National Museum of Korea

This weekend has been a busy one. So I am going to do a separate post for each day. I took way to many pictures for it to all fit on one post.

On Saturday we went to the National Museum of Seoul. The museum can actually be seen from Yongsan Post. Overall it was interesting. The entrance courtyard and gardens are beautiful. The building is huge! Everything is pretty spread out over 3 huge floors and several galleries. It was very clean and the exhibits were well presented. There were really cool animated videos telling of the history of Korea. The videos were mostly in Korean, some with English subtitles. Most of the exhibits told you what you were looking at in both Hangul and English but the descriptions were mostly Hangul. There was a ton of pottery! Ancient pottery, pottery on loan from personal collections, pottery from a ship wreck they recovered, celadon pottery, and pottery from other counties! After a while we were pretty bored with the pottery. There was an entire exhibit of statues of Buddha. That was interesting and we learned two important things in that exhibit. First, the look of Buddha is different in every country, and second the different positions of his hands mean different things. Unfortunately I can not explain either of the above lessons in detail because everything on the signs was not English.

Bronze Knife shaped coin. A characteristic artifact of the Lianhuabao-Sejukri culture, 4th century BCE. 

Gold Crown and Belt, 3 Kingdoms period, 5th Century.

Giulianna and a Replica of Jungseong-ri, from the 3 Kingdoms period, 5th Century.

A close up.

This is the Ten Story Pagoda. It takes up a good amount of height in the museum.

Replica of the crowning hall.

Mike and the kids under a hand made flag.

Inside the Museum.

One of many pots!

Need I even explain?!!!

Buddha

After touring the main part of the museum we had lunch. We ate at the cafeteria, which is nothing like you would expect. The menu choices are not at all what you would think, no hamburgers or chicken fingers. Choices included seafood bean paste soup which is what I had, pork cutlet, a hodgepodge kids meal with rice, spaghetti and a pork cutlet, there was curry and some other things. Korean food is definitely interesting! It was all pretty good, absolutely not American! After lunch we went over to the children's museum. For this part you have to get timed tickets which allow an hour and a half in that area. We were lucky to get tickets and had a few minutes to wait until our appointed time, so we hit the gift shop. Somewhere in the gift shop a tragedy occurred. Giulianna lost her Hello Kitty beanie baby. I had been reminding her all day about Kitty and when the chaos to get into the children's museum occurred Giulianna must have put kitty down and walked off, and I didn't notice. When I went back a few minutes later she was gone. At that moment she wasn't too upset because of all going on around her, but for the next two nights at bedtime she cried about how she wanted Hello Kitty. Poor kid! So the children's museum part wasn't at all for a kid Giulianna's age. Most everything in it was intended for school age kids. She had a good time though putting together some giant puzzles with Daddy and just checking things out. Its so cute how she tries to talk to the Korean kids and they can't understand her. I am constantly reminding her they don't understand.

Rhyon playing with a pot in the children's museum.

Giulianna teaching a Korean boy to cook!

Mike and Giulianna trying to build an ancient pot.

Museums are fun!!!!

Playing with  a giant magnet puzzle.

Rhyon in an "Ancient Castle"!

Rhyon becoming part of some ancient painting that I can tell you nothing about because its description was completely in Hangul.

Giulianna wanted to really ride the horse!

Picture Giulianna took of me and these weird giant stuffed "people".

 On our way back to post after the Museum there was a street vendor selling what I can only describe as a pancake. Basically they took dough and put some cinnamon sugar stuff in the middle, make it flat, and fry it for a minute. I had to have one, so I bought 3 one for each of us, and share with Rhyon. Then I dropped Mike and Giulianna off at the playground and went to the commissary for groceries. After that we went home and called it a day!

View of Yongsan from the National Museum.

Out side of museum.

A view of the city from the museum.

Sunday we went to Church and then to a birthday party. Giulianna went crazy playing in the bounce house at the party. We were there for a while and then headed home for naps since the following day we were going to Seoul Land! Look for my next post all about Seoul Land!!!!