Seoul music and gate

Alanna and I went up to Seoul for a weekend to see some of her friends from Canada, one of which now teaches there and another--Neal Conway, the guy who gave the concert in Mad and Jeff's apartment--who was visiting. Before meeting up with the others we stopped by Dongdaemoon, the great East Gate. Sadly, Namdaemoon, the great South gate and national treasure number one, was destroyed by arson shortly before I arrived in the country. I'm not sure why the East gate is so far below the departed South gate in terms of ranking. Perhaps it was more recently restored or is smaller or something. It did look nice lit up at night, and I liked seeing the city wall continue on up the hill.

We dropped our bags off at the friend's apartment and met her pet rabbit, then ate out at a place that served entire plates what Will and I call beef bacon. After that we went to see a show of a bunch of musicians that the rest of the group knew from Newfoundland, Canada. It was pretty entertaining at times, though I lacked wakefulness and energy to dance, much less to live off every note like the four super enthused Koreans in the front row. Most of the rest of the audience was foreign. Neal had complained earlier that in Korea he ended up playing for nearly all foreigners, whereas in China he had been able to give shows for the locals and get to know them a bit.

The next day we went out for brunch, and I really enjoyed the architecture of the subway stop where we got off to eat. The grand open subterranean space was capped with a glass dome and as divided by a V of escalators. After brunch we headed back to Daejeon.