Seoul Fortress & schoolchildren, galore!

Seoul Fortress

Seoul Tower, the mighty fortress & Schoolchildren...everywhere!!!

We continued our steep climb up to the top of Mt Namsan. Who needs stairsteppers and treadmills in Seoul when this natural feature exists? We eventually meet up with the fortress wall of Seoul that still stands, in force, in parts of Namsan Park. Along our trek, we encounter dozens and dozens of schoolchildren who must be on a field trip to Namsan Park for the day. The children are totally thrilled to interact with these three Americans. Every opportunity they get, they greet us with "Hello", "Where are you from?", "How old are you?", "What is your name?". We're awed by their interest in us--something that we'll never get used to when venturing out in Asia. Soon, the children enjoy their lunches, picnic style. Many children offer us treats from their lunches and we graciously accept their offers. Soon thereafter we are swarmed literally by dozens of children all of whom take some great excitement in our 'accepting' their offers of chips, cookies, chocolates, fruit slices. Soon, our hands and arms are full of gifts and we are very cognizant that we had nothing to exchange for their generosity. Next time we'll remember to bring some sort of nice 'American' trinkets as trading items for these generous school children. This is definitely a cultural occurence that we would certainly welcome in our native country.

After awhile, I notice each school student wears a nametag with a little notebook around his or her neck. I decide that I could at least write a nice little note to each child so I proceed to write little comments such as "We are visiting Korea from America. It is nice to meet you. We love Korea." Hopefully, the children will enjoy these comments for a while--especially knowing they are studying English in school and any personal interaction with the language may create a 'future' mental memory peg to boost their learning. If not, at least we make instant friends. ;)