Namdaemun Shopping 2014!

Hellena returned from her honeymoon a week later and we all met at Namdaemun for lunch and shopping. Rocketman and I did a little shopping before we met the girls. I love Namdaemun because you can find everything and I mean everything. It was lunchtime so we saw a lot of this going on.

We also saw this ajosshi trying to drum up business by wearing a big Western nose and cowboy outfit.

                                                            The food! The food!

I had been looking for these kid's shoes everywhere!! I found them at the end of the main street. I only bought one size but now I wish I had bought another pair of a different size.

                                                                                  Hi Johnny!!

Rocketman took this picture. It was so funny to us especially since we were sweating like crazy.

See the worker on the top of that building. No safety harnesses or anything. I couldn't look, I was so nervous for him.

There is a building near Namdaemun called Mesa and in the basement is where you could find sterling silver and gemstone vendors. We when moved back in 2011, I went to visit it and the whole basement was closed off. No one seemed to know where every went but leave it to Hellena to find out where everyone went. She got on her phone and within minutes, she found that they had moved.

                                                                  Bead nirvana!

Everywhere you looked, vendor after vendor of gemstones and other high end jewelry supplies. I wanted to get some gemstones to make bracelets so I was so happy.

This is the outside of the building and it's not on the main road of Namdaemun, it's on one of the side streets. The jewelry supplies were on the 4th and 5th floor.

Look out! Three girls shopping! I can't believe the energy Hellena (in the center) had. She was 4 months pregnant with twins.

                                        I never get tired of seeing things like this.

         I saw that Starbucks had new coffee cups so I picked them up. I have the old designs too.

Here are the shoes I bought. My hanji teacher covers them with pieces of hanji paper to make hanji shoes.

              Yep, I bought an ajumma visor and I bought one for each of my sisters.

There is an accessory building too in Namdaemun where you can actually watch the vendors creating their beauties. I picked up this hand painted magnet there.

                                   Here are the gemstones I bought in Namdaemun.

These returned to the States in my carry-on bag. I just didn't want anything to happen to them.

 

 

Chilbo (Korean Enameling) Class with Nan-Young!

I was lucky enough to spend a total of two days taking chilbo classes with Nan-Young. I always have my camera ready and she loves to use it to take pictures of me. Nowadays I make sure to have her warn me so I can slip off my readers. 

She is using a new platform to show her new work called KakaoStory and I had Rocketman set it up on my IPhone so I could see what she was doing. I chose two projects from all her new work to make during my class. I just love how this turned out. She still has it to frame for me and then my friend, Hannah, is going to ship it to me.

                                 I also made this pendant. This is how it looked before firing.

 After firing it was made into a necklace using maedeup made by Young-Soo. 

                     I also made this Korean dancer. I love it so much! This was before firing.

                                                                And after firing.

                                            Nan-Young loves to draw me instructions.

Metal Guy also stopped by during class. He is the photographer for Nan-Young's jewelry. Here he is using his new Samsung Galaxy to take a picture of her latest earrings.

During class, she took out this book and showed it to me.

As I opened the book, I saw it was a brush painting book and she had painted all the pictures in the book. Here are a few of the paintings.

It turns out it was a book of her desire to find a mate. When I met her in 2008, she was married but her husband lived and worked three hours away. She rarely saw him and was glad because he was quite abusive. She divorced and raised her daughter. But now that her daughter is graduating, she wants to have someone to spend her life with. She's had a few boyfriends over the years but she hasn't found the one yet. I was deeply moved by her book and saw the parallel of the birds and her hope for a mate. Then she gave me the book! I tried to give it back but she refused. She did some last minute touches to it and I videoed it. You can find it at the end of this post.

Nan-Young had me and Rocketman sign a brass square. I didn't know why she wanted it but we soon found out.

                              Rocketman found out that chilbo is harder than it looks.

                               She added some touches to Rocketman's square.

                            When they were fired and cooled, Nan-Young added them to this wall.

                                                        This was so beautiful!

                                                                           Here we are!

                                         This is on the side of her building.

                         We left with presents from Nan-Young. These are refrigerator magnets.

                                          I bought these rings for myself and my sisters.

                                                      She gave Rocketman this tie.

                                She also gave me these two fans that she had hand painted.

It is always so hard to say goodbye to her. I shed tears even though I know I will see her again but I miss the good old days of weekly lessons. But I feel blessed that at least I have yearly lessons.

Here is the video I shot of Nan-Young:

Friends! Korean Edition!

I have made some incredible friends during our three year stay in South Korea. One of them is Mi-Sun from Nolboo. Every Sunday was budae jjigae at Nolboo and grocery shopping at Home Plus next door if I needed anything. Rocketman drove to Home Plus and that is where we parked since there is nowhere to park at Nolboo.

 

We usually arrived at 11 am on the dot and we were almost always the first ones. We had our favorite table looking over the huge intersection where we would people watch while waiting for the budae jjigae to cook. We became well known to the staff and especially one gal, Mi-Sun. She was the manager and she would always bring us special side dishes. Her smile was contagious and it as impossible to be unhappy in her presence.

 

It was so hard to leave her and the nolboo budae jjigae. We would make sure to visit her every time we visited. We didn't know how to let her know we were coming but she was always there, including this time. She doesn't speak any English but she had a sister who lived in Daegu and she would call her sister who would act as interpreter for us. She told us how much Mi-Sun loved us and thought we were so very kind to her. I responded that she had always been so kind to us and we really appreciated it.

 

We were so happy that she was working when we stopped by in September. But it was the first time she showed so much emotion. She was shocked to see us, grabbed me and hugged me as the tears fell from her eyes. It went on and on as the tears filled my eyes also. In the past, it had always been me that hugged her. It was unbelievable.

 

Of course, we ordered what we always did and she called her sister and I caught her up on everything in our life. It was so good to see her and it made me homesick for our old neighborhood. We saw that the big construction hole next to our apartment complex from the 2008 recession was finally being developed and they are putting in a huge apartment complex like ours. 

   Rocketman and I also had lunch with my hanji teacher, her daughter (Hannah) and my hanji friend.

Then it was coffee afterwards. My hanji teacher allowed her daughter to attend. I had met Hannah the last time we lived in Korea.  She had just returned from living a year in Canada learning English. She was studying 24/7 for the Korean Scholastic Ability Test which will determine which college she can attend. It all depends on how well she scores. Of course, all Korean parents want their children to attend Seoul National University. She was studying from morning till late at night, plus going to hagwon (Korean private schools) for extra schooling.

She was having a hard time with all the studying. She was really feeling especially bad since her friends have their mothers home and they cook for them. Hannah's mom (my hanji teacher) is gone all day working, so Hannah has to take care of herself. Her mother is pretty tough and my heart went out to all the pressure Hannah was under. I keep in touch with her through Kakao Talk and the test is next week.

Here is a video Eat Your Kimchi did about the test day a few years ago.