. This time I actually went inside and walked around Gyeongbukgung. The complex is huge and my time was limited, so I'll have to go back again and walk through a different section next time.

There were many people dressed in hanbok - traditional Korean clothing. I snapped this photo of two ladies having their own photoshoot:

"Radish" in Korean is 무 (moo). As soon as I spotted this, I turned to my friend like, "It's a 무! Why is there a 무?!" I don't know why there was a giant radish, but I had to get a picture with it.

In the evening I spent hours walking along the Cheonggyecheon, a stream that cuts right through Seoul. The mouth of the stream was crowded with people for the lantern festival, but further downstream there were few people and it was quite serene - there were parts that made it easy to forget that you're literally in the middle of the city. I'm not sure how long the stream is, but there are 22 unique bridges which cross overhead and I saw maybe half of them. I also stopped at Palseokdam and attempted to throw a coin in the well for good luck.

I celebrated my birthday by going out for Korean BBQ with a friend of mine who is also a native English teacher, then we met up with one of my coworkers and the three of us went to a Korean dessert cafe. Dessert was amazing but we dug right in and I forgot to take a picture first :(