Easter Sunday, Changdeokgung Palace, Myeongdong

Sunday – Happy Easter everyone. This morning we woke up to find that Easter bunny can find us in Korea. There were little eggs hidden all around our room. The kids went on an excited hunt and Lily found a little fluffy chick and bunny under her pillow. How did easter bunny know that Lily couldn’t eat chocolate they wondered? 

We decided to celebrate Easter Sunday by heading off to church this morning with Sue, Michael, Tom and Lettie. We found a local English speaking expat interdominational one (google is a wonderful invention) within walking distance. http://www.seoulunionchurch.org/index.html

Actually they meet in a beautiful chapel inside the Yonsei University Campus (just a 10 min walk from Sinchon station). It was called Seoul Union Church, and had a lively congregation of a lot of expat Americans, and a few Australians that were mostly here on holiday. We met a couple from Canberra who were over here visiting their son & Korean daughter in law (who was about to give birth to their first grandchild). The service lasted 1.5 hours, so the kids were very wriggly, but it was a nice service with lots of modern singing, a band, and we were all invited to take a flower that we were given on entry up to the cross to decorate as part of the easter celebration.

We then walked back to our room for a little rest (and easter egg chocolate fix) before we headed out on the subway again to Changdeokchang Palace. This palace is famous for its Secret Garden and Seoul’s oldest stone bridge (built in 1412). The oldest and best preserved of Seoul’s palaces – it dates from 1405. It served as the main palace in the city for over 300 years.

. Unfortunately, the one and only way to visit the Secret Garden, is to do a guided tour which lasts for almost two hours. Not easy with hungry, wriggly or tired young children. Also, as we missed the English guided tour, we were put with the Korean only version, so did a lot of standing around and suceeded in breaking most of the palace security rules as follows –

Attached to the palace is the "Secret Garden", a beautifully landscaped garden to be used by the Royal Family only. There is a great collection of imported trees, pavillions, pagodas, stone bridges and ponds

a) lagging behind the rest of the group and making them wait, tutt, tutt
b) walking in front of the group is also not allowed
c) the lady at the gift shop gave Sam some biscuits to eat after she had a long chat with him about whether he had either a kangaroo or koala in his house for a pet??? So as he proceeded to eat the one little shortbread biscuit, a guard rushed over and said “no eating in the garden”
d) the kids got told off for not sticking to the pathways and walking on the grass
e) we were not allowed to leave the tour early (we tried to escape, but were soon shepherded back)

"Tell me Amelie," says Lily, "exactly what is the secret of the Secret Garden?"

So, although the gardens were beautiful, we were kind of glad to get out on our own again.

So after that, the Reddick family and ours decided to go to Myeongdong for dinner. We met the Turpies there. Myeongdong is a very trendy shopping and commercial area of Seoul. Known for its large department stores, and street markets selling all different kinds of clothing, jewellery, handbags, accessories – we wandered around somewhat aimlessly checking out the people and the stalls, then finding a restaurant for dinner.

Western style tonight – a cross between Italian and Mexican we think. Anyway, the food was quite good, then as has become one of our frequent habits we caught the subway home, and hosted the Reddicks in our room for a couple of hours after the children had gone to sleep.
I received a lovely phone call from Linda Choi tonight, who has just arrived in Seoul to pick up her daughter Eva. We chatted about catching up tomorrow at Eastern as we will be there too to visit our children's foster mothers.

Oh yes, one last thing - did I mention that in almost all subways (and all the connecting tunnels which go for miles) there are shops everywhere - very distracting for the mummies when trying to get somewhere on time! This is not a shopping centre - it's a subway tunnel.

Once again - thanks for all your emails - it was great to hear from you - Kim, Tamara, Jan, Emma, Diana, Mary, Janelle and Robyn recently. The answer is yes, we are a bit exhausted with our schedule, yes we are having a ball, and yes, I am doing lots of shopping!!!! Glad you are enjoying the blog, and I hope you are all taking notes and preparing for a trip of your own soon!

P.S. reader beware - tomorrow's entry could be soppy and somewhat emotional - its back to Eastern where we picked up our beautiful children all those years ago for a visit with their foster mothers...