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

My first day!

Sunday morning at 3AM My family got up and went to the airport. Thankfully there wasn't much snow to drive through. One of my suitcases was under 50 lbs but the other was over weight. It was 69 lbs and 70 is the limit, so I was sooooo happy. I got nice orange tags on that suitcase warning the baggage handlers that it was heavy. We all put extra tags on our luggage that said TaLK scholar at Jochiwon University just in case they got lost.

 

I met up with Lindsey, Teresa and Justina at the baggage line. I went through security with Justina. She got held back because she put her passport and boarding pass through with her carry-ons.  Finally we made it to the tram. That would take us across the airport. While we were waiting we realized that Justina had left her purse at security when they were trying to find her passport. I waited by the tram with our carry-ons while she went back for her purse. We took the tram to the gate. The tram was so fast and fun, later I went with some of the others for food and we took the tram again for fun.

The ride from Detroit to Atlanta was about an hour and a half. I think I slept for a half hour. I talked to the couple sitting next to me. They were going to Costa Rica for vacation. The Korean Air flight attendants were so cute with their uniforms and hair bows.

 

We left Detroit a half hour late because there was some luggage from a previous flight to Atlanta that had left without some of it's luggage. We didn't hear until we were on our way to the runway that it was 400 pieces of luggage. How does a plane leave that much behind?!? Shouldn't it have been empty then? We had three hours at the Atlanta airport. On the way to the gate three of our group got separated, so we got to the gate in two groups. We took turns staying with our carry-ons and going for lunch. I got a stromboli from the pizza place. It was de-lish!

The ceiling above the sitting area had very interesting metal animal sculptures. There were at least 24 different ones. Alex was able to get online and take a test for one of her classes. Others changed their facebook status.

For the second flight I sat next to a couple on their way to Vietnam and Thailand. All three of us had sudoku books that we were doing. I watched Megamind, listened to my ipod and slept. I got a total of 5 hours of sleep, but I was still super tired. At one point I could see mountains out the window. I think it was Russia. There were also the islands to the west of Seoul. We went through immigration and then collected our luggage. All of our baggage arrived safely and we were very grateful. We each got a cart to put our suitcases on and wheeled them through customs. Right outside customs was the currency exchange. The teller took your cash and put it through a machine that counted it for you. Then she counted out your won . I've never seen someone count money so fast. She just flipped through the bills in a blur.

We went out to the airport lobby and met the two TaLK people who were there to pick us up. We had a two hour bus ride to the University. They told us that the cafeteria would be closed when we arrive but we could order food for delivery. We were almost all hungry right then so we begged them to let us get food. They, reluctantly, gave us ten minutes to get food. I got a little loaf of bread that I didn't realize was cream filled till I was on the bus. That was my first time buying something with won, but I did okay. On the bus I sat next to Justina. There were awesome rainbow lights and the curtains had tasseled fringe .

Finally we arrived at Jochiwon University. We were given our name tags and room keys. The keys are little cards that you wave in front of the pad by the door. They also get you into the dorm so that boys can't go to the girl dorm and vice versa. We got bags of goodies: travel mug, pen, campus towels that we have to return at the end, two snack cakes, a juice box, a puffy vest with hood and a 4GB flashdrive. My roommate arrived later after I had unpacked some stuff and took a shower. I was so tired when I first got to my room that I didn't know why I'd taken this crazy trip. But one glorious shower later I felt perfect. My roommate's name is Eunice and she's Korean. She's been living in the US since 8th grade or so. She lives in Virginia now. Her mom has already called her on the room phone and so did her dad who lives in Korea.

I was able to plug an ether-net cord into my laptop and get instant internet.




I one of the closet there is a picture frame. They actually cut the back of the cabinet out so you can see the picture. It's the same in all the dorms.

I have a hard time remembering to take my shoes off when I enter my dorm room. Eunice does it at home so she never forgets.

My name tag, safe key (for my passport and money), and my room key card.

The bathroom and shower.





Below is my towel with Korea characters, my blanket with a 'classic bear' and my pillowcase with Korean characters.

This morning Eunice and I missed breakfast so we went next door to a convenience store. They didn't have adapters (the one I brought can't fit my laptop cord with three prongs). I got cheese balls and a cheese sausage for breakfast. They had green tea flavored ice cream, valentine's day chocolates, cheese raman and Korean Oreos. Eunice didn't bring any soap, toothpaste or shampoo with her, she was able to get it at the convenience store, but she had to use mine the night before.

<= cheese balls






      ^ This actually reads "Oreo" in Korean

Eunice, Lindsey, Tuesday (her room mate) and Chenny (Tuesday's friend) and I all took a taxi downtown to the homeplus store for adapters, hairdryers, shampoo, and toothpaste. (I only needed the adapter). We got what we needed (the adapter was $20 but at least it did three prongs and was a transformer). There is a place there to get glasses so Lindsey and I are going back with our prescriptions to get cool Korean glasses. The frames are only $15 and the lenses are $35.
Taxi ride with Tuesday, Chenny and Lindsey.

When we returned we had lunch. Rice, chicken, pineapple, seaweed soup and kimchi. The rest of the afternoon was spent talking on skype to Bobby and my parents and composing this nice post for you all. I hope you appreciate it because it took quite a while to figure out how to post pictures and make them all face the right way.
Tonight at 7pm there is our mini orientation. Tomorrow is the start of orientation proper and .... MY BIRTHDAY!!!  Tomorrow night is a field trip to Jongno, Seoul.
Eunice is taking a nap now and I believe I will too.
Hope everyone is sleeping well in the US,
~Lisa

Arrival at the University

It's 9:40 PM here and it feels like 2 in the morning or so. We had traveled for over 24 hours when we arrived in Seoul and then took a 2 hour bus ride.
We had a short orientation and recieved presents. I'll have to explain more tomorrow.
Just want to say I arrived and was able to get internet and a hot shower and now I'm going to fall into my nice new bed and sleep for the rest of Korea's night.
Good Morning Americans,
Good Night Koreans,
~Lisa

The Night Of

I leave for the airport in about 6 1/2 hours. I'm almost packed (just a tin of cookies for Chigan left). I have my important papers and tickets. Yesterday was the farewell party for family and friends. I've said goodbye to my grandparents and friends. Now I just have to wait. As if waiting three months wasn't hard enough, these last hours are booooring. I don't want to leave my family, but my grand adventure has almost started.

I learned that my school is Deokchi and I will be living in Imsil near Justina. Other than that, I don't know much. It's strange to be doing this huge thing without much advanced information. I get so many people asking me for details and they don't realize that I don't know anything to tell them.

I should be able to update during orientation but I may not have internet access when I first get to my apartment.

I'm going to look for something to entertain myself for a bit.
Until next
~Lisa