First day in downtown

Naeun and I had a late start to our day by heading out to the Daem Gallery for the photographer, Ryan McGinley, exhibition. http://ryanmcginley.com/ While enjoying the McGinley's photography, I was equally interested in being surrounded by Seoulites. The crowd was overwhelming in their 20s and 30s and from what I can tell, visiting art galleries is a date activity as many couples walked arm in arm. The visitors were taking pictures of the photographs and taking picture with photographs with a steadfast dedication as they were to post evidence of their art visit later on their social media profiles.

View from inside Daem Gallery

We walked around the block to do some sightseeing. The downtown was not crowded that much because of it being a weekend and the near freezing temperatures. 

Police standing guard

When we left, we went to Jongno to meet with Dongho and his girlfriend to eat Bohssam. Naeun had not seen his girlfriend before either. As the first exposure to watching young people speak to each other since I came to Korea, I watched the communication between people that have just met. As a sister meeting her brother's girlfriend, I thought the formal , yet friendly manner of conversation was really interesting because American counterparts would be a lot more warm to each other. But I like the way using formal speech creates a sort of distance between strangers. As the default conversation mannerism, there is no awkwardness in figuring out whether to be more chummy, more cold, more friendly, etc.