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How to Have a Cheap Date Night: Street Food for the Win!
My favorite thing in basically every city is to see it at night. The colors and the lights make everything so vivid, and I love the nighttime energy. Seoul’s neon vibe and large shopping districts lend themselves to evening strolls and people-watching. Added bonus: avoid the scorching sun and terrible August humidity! Over a couple of nights, we enjoyed an evening stroll to one of Seoul’s largest shopping districts, enjoyed several of Seoul’s many riverside parks, and most importantly – found some famous street food. As soon as we saw Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) during the day, we knew we wanted to see it at night. We were not disappointed!…
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Seoul from the middle ages to the space age
On August 15, Gwanghwamun Square was the site of a political rally estimated to have included 20,000 participants or more. Discussing all the politics connected to that event would take a separate post, so suffice it to say it was a very controversial gathering, particularly in the context of coronavirus concerns. Any gathering of over 100 people currently is banned in Seoul and the surrounding areas, so the city seems to have been very unhappy about the rally. By Monday – August 17 – Gwanghwamun was back to being deserted, and all we saw were some of the remnants of Saturday’s political action. We walked through the (extremely large) square…
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Is there anybody out there? Traveling through quiet Seoul.
Liberation Day, also called Gwangbokjeol in South Korea, literally means ‘Restoration of Light’ day. It is celebrated each year on August 15 and commemorates the Allied Forces’ prevailing at the end of WW II, which subsequently liberated the Korean peninsula from decades of Japanese occupation. It is the only Korean public holiday celebrated by both South and North Korea. Ordinarily, we might have looked for some public celebrations over the weekend, but with COVID circumstances being what they are, it seemed like the city of Seoul was really discouraging any event that might draw a big crowd. There was a huge political rally downtown despite the warnings, but we stayed…
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How to spend your first ‘real’ weekend in Seoul
If you saw Peter’s recent Facebook post, you already know we made the most of our first days out of quarantine. After 15 days of feeling like our muscles were wasting away from disuse, we proceeded to walk about 35 miles over Friday-Monday. Our legs no longer feel disused! Friday We were released from quarantine on Friday at noon and decided we didn’t want to take any transit or go inside at all. We just wanted to walk! This was a good opportunity to explore Itaewon, the international neighborhood next door. We can walk there in about 15 minutes from our apartment. Itaewon is known for its great diversity, making…
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Where in the World is Yongsan-gu?
South Korea, you say? Quarantine for two weeks, you say? In a very small apartment, you say? We say – why not? We have felt really lucky that were are able to quarantine in our Airbnb apartment. It was a little tricky getting all our luggage up the narrow stairs when we arrived from the airport, but we’re happy for the view of the street that a small second-floor patio has given us. Plus, there have been flooding monsoon rains falling basically since we arrived, so at least we have no flood concerns on the second floor! We have a living area, two small bedrooms, and a galley kitchen that…
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Amazing! Two Phones in One!
It’s a T-Mobile phone with a U.S. phone number! It’s a KT phone with a Korean phone number! Stop! You’re both right! It’s two, two, two phones in one! We knew that when we landed in Seoul we needed cell phones with a data plan that worked in Korea, so we could install the required COVID monitoring app at the airport. Luckily we already had T-Mobile (Magenta plan), which by default includes unlimited data (2G) and texting in most international countries including South Korea. Calls are $0.25/min, but there are easy ways for us to avoid this charge (see below). It was quite nice to turn the phone on once…
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Getting tired of 2020? 투표하다! (VOTE!)
Many of you have expressed concern about whether Peter and I will be voting absentee this November. The short answer – yes! Of course, as we quickly have discovered, few enterprises are simple when trying to accomplish them from overseas quarantine. While possible to request a ballot, it was not quite as easy as I expected. It required perseverance and a little technical skill. Peter had easily requested an absentee ballot in the U.S. before we left for Korea, but then we discovered that there is a different procedure for having a ballot sent to an overseas address. Lots of googling for information led me to two helpful resources: The…
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Food Delivery in Quarantine: The Devil is in the Details
Being confined to our small apartment in Seoul has presented a number of challenges. Not surprisingly, our primary concern before arriving was making sure we would have enough food to eat. Thus, before we arrived, we had done some online research and had a plan in place. Our Airbnb host Han kindly offered to stock our kitchen with some essentials to get us through the first couple of days. We also planned to use the Shuttle app (similar to GrubHub) for delivery from area restaurants and Gmarket.com for groceries. Upon our arrival at the apartment we found that Han indeed left us the staples that we requested as well as…
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Quarantine: It’s day 8 of 15, but who’s counting?
It never occurred to me to start a blog at any other point my life. A few weeks ago, I joked with some colleagues in Philadelphia that I had no hobbies I could do while sitting still. That’s true at least if you don’t count reading, and even I, a voracious reader, was not excited about the prospect of sitting and reading for 2 full weeks of self-isolation. I know to some that might sound like the best thing ever, but the thought of that much stillness honestly sent me into a panic! Knowing that I would need to quarantine when we arrived in Seoul gave me a strong desire…
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Trees: The Ultimate Chemists. How Trees Inspire Me to Do Better Chemistry
When I talk to people about my research, I have found that it is not usually very helpful to say that I am an organometallic chemist or (worse) to say that I synthesize carbon dioxide complexes of molybdenum and tungsten. Instead, I usually start by talking about trees. Most people know about photosynthesis and that a tree, like all plants, harnesses the energy from light to grow. Some people even know that the whole body of the tree: its leaves, trunk, roots and all its branches are made primarily of carbon. Where does the tree get all of this carbon? From the air. The tree uses the energy it collects…
