Travel Expo '07!

Saturday, Victoria and I went to Seoul to visit a travel expo having to do with travel within Korea. We met up with Dini and James (who take us to the military base sometimes) and Jude and Lindsey, 2 more teachers in the Pyeongtaek area. It's nice to get together with people from other cities and to do things that aren't too related to school.

The expo was at COEX, which is a gynormous mall/convention center in Seoul. It was so incredibly busy and obnoxious, if I was run into yet another time by a Korean I was going to scream. At any rate, we were at the travel expo. It turned out that each booth/district had little to offer in terms of English. Apparently, given the governments huge effort to bring thousands of native English speakers to Korea to teach and live, the Korean tourism industry has decided that only Koreans will want to visit the various regions. This got Victoria's goat, and she did make a complaint that they need to bring some pamphlets in English.

Anyway, it was a stragne kind of expo. Lindsey and I went around visiting the booths, but mainly drinking the free booze that was offered up, some strange mint water which tasted like toothpaste, and generally looking at everything through sarcastic colored glasses. So, here are the pics. Enjoy.

Here are a couple of really cool paper lanterns. The one drumming was animated, they were pretty cool. Reminded me of my dad's Christmas lights. I miss that.

Here is a pic of me trying on a replica of the most famous crown/artifact from the National Museum. Man, if I wore this in class, my kids still wouldn't look at me.I couldn't get enough of the people in the big head costumes. How cool are they? Oh, it was hot as sin in the expo too.

And here are just some strange pics from the expo. Some robot sculptures made out of junk, and some fun stuff. What a strange trip to COEX it was.