Birthday in Seoul

Yesterday, February 9th was my Birthday!!! I had an envelope from my mom in my suitcase with a pair of earrings, Matt bought a Pokemon chocolate cake for me at the convenience store, Eunice bought me some honey skein when we were in Seoul and the orientation team gave cakes to the other birthday girl and me (along with b-day glasses, a party hat, a lei and a balloon flower).
In the morning we went to our first orientation meeting. We got to meet our Foreign Group Coordinator (FGC), Marcelle, from Australia and our Korean Group Coordinator (KGC), Brian (from Korea of course). All the EMU students (except Brian) are all in the same group because we've been placed in the same province.

We split into teams. I was in team 1 with Alex from EMU, Brittany from St. Louis, Richard from the states, Sean from N. Ireland and Amynta from Vancouver. These would be our teams for our scavenger hunt in Seoul. All that morning and when I arrived at the orientation classroom all my friends kept saying Happy Birthday.I don't know if the orientation team had planned it before or just because they heard from my friends, but at lunch I got a birthday cake and was sung to by everyone. It was another girl's birthday too. I was sung to six times that day. Eunice sang to me in Korean and Alex sang to me in Spanish. A big thank you to Eunice and Lindsey for taking my picture.

 

After lunch we all got on the buses wearing our blue vests. We rode for two and a half hours into Seoul to the university for an Opening Ceremony from the government. There were several speeches which were kinda interesting. One of the 5th generation scholars spoke which was nice. Then this group of adorable little kids came out wearing different cultural dress. They were kids from 17 different countries. They sang three different songs.

Then there was a group called stone Jazz, who played two songs. They have a bass, acoustic guitar and drums as well as traditional Korean instruments. There was a kazoo recorder called a Piri. A lap violin called a Haegum. And a dulcimer harp which is either a Kayagum or a Komungo (according to Eunice these are both famous and very similar).

Then there was a taekwondo demonstration but the K Tigers. There were really little 6 year olds or so through high school students. I took videos but I couldn't keep from watching them live instead of through the camera. I hope I caught all of the action. The video had lots of flashing lights so be careful when you watch it. (My second video is to long to fit here. I believe it has the worse of the flashing though.)

After the ceremony we drove about a half hour across town to the Gyeongbok Palace. On our first bus ride we had had a few scares. Brittany and I saw the driver cut off a few cars and motor-scooters. Almost hit many cars in front of us and threaten the lives of many pedestrians. At one point we came to a very abrupt stop. Several of the scholars were sure we'd hit something. Turns out they were right. We hit the truck in front of us. The driver got our and had a ahem...conversation with the truck driver. There didn't seem to be a problem though and we continued on our way. On the second ride to the Palace we were just turning into the parking lot when we got rear ended. Brittany and I burst into laughter because we thought or bus driver had been more careful this ride.
 At the Palace we started our scavenger hunt. We had to take ten picture from around town and had a map so we could find them all. We got the first photo at the Gyeongbok Palace. Most of the places had KGCs at them. Yumi was the KGC at the Palace and took our picture.....well I say she took our picture, but actually she acidentaly took a five second video. Please enjoy :)
(Alex, Richard, Amynta, Brittany, me and Sean)




Then we left for the next place. The Palace was closed so we had to go around which meant my group of course went the wrong direction at the very beginning of the hunt and got lost. Amynta has been in Korea before and knows some Korean for which I was very grateful. She was able to ask for directions. We found a very helpful couple. The guy spoke some English and after a few moments of not being able to communicate the directions of where to go he finally said, "just follow me." He walked us all the way till we were back on our map and facing the right direction.
While we were lost we were fortunate enough to spot this sign. I have no idea what chicken art is like, but it sounds awesome.
We did find the next stop which was the yellow totems. They are the hangul characters for 'S' but I don't know why we needed pictures of them. There are just a sign on one of the buildings. Across the street was a place making honey skein. This is also something we had to take a photo of. Amynta is the one posing.

 The next place is a famous Starbucks. It was the first Starbucks in Seoul to only have the Korean name out front with no English or the logo (I think that's what it is). When we were there, there was a logo. The night was so freezing that we went inside to check in with the KGC and decided to take the photo inside. Unfortunately the KGC told us it had to be outside so we weren't warm for long.

Next we had to have dinner in the Jongno district. We were each given 10,000 won on the bus for dinner (~$10). We went for pork belly at a nice WARM indoor restaurant. We ordered beef and pork. The sides were already there at the beginning while we waited for the meat. We had to cook the meat ourselves and cut it smaller with scissors. The waitresses giggled at us a lot because we had never done it before. They didn't stop watching us for the whole meal.

After dinner we went to the Cheonggyecheon Stream. Brian, our KGC, was supposed to be standing on the stepping stones somewhere in the middle of it so we walked along the sidewalk above it looking for him. Eventually we saw someone in his red vest huddled to the side of the stream. We felt so bad for him having to stand down there for three hours. We had to get a photo with one of the KGCs and a photo next to the stream. We all decided our photo should be with Brian because he is the KGC for our group.

Next was the giant spiral conch shell.
Next to it is a statue of a big yellow angel monkey. His name is Haechi and he is the mascot of Seoul.

We then found the statue of Admiral Sunsin Lee. He is the war hero from the 1592 Rebellion against Japan.

 This is the golden statue of Kind Sejong.
Below Alex is conquering the world. We tried to find the KGC here and couldn't. We walked around the statue. At the back was a security guard who pretty much made us go into the museum. There is actually a museum UNDER the statue. We weren't there for very long but it  looked cool. Brittany and I sat on the bench they had for taking photos. We had to take our shoes off first.

 These photos are just some I took while we were walking around. The last one is actually the gate to the Palace at night. That is where we ended the hunt and got back on the bus. Our team was back first. No we didn't win anything other than getting to warm up first, which was a pretty good reward. We were there twenty minutes before our deadline. Eunice's group was late and she saw the first buses leaving to go home and thought they had left without her.
One accident free, 2 hour ride later we arrived back at campus. I took the time to put the scavenger hunt photos on my flash drive to turn in, brushed my teeth and went to bed. It was an exhausting day but one of the best I've had in a while.
I will post this blog now and then start today in a new one so stay tuned. By the way I still haven't had a chance to turn in the photos so it looks like I stayed up extra for nothing :)
~Lisa