La douleur passe, la beauté reste

This was written on the wall in the Seoul Museum of Art, along with the translation into Korean, and attributed to Renoir. It means something like "the pain goes away, beauty stays."

I finally made it to the Renoir exhibit today. Unlike last time, there was no line at all when I got there (although there was one later in the day when I left). I didn't take my camera because photography wasn't allowed in the museum, so unfortunately there aren't any pretty pictures to show. The paintings, however, were really beautiful. It was a big exhibit with lots of paintings on loan from museums and private collections all over the world. It was pretty neat to be able to see all of that together at once, knowing that in a couple weeks everything is going to be returned to it's original home. Unfortunately I couldn't read any of the literature or the descriptions since it was only in Korean, as were the audio sets. The names of all of the paintings were only displayed in the original French and in Korean, so I got to pull my couple years of French from the closet and dust it off to read the labels. :)

Some of my favorite paintings that I saw were ones I had never heard of before, I guess they're a little more obscure, but they were absolutely breathtaking. I love impressionism because of the way the artists painted light, and there were some outdoor paintings that look like they're just bathed in sunlight. Since I took an hour subway ride there and paid $10 to get in, I decided to wander through twice- once to see everything, and a second time to go back and look at my favorite ones again.

Afterwards I walked to the Paris Baguette (chain bakery here in Korea) on the corner and bought some food for a late lunch, which I took back to the museum and ate on a bench in the outdoor courtyard. I ended up getting a pastry that was filled with chicken curry. Sounds kind of weird, but it was really yummy- wonderful soft bread, crispy crust, and shredded chicken in curry sauce.

Today was a great day to unwind after this week from hell and kind of regain my bearings before I have to go back to work. I'm feeling better physically, and have a slightly sunnier outlook again. I think all of those beautiful paintings worked like Prozac at curing my bad mood.

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with some foreigners at Starbucks for a Korean study session. I'm not sure how successful it will be, but maybe it will be some motivation for me to get back to studying at home.