A Weekend Down South

Greetings from Korea!

I am finally making another post! I have been keeping busy with CIEE orientation activities, Yonsei exchange student orientation and exploring the grand city of 11 million people.

My last post was pretty short, so I wanted to add a little bit more detail to some of the things I did during my first week in Seoul.

Kathryn, Amanda and I waiting for our plane to Seoul!

After arriving at Incheon Airport Tuesday evening, we met up with our program coordinators at a designated coffee shop in the airport and met other students in our program also waiting there. I made it through immigration with no problem (yay!). After an 11 hour plane ride, I felt extremely disgusting. Although all I was doing was sitting on the plane, there is something about breathing and sitting in the same air that has been circulated around. Your hair gets greasy and your body feels like it needs a shower. So, it was definitely time for a change of clothes before heading to school.

We took 2 airport taxi vans from the airport to school. By that time, it was dark outside and pouring down rain. It took about an hour to get to school, where we unloaded and entered the dorm where we would be staying for the coming months. The lobby was packed with people, which was very unexpected, seeing as how we are pretty much the first international students to arrive. Later we found out that they were all high school students on a 2 week program through the same study abroad company we were with. We got our room keys and headed up to find our rooms.

My dorm room! I live on the left side, but this is before my roommate moved in, so my stuff was EVERYWHERE!

I am staying in SK Global House, which is one of two international dorms on campus. The other is International House, located right behind our dorm. The international students are pretty much segregated from the native Korean students on campus, which is kind of a bummer. The international dorms and academic buildings are on the far northeastern side of campus, opposite those of the native students. But, there are other ways in which I hope to meet Korean students.

One such way is through a club on campus called Yonsei Global. The club is lead by native students who wish to build friendships between exchange students and native students.

On the first weekend, August 19 to 21, my study away program, CIEE, which has about 30 students in it, traveled south of Seoul to three different cities. On Friday, our first stop was Cheongju, which is about 3 hours south of Seoul. The city of Cheongju is famous for supposedly having the best bibimbap in the entire country. It is apparently done the correct way with just the right ingredients. We all went to a very busy restaurant and had bibimbap together. It was delicious! The beauty about eating Korean food is that it always comes with a variety of yummy side dishes. Bibimbap usually consists of rice, a variety of vegetables, sometimes some meat, and a fried egg to top it all off. Oh, and don’t ever forget the gochujang! It’s a red spicy sauce that you smother your bibimbap with! Ah, delicious! J

After lunch, we got back on our bus and headed to a mask dance class! We all were under that impression that we would just be watching a performance, but it turned out to be a lesson. We learned various dance moves (while getting extremely sweaty). Some of the group tried on masks and even got to do to the lion dance with the lion costume. I was not one of those who volunteered, however. I was so hot and tired that I let other people volunteer for the experience.

Our next stop was an old Confucian school near our hotel. Only privileged and exceptionally intelligent students could get into schools like this one. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable about every place that we went and had a lot of interesting facts to share. We even ran into a film set while we were there. We weren’t sure if it was for a Korean drama or a film, but everyone was dressed in historical clothing, so it was something like that.

Our hotel for Friday night was a traditional Hanok village. It was a series of traditional Korean houses that was set up as an inn. The boys and girls were in separate houses, of course, some in small rooms and some in large rooms. I was in a small room with one other friend. There were a lot of traditional touches: the architecture, having to walk outside to get to the bathroom, walking through the mud in special shoes only to be used outside, and so on. Then there were more modern touches that we were not expecting: air conditioners in each room, TVs (where we watched Boys Over Flowers), refrigerators, and wacky stuff like that.

GD and TOP in Cheongju!

 Watching Boys Over Flowers at the Hanok Village

Watching 2NE1 perform!

Hanok Village

That night we explored the city a little. It was such a cute little place. It still screamed Korea, but it didn’t have the fast-paced feeling of a big city like Seoul. It was small, quaint, and like most things in Korea, cute. We passed a street vendor selling 호도과자 (Hodo Kwaja), who said hello to us in English. He was so nice and was selling them for only 10 for 1,000 won, which loosely translates to 10 for $1. 호도과자 are also known as walnut pastries, due to their shape. They are filled with sweet red bean paste and are one of my favorite Korean sweets. We ate the first bag quickly and had to stop back for more on our way back to the inn. The man even gave us 2 extra for free!

On the streets on Cheongju.

Breakfast the next morning was a traditional Korean breakfast. We had stuff like rice, fish, kimchi, soup and other side dishes. It wasn’t the type of breakfast that I was used to in the States at all, but it was delicious!

Saturday morning, we left for the city of Namwon, south of Cheongju. Namwon is the location where the most famous love story in Korea takes place. We visited the park and museum that was made about the story. The story is of Chunhyang, the daughter of a kisaeng entertainer and her love Yi Mongryong, who is a magistrate’s son. Here is a short synopsis of the folk tale from Wikipedia:

According to the legend, Chunhyang was a maiden who was taken advantage of by an immoral local governor who forced her to marry him while the young man she really loved was away on government affairs. When the young man returned he disguised himself as a common person and saw for himself the myriad of injustices that the local governor had perpetrated; using his authority to kill him, things are set straight and the maiden is set free, giving the tale a happy ending.

Chunhyang and Mongryong

Our resident advisor trying out the standing swing, which is part of the folk tale.

There is a four-day festival in the fall to celebrate this love story! It was such a cute park and I hope I will be able to go back for the festival!

Our lunch for the day was yummy mushroom soup, rice, mandu and of course, without fail, tons of side dishes!

We then headed to a Buddhist temple up in the mountains and spent a few hours there. Our tour guide showed us around and spoke about different monuments within the temple and then we had some free time to roam around. We had temple food for dinner. The mess hall at the temple is free and open to visitors who wish to have the temple dinner experience. We entered the hall at 5:25 when the bell rang, went through the buffet line, and ate in complete silence. Eating is a time for self-reflection and talking is not allowed in the mess hall. They also hate to see food wasted, so whatever food you take, you need to eat whether you like it or not. After you are finished eating, you line up to wash your own tray. There were so many of us that to keep on schedule, the staff washed most of our trays for us.

Protective gods.

The rest of the night at the temple included watched the drum and gong ceremonies, which lasted about 20-30 minutes. Monks would repeatedly take turns pounding the drum in memorized and precise fashion for minutes on end. It was really long but very interesting. We also got to enter one of the temple and watch and listen to monks who were chanting their sutras. It was an awesome thing to witness, no matter what your religion is!

We stayed in a Western-style hotel for the night. It was set up like you would normally think of a hotel in the States, but when we entered the rooms we found out that we were again sleeping on the floor. I slept much better that night however, as the beds were much more padded. J They also had an American-style buffet breakfast the next morning.

Our last day of the city, Sunday, took us even farther south to the city of Hadong. We got to learn how a traditional Korean tea ceremony works (e.g. how exactly to make the tea, pour it, and serve it to guests. Then we actually got to bake tea leaves! We cooked them in a hot stone oven thing at temperatures around 600 degrees F! We then got to roll them out. This process apparently activates all of the healthy enzymes in the tea.

The place where we learned all about tea!

Learning the traditional Korean tea ceremony.

Rolling tea leaves!

We had lunch at a chicken place, which was at no surprise, amazing. There was a huge bee that almost killed us about 20 times, but someone finally caught it between two dishes. There was also a cute little dog that came to visit us while we ate. It wasn’t the restaurant owner’s dog, so we weren’t sure where he came from. Someone kept feeding him chicken, so he stuck around for a while. J I also got to have my first experience using a squat toilet at the restaurant, seeing as how that was the only option for a restroom. I am proud to say that I survived the experience! It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

I wanted to take him home with me!

The restaurant.

We stopped by one more temple before leaving the city, which was very similar to the first one we went to. It was so incredibly hot that day! Imagine it being 90 degrees and 100 percent humidity. We were all sweating through all of our clothes. It was oh quite lovely. A few of us climbed down into the creek running through the temple, sat on the rocks and dipped our feet in the water.

Only after I got this picture taken did I realize that was a creamatorium.

Then it was time to head back to Seoul!

Before departing for Korea, I was nervous about what the language barrier would be like here. I have never formally taken any Korean language instruction and only knew a few words and phrases of the language. I thought that some people would know at least a little bit of English, and that proved to be correct. A lot of people here know basic English or even more. On more than one occasion, usually being a native Korean student in international programs here on campus, have said that they do not have very good English. However, then they proceed to speak either fluent or nearly perfect English. It’s amazing. I almost feel sub-par to them because they are fluent in more than one language! I guess it just makes me jealous that I have not learned another language well enough to be able to use it to communicate effectively with others. Once classes start, though, I think that I will be learning a lot very fast. There is apparently no English spoken at all in our Korean language class, even though I will be in the very beginner class. It shall definitely be an adventure!

I hope you enjoyed reading my post! My next post will be about my recent trip to the DMZ! Yes, that’s right, I saw a North Korean and stood in North Korea for all of about 3 minutes. It was LEGIT! Talk to you soon!

안녕!

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