11.11.11

November 11th was 빼빼로 데이 (Pepero Day)! This day was extra special this year because it fell on 11.11.11. They called it Millenium Pepero Day! Pepero is one of the most delicious things ever! They are little biscuit sticks covered in chocolate! On Pepero Day, everyone buys Pepero and other cute little gifts and gives them to their family, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, and so on. Here are some pictures of the different kinds!

Regular chocolate and what they call "nude." It's like an inside-out one, with the chocolate on the inside!

Almond. This one is my favorite :D

Pretty decorated homemade 빼빼로!

So much 빼빼로!

Queen Myeongseong

I've been able to go to more musicals over the past couple of months! One of them was titled The Last Empress. It was about the life of Queen Myeongseong (also known as Queen Min), wife of King Kojong. She was the last queen of Korea, killed by Japanese assassins at the end of the 19th century.

In front of the Chungmu Theater. 

It was such an epic musical! The lead actress' voice was unbelievably good. Here is a clip of the end scene. Although Queen Myeongseong was killed, her ghost comes back to sing that last part. Have a listen!

King for a Day

On November 7, a group of us in CIEE (a group of my closest friends) and our resident assistant and program director went to a drama cafe! It's where you can dress up in costumes from historical dramas and they take pictures of you. Hehe, it was a pretty fun time. We got nice big coffees and smoothies while we looked through all of the pictures of our options. None of the guys in our program went, so someone needed to be the man. It ended up being me. :D Time to be King Kojong!

Rockin' the costume. 

There can only be one queen. Watch your back. 

Proposal?

Yikes. 

Here are some pictures that the photographer took of us.

 The photographer was confused at why I wasn't smiling. I told him I thought I was supposed to look serious! 

Our resident director Suzanne and I. 

The group. 

안녕히개세요, 일본!

It was Halloween and our last day in Japan. It was off to Osaka Castle!

Cool tree. 

Entrance. 

There was a pretty park type area on the way to the castle. 

I see it!

More little school children with their matching caps. 

Castle. 

Haha. Group picture. 

View from the top. 

Swag. 

Children EVERYWHERE!

Pretty pond. 

Gorgeous. 

On the way out. 

We passed hundreds of high school kids on our way out. They were so excited to say hi to us in English. They were waving at us from afar. It was so cute!

You can see a bunch of them waving in this picture. 

Adorable bus that was in the parking lot. :)

That's all folks! After the castle, we headed to the airport and made our way back to Seoul. Such an awesome trip!

OH WAIT! A few side notes about things that happened at the airport. We saw 4 very attractive, well-dressed boys across the way while we were checking our luggage. They were saying goodbye to a few people and bowing and waving goodbye. We deduced that they had to be Korean. We were somewhat staring/stalking them for a little while. It turned out the we were right behind them in the security line and then the immigration line. One of them spoke to one of us and we found up that, yep, definitely Korean! They looked as though they were K-Pop idols. They then proceeded to run towards their gate as they announced a flight to Seoul Gimpo was having it's final boarding call. Many of us are very familiar with K-Pop but we didn't recognize them. We have since been keeping a lookout for newly-debuting groups to see who they were. But, no such luck yet.....

Also, a couple of the girls in my program ran into Bow Wow at the airport! They even got a picture with him! Life is so random sometimes. 

Gotta love it. 

Japan Round 3

Time to go and pet some deer!

Our third day in Japan was filled with cute deer, a huge Buddha, shopping, and lots of rain. 

We left Osaka in the morning and made our way by bus to Nara, another city in the Kansai region. It took us less than an hour to get there. We went to one of the biggest tourist attractions in Nara, the Todaiji Temple and Deer Park. 

At the deer park, there are hundreds of wild deer just roaming around. You can walk up to them, pet them, buy biscuits and feed them and take pictures with them. They were all so nice! It was kind of weird because back in the States if you were to approach a deer, it would just run away from you. These deer let you walk up to them and sometimes even came over to you! 

Deer everywhere!

So cute!

See that little guy over there?

There he is!

He looked so cuddly so I decided to pet him. 

Beware of what the deer are capable of! We didn't run into any mean deer though. 

Todaiji Temple. 

The temple is home to the biggest Buddha statue in the world!

Mr. Buddha. 

Gift shop. 

Me with the Buddha. 

One of the Bodhisattvas sitting next to the Buddha.  

This one gives you a pretty good idea of just how big this thing is. 

From the back. 

It's said that if you can fit through the hole in this pillar then your wish will come true. So a lot us tried to go through! The hole is a lot bigger than it looks. This is Kathryn's second or third attempt!

It was pretty cool. There were multiple groups of people standing around watching people do it. Each group spoke a different language. We were all standing there laughing with each other. It's amazing how funny little things can bring people together. 

Me being pulled through!

It's said that if you are hurt or not feeling well, you can touch the part of you  on this guy that isn't feeling well and you will be cured!

Then we did some more exploring around the grounds.

Possibly my favorite picture from Japan. :)

We were confused as why there were so many school children out on a Sunday. Apparently Japanese school children frequently go on field trips on the weekends. 

Making our way back down the hill. 

Don't fall in!

My Japanese pen pal, who I have had since 6th grade actually lives in Nara! We were trying to make plans to meet up while I was there, but we couldn't quite get a hold of each other in time. It turns out that she was at the temple at the exact same time I was and she was looking for me! But we never saw each other! Crazy! I guess we just weren't supposed to meet that day. I know we will one day though!

The second half of the day consisted of heading back to Osaka and doing some shopping!

Big, fancy department store. 

Lush!

We had sushi for dinner! Although I don't really like fish that much, I had to try sushi in Japan!

The people who worked here were really nice. 

It was pretty tasty!

Photo booth time! Time to make some creepy-cute pictures!

After you take your pictures, you can decorate them. It's pretty elaborate. 

AAAAHHHHH! Can you hear heaven's gates opening? This place was multiple floors and had everything Hello Kitty that you could ever think of. Do you want a Hello Kitty phone charm? Choose from a selection of a few hundred different ones. No joke. 

America. 

Rain. 

For our 2 nights in Osaka, we each got our own hotel rooms! It was so legit!

These controls were on the headboard. You could control the lights, air conditioning, alarm clock, reading light, and classical music all from one place. Haha it was awesome. 

Last day in Japan is next! See you soon!

Hails