Today in celebration of Chuseok / because all of my friends are out of town due to Chuseok, I decided that it would be a good day to pay a visit to a palace (since they are pretty much the only place open today). For today’s adventure I traveled over to 창덕궁 (Changdeokgung). Since it was Chuseok, there were a bunch of traditional games set up at the enterance.
After purchasing my ticket, I tried to enter. I don’t know if it was something this palace does (since I don’t think I’ve ever been here before), or it was a special event due to the holiday, but all people got put into guided tours. The English tour was going to go down in like 40 minutes, but there was a Korean tour begining right then…so I joined up with a group of Koreans to learn about 창덕궁.
The tour group I ended up in consisted of a lot of elementary school kids and their parents (not a lot of old people like some of the other groups I saw) so it was kind of geared towards kids, which was good for me since that’s about the level my comprehension of Korean is at.
This is where some kings did business.
A tree.
After checking out the palace proper, we headed over to 비원 (Biwon), or as all English materials call it, “The Secret Garden.” At this point I was pretty sure I had not yet been to this palace…since I really had no recollection of seeing any kind of garden…secret or otherwise at any of the palaces I’d been to.
Secret Garden.
This pond had some koi in it that I attempted to photograph, but my camera wasn’t having it.
I was so on an elementary school field trip. These were the other people in my tour group. The lady with the microphone was our tour guide. She was explaining the sundial (in Korean), and because (like I said earlier about this being about my speed in terms of Korean language), I was the one who answered the tour guide’s question as to why the sundial did not have 24 hours on it (”밤에 해 없어요.”)
The men’s quarters.
A kid, an old school wall, some power lines, and an office building.
Being in the tour group was actually a lot of fun. I could understand the bulk of what was being said, and the first time I asked a question of our tour guide I saw the looks of surprise I’d seen in quite some time…and then had to explain to a bunch of people that I could understand spoken Korean, and speak Korean a little bit. Anyhow from there it was time to go home so I got on the subway and traveled back to my homestead….to drink.
