The Tiger or the Bear?

Well Meg had her birthday yesterday. It was a little strange to celebrate it on October 3rd here since it was still October 2nd for most of the day back in North America. Her birthday was pretty much ending right around when it would have started if we were still back home. We were lucky that October 3rd is a national holiday in Korea. It celebrates Korea’s birthday (Foundation Day). It commemorates the mythical founding of the Korean nation in 2333 B.C. by the legendary god-king Tan-gun. It is an interesting myth which involves a bear and tiger striving to become human. If you are interested in finding out whether the Korean people are descendents of the Bear or the Tiger; you can read a short synopsis of the myth at: http://www.lifeinkorea.com/information/tangun.cfm

To celebrate Meg’s birthday we decided to head into an art gallery in Seoul. Meg had read good things about the Leeum Samsung gallery (that just opened a couple of years ago) and so we ventured off to spend the afternoon there. The gallery was quite beautiful and I really liked the design of the building, unfortunately only half the museum was open this week. Fortunately for us it was the Korean section that was open (we’ve probably seen enough ‘foreign’ art back home and on our honeymoon). One benefit of only half the museum being open was the price of admission was only $5 and it came with a free audio guide. The audio guides were very nice. There were little palm pilots with touch screens and a headset. When you walked up to an object it would automatically start playing what you were looking at (in theory). You could touch the screen to read the script or view different angles of the item. It was a very nice set-up. For some reason however, it only worked properly on two of the four floors. On the 2nd and 4th floors for some reason whenever you walked up to a ceramic or piece of art it wouldn’t register properly and it would talk about another piece of artwork. To make maters worse it would talk about something that wasn’t even on display. I suspect the gallery rotates some of its collections and doesn’t always update what is on display with the English audio guide. This is a shame because we really liked the gallery itself and would like to go back and see the other exhibits.

After a dinner of Dak Galbi (spicy chicken – currently Meg’s favourite Korean food) we went to the English bookstore and browsed around. We were hoping to get some textbooks or props for our classes, but nothing seemed quite right so we stopped by the local Dunkin’ Donuts, bought a small cake and headed back to Yongin. It was a pleasant day and the third country Meg has celebrated her birthday in.