................Taking Flight...............: Bohye and Starry Night at the Palace

Jacob and I met Bohye in Hongdae. The only problem was that at 11:15 on a Saturday morning, hardly anything is open in Hongdae. Also, Bohye had just gone to the orthodontist and could only eat soft food. Jacob remembered a Japanese noodle soup place so we finally picked that as our lunch. We walked around Hongdae a little and then went to a coffee shop and ordered something to drink and a dessert to share. We chatted and sat in the cafe for a long time. Then we figured we should take a little walk and we went to Hapjeong. Unfortunately it was a little bit chilly and windy even though the sun was out. When we got to Hapjeong Bohye had to leave. It was good catching up with her, and afterwards she apologized for her low English skills. I told her my Korean is no better than her English so she shouldn't feel bad. We both agreed to talk with each other in the opposite language to help each other.

Jacob got a used phone from one of his students and we're trying to see if I can possibly use it and switch phones. We asked Bohye and she said she didn't think it was possible at all. I'm a little bummed, but we're going to keep researching to see if maybe it will work. Fingers crossed!

Once we parted ways from Bohye, Jacob and I headed to Myeongdong and Jongno area to do a little shopping. We also stopped at Pita Pit to get some pita sandwiches to take along with us. We walked through Insadong (it was so crowded!! AND for the first time, I think there were more Koreans than foreigners there too!) We were going to keep walking through the "couply" area, but looked down towards the palace and noticed a lot of people so we figured we should try and get our tickets for the palace event asap.

At first we were a bit confused about where to go/how to get the tickets, but eventually we found the "foreigners" line to stand in and saw that there were 55 tickets for us available--we were maybe 10th in line or so, so we were good. In front of us stood a Korean mom and her daughter. After waiting for a bit, the mom turned to us and started talking to us in Korean. Then she called her daughter over to try and talk to us in English. Basically, they were asking us to buy a foreigner ticket for them because they got 2 tickets and needed one more (for the dad). It was really awkward and uncomfortable. Jacob and I were both a little torn--not sure where the line between being nice and following the rules so that foreigners got tickets too. In the end we decided we didn't want to get in trouble and figured they could work something out. (We later saw the family as 3 in the palace, so they did get it worked out) We had to wait in line for a little over an hour til the palace opened at 7-then they started selling tickets. It was worth the wait though. Once it started getting a bit darker around 7:30 it was quite beautiful. We didn't wait until it was completely dark because we were both getting cold (and tired from walking all day). We took the subway home and had the pita sandwiches we bought earlier.