Chuseok and Everland~

First and foremost, happy Chuseok! (Well, belated Chuseok at this point) I hope you all had a great time with your families if you celebrated! For those who don’t know Chuseok, it’s essentially Korean Thanksgiving. Everyone goes home to their families and has a big Korean feast! Sounds awesome, right? Well, since I’m here without a family to go home to, a few friends and I decided to do something fun instead of just sit around and do nothing! We heard that Everland (a huge Korean amusement park) had a huge discount for foreigners on Chuseok weekend, so we picked up some coupons and headed out there! It was just myself, Kristen, and a friend Marissa…but it was a blast!

First, we met at Gangnam station. From there we took a long, long bus ride. Thankfully we got seats on the bus, but some weren’t so lucky…

These people had to stand for at least 50 minutes straight! The view while riding there was really beautiful…so many green mountains. I didn’t get a photo, they all came out blury. (You’ll have to excuse the not-as-great quality of these photos, I used my hand-held camera instead of my Nikon camera.) When we finally arrived at Everland, we were so excited we were practically shaking in our shoes. During this time, they deck out the park in Halloween decorations!

It was so cute~ The park itself was so pretty and really, really huge! I was impressed. During our time there, I’d say 80% of people were foreigners and the rest were families with small children. Since Kristen and I hadn’t eaten at all that day, we stopped off to get some food. I, of course, got a katsu curry dish.

Surprise. Kristen and Marissa got other things that also looked and smelled so good TT___TT

The inside of the building was really pretty too~

I had to take a photo of it because the colors and contrast of lighting were too perfect to pass up…anyway, so after eating we headed outside to decide where to go first. The park had different sections that you walked to, and the surrounding area was so beautiful.

I’ve never been to a Disney park, but I don’t think they’re as pretty as this was. Huge mountains covered in green trees were all around the entire park and it made the day feel even better. It was definitely a fresh feeling coming from the big city of Seoul~ First we decided to go to the zoo area. We went to a place where they had some animals, they were so cute~

Then, we went on a river ride. The entrance had such beautiful banners hanging from the ceiling! (Sorry, once a photography major, always a photography major;;; )

Anyway, so these rides are some of my favorite in the world! It’s where you sit in a big circular thing and go down white water rapids! Kinda…anyway, it was so fun!

See, you know these rides. Anyway, it was so fun! After this section of the park we went to a…like, 60’s America themed part? I’m guessing, I dunno. Everything was old-timey cars, drive-ins and rock and roll. This part had lots of rides I couldn’t go on. Since I get dizzy really easily, I can’t do rides that spin in circles…which was almost every ride in this place. Kristen and Marissa, on the other hand, could go on them. They went on one that spins you around and up.

This is them before they got on the ride-o-doom. You can see the terror just in the background. They really said it was fun…I’ll take their word. We then moved elsewhere.

Ahh, such a pretty site everywhere you turned. The next place was “Aesop’s Village”. It was definitely a place for kids, but it had such a fun Dr. Seuss feel!

They had the most fun ride there, though. We went on it at least 7 times. They had a photozone, so we kept going on to make the weirdest, funniest faces we could at the camera.

Seriously, I think I got an ab workout from laughing at some of our pictures. It was really fun, and the people working this coaster must have thought we were insane. But we had a blast together here. After being here for a bit, we moved onto the gardens area. Oh my gosh, it was all so beautiful.

As you can see, they even decorated the gardens with the Halloween theme!

After this, we moved to the fountain and rose garden~

So pretty! Around 6:30, the sun started to set and all the themed lighting came on!

We walked around and really enjoyed seeing everything (and also enjoyed the cooler air that came with night time now~) and then stepped into another place to get something to eat!

Mmm, pizza and bulgogi spaghetti. So delicious! We really had good food here for pretty inexpensive. I was impressed, I’m used to the jacked up prices that rip you off back home. We walked around for about an hour more before we finally left, exhausted.

I’m going to post some photos of me and my friends, but I’ll put them under a cut so it doesn’t take up a ton of room!

As you can see, I've mastered the art of the V for victory sign. In Asia it's not weird and I can always be doing something with my hands. Perfect for me! Anyway, that was more of my face than anyone needs to see. It was an incredibly fun Chuseok and I can't wait to go to Everland again sometime!