The amount of things there are to do still surprise me. Seoul is home to a huge party scene, with plenty of dance clubs and spas and alleys filled with drinks and drunks. While I've wandered through some of these alleys, I still have yet to go to any clubs or the famed beauty jimjilbangs (which from what I gather, are bathhouses). I've never been much for clubbing, although the itch does come every once in a while, and the idea of a Korean bathhouse is enticing and interesting but not enough to make me run to one just yet.
There are still a lot of things to cross off the Korean list, but there is no rush.
What most of my weekends have encompassed so far has been exploring the parks and mountains and streets of Korea. In part because of the cheapness of it, but in other because I really do find peace and enjoy time outdoors. One of the many things that I've fallen in love with here in Seoul, has been the parks. I have to say and my hat off to you, Korea, you do parks right. Here I'll try to list some of my favorite parks I've seen so far and try to explain why I don't really think that weekend at the park is a waste of a weekend at all.
Olympic Park
I have gone to the Olympic Park twice so far because I just couldn't really think that once is enough, and I plan to go a third and a fourth and countless times more. This is where the 1988 Summer Olympics were held and the massive park includes at least 6 (that I counted) stadiums for indoor sports plus a pool. It also homes some sculptures scattered randomly throughout the park. There is also a museum there, which I haven't been, and a beautiful display of all the flags of the participating countries in the Olympics. This park is massive and you could wander all over it in one day and not really get bored with any of the sights. Also, there are wild rabbits! 
The first time we went there, we were stopped by a very friendly Korean man asking us where we were from. He then offered to take our picture, and continued to tell us why he thinks the Olympic Park is the best park in Seoul. "There is so many fantastic memories here. So much history. I have taken my wedding photos with my wife here. This is the best backyard I could have asked for" and to me, that just made the place even more magical; the thought of how locals view this park as their backyard, how at home they feel, yet not really taking it for granted.
You get some amazing views from the park to. Some pretty cool shots of sunsets and the 6th tallest tower in the world in the distance.
Seoul Forest
I have to admit that I was a little bit annoyed when I first realized that the Seoul Forest was a park and not really a forest. It only took a few steps in to make this realization but I immediately got over it when I started studying the map and realizing how much there was to do there. There was a greenhouse where you could pay to go in and walk among all the butterflies; there was this small area where you could go, see and feed some deer; some small outdoor theaters; a massive picnic area; a swamp looking thing and what they called a mirror lake (which was dry when we went). It's another one of those parks perfect for a whole day shmeal; you can go play in the sculptures, pack a picnic, enjoy the quietness and the green and the shade, and watch people amusing themselves with paper plane flying contests.
Ogeum Park
This park is the smallest of the ones I've seen so far, but there is something really unique about it. Like all of the parks I've been, they're kinda in the middle of it all - surrounded or adjacent to busy streets and apartment complexes, and for some reason it just really surprises me how one moment you feel like you are exactly where you are supposed to be: in the middle of the second biggest city in the world, around all of these people and city noises, and the next, literally one step away, you are able to tune it all out and if you were to forget what is past the trees you feel like you traveled hours away from the city in order to get to a place like this. 
This little park had it's own kind of personality though. It had one of the tomb mounds within it, a cluster of unique and interesting bird houses, and a trail of stones. A trail of stones... we didn't really think much of it when we came across it, until we saw how people would take off their shoes to walk among the stones through the entire trail. I've heard about how therapeutic feet massages can be and decided to give it a go. It really wasn't a long trail, but it felt long... it hurt. It hurt so much, but as soon as the shoes came back on and you started walking on normal ground again, boy did it feel good! Guri Park
Actually, we came across this park by mistake. We had set off to find a specific place and got totally lost trying to find it. We went through what I believe could have or could have not been private property of harvesting fields; wondered how we could have gotten so lost until we found a little trial and thought we might be on to something. We weren't onto the thing we were supposed to be on, but we found the trail to the Guri Park. 
Guri is where I live. I have been told by coworkers about how pretty this park is and how I just needed to find the library in order to find it, I just hadn't made it a priority. But it definitely made itself a priority to me. What I liked the most about this park were these little signs throughout the park with English questions and answers. At first I thought 'Oh how cool, to practice their English!' but then I thought the questions were getting really specific and weird. Like "Is Annie bringing us coffee? She just went out to get some" or "Why is the copy machine not working? It is out of toner" or "Did you not see that stop sign? Yes, I did." or "Why is Annie not here? She is not feeling well today." And all I could think of was, who is this Annie who seems to be a terrible driver and an incompetent secretary? Poor Annie. My favorite bits of this little park were definitely a magical bridge covered in leaves and the 'Secret Garden' which was just a rose garden, but lovely just the same.
This is a very short list, but I'm excited to see more! Honestly, parks here man... a whole new meaning!
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