"Quarantine"

Although our trip to the medical center prompted a lot of jokes about being under quarantine, we soon discovered that our employer actually does want us, for lack of a better word, to self-quarantine. From Thursday through Sunday we had to submit our temperature and any flu symptoms via e-mail twice a day. In order to do this, I first had to learn how to use a mercury thermometer (hint: the end with the mercury in it is the one that goes in your mouth). Furthermore, during training orientation on Saturday we found that our hotel group was the only group of trainees we should be interacting with (even though there are about 80 people total completing training this week). This is apparently done because last February one trainee managed to infect about twenty other trainees with swine flu and forced the school to shut down its entire operation for a week while they recalled the trainees from all ends of Korea and put them in quarantine. So it totally makes sense that they changed their training policy to help keep andy potential diseases contained. However, none of us were too keen on the recommendation to wear our surgical masks in public.


Before training officially began on Monday night, we took advantage of our free time under "quarantine" to get out into the city. We bravely navigated the subway, which turned out to be a rather easy task since every sign is double-posted in both Korean and English. On Sunday I took the subway to City Hall with Jenn and Stacy, where we stumbled upon the memorial service for Kim Dae-Jung. If you aren't familiar, Mr. Kim is considered the first truly democratic South Korean president, in office in the early 2000's, and he passed away on August 18th, the day before I arrived. The entire square was completely mobbed with people sitting and standing and cops lining the street. Almost all the people watching the service had yellow signs or balloons bearing pictures of Kim and slogans like "Goodbye Mr. Sunshine" or "Because of you we know what democracy really is." The craziest thing about the memorial service was that they didn't shut down the square to traffic, so all the buses were running as normal through the middle of the crowd.

The service was being held right across from Deoksugung, which was our intended destination. There are a few different palaces in the city of Seoul, and Deoksugung is one of them. It is basically a walled-in area enclosing a few buildings as well as an art museum. There are lots of trees and LOTS of cicadas when it is hot out (and it was - around 86 degrees with the kind of humidity you can only feel during monsoon season), so you kind of feel like you've walked into another part of the world, minus the fact that you can see skyscrapers surrounding the palace walls. The best part about Deoksugung is the admission fee - 1,000 won (about 80-90 cents). The cost efficiency is great because you don't feel all the pressure to learn that is normally associated with a visit to a historical landmark since you can come back as often as you want. Plus, if the day is disgusting you can take a quick loop around and go find somewhere to buy some cold drinks (that's what we did).

After fighting our way back out of the memorial service, we headed at random down some streets trying to figure out where to go next. We encountered pretty much every cop in Korea waiting in packs along the streets to be called into duty. Korean cops, by the way, are not particularly intimidating in size, although the mob gear they were carrying helped a little. We ended up on another busy road a few blocks away from City Hall that was also lined with police. Then, while attempting to decide where to go next, I noticed the six-lane road had become empty. The next thing I knew, we were watching the funeral procession of Kim Dae-Jung. It was a completely awesome feeling to stand on the sidewalk and watch the car containing the body of a former president drive by, even if it's the president of another country. If you ever have the opportunity to attend a head of state's funeral, I highly recommend it.