It's Good to be the King

On Sunday, I went to Gyongbokung, one of the palace compounds first built in the 14th century. The history is interesting (it was the seat of the Korean monarchy for a number of centuries, and was then the seat of the imperial Japanese government when they occupied Korea--the Koreans say it the Japanese intentionally located authority here to deride a Korean cultural landmark), but what I think really blows you away is the sheer beauty of the place. It sits on a very flat piece of land, and you can see the mountains looming in the background. It's pretty awesome, in the way the word was used before it described Pizza Hut pizza. You can understand why the king wanted to be here.

Also at Gyongbokung: A number of people came up to me to ask me to help them practice English. At first, I thought this was really weird (especially when two girls who looked pretty young asked me if "we could go somewhere quiet to talk"), but it turns out that they were students in an English class and had been given an assignment to speak with a native English speaker for 5 minutes, and to videotape it. Since I was the most conspicuous English speaker at Gyongbokung (you may find this hard to believe, but people can tell I'm not Korean!), I was the obvious choice. So I got to meet some very nice people who's English is a whole helluva lot better than my Korean.