To celebrate, Tara and I went out to the Seoul Zoo.
It was lots of fun and totally EMPTY!
That might have had something to do with the monsoon, but who knows. It was pretty much pouring buckets of rain most of the time we were there.
We got to the zoo before noon and first thing Tara did was buy a poncho since she didn't bring her umbrella. She later gave in and bought an ugly, overpriced umbrella because it was just raining too hard for a poncho. Even with umbrella and poncho, we still got totally soaked. But it is a really awesome zoo!
Most of the animals were hiding inside where we couldn't see them. Smart. The giraffes were curious and kept looking out at us though.
There were these ads for Nickolodeon all over the place, too. This brought up a good point. Does Dora teach Koreans to speak Spanish or English?
Tara posed with the flamingos. They're all matchy! :D
Then we stopped by the Ape Jungle.
Lots of monkeys. While we were watching the baboons, one of them got a little excited and jumped one of the girls. It was awkward.
Also, we were sharing a bag of trail mix and they kept STARING AT US. It was a little creepy. This little guy got angry that we weren't sharing and turned his back on us. Sad. :(
While we were looking at the monkeys this family came up and the kids started speaking English. At first we thought it was just to impress the foreigners, but it turned out that they were from Canada visiting their Korean grandparents. They were so cute. :)
While we were walking, we found this fun thing where you could put your feet in animal feet (real sized? I don't know) and look at yourself in the mirror to see yourself with animal feet. Rhino feet!!
Did I mention that it was raining? The whole time? POURING?!? I mean, I'm an Oregonian, but we also have really great drainage systems so when you walk down the road it's not PUDDLE! PUDDLE! RIVER!!! As you walk. I think this one is too large to be considered a puddle. A small pond maybe? I'm sure a family of ducks would be quite happy living here.
We did get to see some lions, which was cool. To do so, we had to peer through the thick curtains of rain. All the lions were under their little umbrella things.
There were several places that were not affected by the rain as far as viewing the animals went. One of those was the nursery where they had BABIES!! There was a monkey, a gorilla, otters, two lions (too CUTE!!!), and these little baby monkey things!! Look at them sleeping like adorable little angels!
I did feel bad at one point. These two little kids were screaming at the baby gorilla and tapping at the glass while their parents watched and laughed while the baby got angrier and angrier, throwing itself at the glass and showing its teeth. It was kind of sad and I wonder what the parents were thinking. Did they think the gorilla was playing and having fun?! It was throwing it's body against the glass! What part of that says, "Hey! Let's play!"? Jeez...
Anyways. There was another part of the zoo that was largely unaffected by the rain: the ocean animals!! The only ocean animals that weren't there were the penguins. Sad day.
We even got to see them feed the seals. They were passing out plastic gloves and letting you throw fish. Isn't that cool? I don't know why we didn't grab a glove and a fish... too busy taking pictures I guess.
In one of the seal enclosures was a new baby seal!! The big daddy was looking kind of angry, yelling and running around. But the baby was so wrinkley and cute looking.
Turns out they have a seal and dolphin show! Cool! We got us some tickets and sat down to watch. The little girl in front of us wasn't too sure about this at first and hid behind her parents.
She eventually came around and sat next to her dad. What a little cutey!
The show was fun. Tara was not amused by the cuteness of the dolphins because dolphins are the rapists of the sea. It is also It was still a very good show and the dolphins were able to keep it G rated. I think it should also be noted that the music for the dolphins' entrance was the theme from Star Wars. You have to wonder how many people there actually knew it was from Star Wars? My students don't know anything about Star Wars... Anyways! Here is a short video of part of the show for your enjoyment.
Along with cool animals, dolphin tricks, and rain (rain rain rain), there were some other cool things that we found while we were there.
First, these awesome toys. I have one popular toy: a stuffed animal on a stick. However, I think the rolling inflatable duck pet might be just as cool (if not cooler) than my octopus on a stick.
There were also some exercise bikes looking out over the lions. You know, just in case you want to pretend you are biking after the lions.
We went into a convenience store for a snack and there was this big shelf of foreign snack! There were even flags to tell you where the snacks were from!
And what's more American than fishy crackers that taste like cheese, right?
Last, but certainly not least, a fine example of Konglish. Konglish can be two things. 1) Speaking with poor grammar and thick accent (that's how my students describe it at least) or 2) Bad translations.
There is nothing really grammatically incorrect about this, but I don't think the instructions they wanted to give us were really "Just a moment please." Just saying.
We finished off the day with Korean barbecue. Then it was off to my baby apartment to peel off the rain soaked clothes and lay out my collection of damp ticket stubs to dry before I glue them in my scrapbook.
Coming up next week: a trip where I will actually (hopefully) FIND the Vietnamese Embassy instead of wandering around Namdaemun area (which, I have discovered, is not even close to where I needed to be... oh well).
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