A Yellow Welcome To My Neighborhood!

It was summertime  when I first moved into this neighborhood. Ronnie, my Korean real estate agent who helped me find an apartment when I arrived in South Korea, suggested this neighborhood as she said it was near my office. (Yes, Ronnie was a she and it's just her English name).

Although Ronnie who told me that it's near my office, it was my other Korean friends who told me that living here is convenient as Hannam-dong is near the city center making it easy for me to travel to the other corners of Seoul.

And what nobody told me I had to discover myself. I have never seen Gingko trees before. They're not the typical trees that grew in our neighborhood back in the Philippines. We had chico (sapodilla), mango, moringga, santol, rambutan, star apple (caimito) and tamarind trees; the last one I used to climb when I was a kid, and Lola Tinay would scold anyone she saw climbing up that tree, and she did scold a lot of kids. Ha-ha-ha! 

Those Gingko trees, which were still green during the summer I moved in, started to turn yellow when days got colder. And then one morning, as I made my way to the bus stop, both sides of the main road of Hannam-dong which was lined of Gingko trees, were now glowing in yellow hues under the autumn sun.

Although these trees always turn yellow in the fall, maybe global warming had messed up their timing as not all the autumn foliage is synchronized. Some trees were still green, while most were already in their ripe yellow glory.

But yellow, or still greenish-yellow, I just enjoy strolling down the sidewalks of my neighborhood, where everyone passing this way is greeted these days with a very yellow welcome.