Day 4 Continued

It's now the end of Day 4. We spent most of the morning and early afternoon shopping in an area known as Insadong. A very narrow street with shops on each side. The street is really only used by pedestrians and scooters now. Lots of knick-knacks, tourist stuff, food stands with guys yelling to draw customers. Pretty cool, actually. Ate in a typical noodle restaurant, although I had dumpling soup since I can't eat noodles. I ate the soup and the filling in the dumplings. Very tasty!

The day didn't start off well, though. While walking to Insadong we were accosted by a man who seemed to have serious issues with 3 white women and a Korean child walking the streets. He walked up behind us while we were waiting at a cross walk and started yelling, ran over to Naomi, age 9, and slapped her face. I grabbed her and shoved her into mom's arms, then he started yelling at Angie and I, too.

A very nice couple stepped up behind us and every time the guy tried to get closer to Pat & Naomi, the husband would quietly move between them. As we started to cross the street they guy kicked Angie in the butt. Fortunately she was walking fast enough he didn't do any serious damage. The nice couple continued to run interference until the guy wandered off, both asking if Naomi were alright. We don't speak Korean, and they had very limited English, but sign language worked. Pretty upsetting way for a little girl to start off the day!

Everybody is ok, took awhile to convince Naomi that it was going to be alright, but we eventually had a good day of it. The man was obviously mentally ill, possibly homeless, although there are very few obviously homeless in Seoul.

On the bright side, Seoul is a very pretty, very clean city. Angie and I are going to be heading off in a different direction tomorrow to see what appears to be a very large palace nearby. Should be very interesting!