5/31 - Such a short stay in Seoul

i can't believe it's already our last day in korea. it feels like we just got here but we also did so much. pauline, julie and i had lots of plans today, especially since the weather was so nice, but ended up not doing very much before dinner. thankfully, julie was able to do my laundry at her place (which should get me through the rest of the tour). but other than that, we just took it easy. pauline briefly met up w/ a high school friend in the morning so i caught up on this blog while watching the celtics beat the pistons to get into the nba finals.

for dinner, my uncle, (dad's younger brother) who is a piano professor in korea, held a dinner for our family at bellagio (restaurant attached to sejong hall). we had such a great time talking and laughing and the food was excellent. i realize how rare this kind of meeting is and i'm not sure when we will be able to get together like this again.



tonight's concert was another great program. we started off w/ bernstein's candide overture followed by mozart's sinfonia concertante w/ juliette kang (first associate concertmaster) and cj chang (principal violist). julie and cj sounded so good together and as always, the candide was a lot of fun. we played shostakovich symphony #5 in the 2nd half and tonight's audience seemed even louder and more excited despite the smaller size (probably due to the demonstrations which i will talk about later). it was so surreal to be playing here in seoul w/ my entire family watching (as well as about 100 friends).


this is after about 20 people had already left since they had to catch the last train to taegu (about 150 miles away)


such a rare and memorable occasion for our family


my family meets maestro eschenbach

after the concert, we went to my uncle's apartment for dessert. there, the fun continued as we took tons of pictures (i think there were 4 cameras going at the same time), laughed a lot and ate a delicious cake one of my cousins brought as a gift. on the way, we saw tons of policemen (there was even a barricade of them right in front of my uncle's building). for the past few days, there have been protests throughout the city. at one point, there were about 40,000 people in the city hall plaza nearby our hotel. due to all of this, there have been some delays when taking buses from our hotel to the hall and back. walking has been the best option although there are huge crowds all over the place which slows things down. the hardest thing has been trying to get taxis in our area since many roads have been closed. it took my parents almost an hour to get from their hotel to the restaurant/hall.


one of the many police barricades - thankfully, they let us through


hanging out @ uncle tony's after the concert

wish we weren't leaving tomorrow. i'm so thankful my entire family could share this memorable experience all together and already am looking forward to playing here again (and eating the food!).