I Got Seoul!

Since we are stuck on the same campus all week, when it comes time for the weekend we are all ready for some fun and a change of scenery. So the first full weekend I was here me and my new friend Kendall went up to Seoul and spent some time with a couple people I know from my mission. We rode the train up to Seoul and made our way through several subway stations to find our destinations. It was an experience just trying to figure out Korean transportation by ourselves but we had a good time and it was nice to get away.
First we met my friend Jong Hyuk who was a missionary with me in Canada. He took us to a restaurant and bought us dinner.

                             Jong Hyuk, me, and Kendall (the phone is not mine, I still don't have one)

This is what we ate: It was some ridiculously hot sausage. Even though it was like eating fire, it was really good.

That night Jong Hyuk let us stay at his flat in Gimpo. Pretty awesome we didn't have to pay to stay anywhere. The next morning he came and got us and took us to the train station and we ventured back through a few different subway stations to meet my friend Ki Yeon. I know her from church in Vancouver and I also taught her a few times while I was a missionary. We met Ki Yeon and went to church with her at in Seoul. 

Kendall and I

Me and Ki Yeon

Then after church Ki Yeon took us back to her house and her mom fed us Lunch! It was great!

Yes that is fried spam!

Ki Yeon's mom was so good to us and made us lots of food. 

After dinner we took the bus, subways, and train back to Jochiwon. Back to our wonderful life at orientation. The week of the 10th through the 14th was pretty unspectacular. I honestly can't even remember anything that happened that week other than, on Friday we had a Yoga class we I really enjoyed. My body felt so good after doing Yoga. Other than that, the whole week was packed full of classes and lectures. Oh I guess one of our lecturers was a magician and showed us some cool tricks, but other than that it was quite and uneventful week. 

We did go out (on the one night we didn't have class) and explore Jochiwon a little. 

On Saturday, we had a field trip to Seoul. All of the TaLK scholars packed onto 3 big buses (by the way the charter buses here are pretty sweet and very colorful) and we headed to Seoul. First we went to a museum that had a lot of old Korean stuff. We only had like an hour to look around though. I didn't take very many pictures but here are a few. 

Huge Buddhist mural. 

Huge tower

Me with Seoul Tower in the background. 

After the Museum they took us to Hongdae (a popular part of Seoul) and let us find our own lunch and shop or look around or whatever we wanted. Me, and a couple friends went and ate pork belly, sam geoup sar. It was really good but it ended up being more expensive than we thought it would be. 

Stole this video from Kendall (along with several of the pictures)

After lunch they took us to a Korean Musical called Miso. On the way there this happened randomly as we were walking down the street. 

The play was really cool. They wouldn't let us take pictures in the play but here are some I found online. 

After the play we had the choice to either go back to Jochiwon on the bus or stay in Seoul and do what we please. So Kendall and I met up with Hwang Hye Ryeon, another friend who I used to teach in Vancouver.
We also met up with her friend Ji. They took us to a restaurant in Hongdae. It was a pizza place. It was really good. Their bread was great! Then we walked around and ate some street food and checked out some shops. 

This is what Hongdae looks like, except it was way more packed with people than that

That night Kendall and I stayed in a hostel but it was more like a bed and breakfast. We had a room to ourselves. It was really nice and pretty inexpensive. The people were really nice too and seemed excited to have us there. Sunday morning we got up and went to church with the girls. 

Ji, Hye Ryeon, Me, (cute little photo bombing girl), Kendall

It has been great to see people that I know from when I was in Canada! 

Week 1

Guess what! I have a girlfriend, she is a little chubby but that's ok! I think she is beautiful (I may be a little biased I guess)

Here She Is

We had a fun time making these dolls on Saturday!

Wow the time has flown by and at the same time if feel like I have been here forever in Jochiwon. The people here at orientation are amazing. Everyone is from different backgrounds and places and each person has different reasons why they are here and how they got here. It is humbling to see what some of them have already accomplished, and to see how ambitious some of the other TaLK scholars are. I feel so lucky to be here. Last year in February they had almost 300 scholars here and this year we have about 120 at orientation. From what I hear, people liked the program so much that many of them extended and so there were significantly less spots available so it was very competitive. Before I came, I figured that not many people would have graduated from university already since this program only requires 2 years or an Associates degree. But I am one of the only ones that doesn't have a Bachelors. So, I feel very lucky that I was picked.
Another surprising thing is that most of these people don't know much, or any, Korean. There are a handful who have studied it in college or something, then there are those who's parents, or at least one parent, are Korean so they know the language.
So I was feeling pretty good about my language ability till I tried having a whole 30 minute conversation with my K-pop teacher and I realized I have forgotten so many words and so much grammar.

The opening ceremony of orientation was pretty sweet. We had 2 cool performances. One by a drumming group and the other by K Tigers who do cool Tae Kwon Do demonstration shows.

I stole this video from someone else because I didn't have my camera with me at the time.

Here is a video of the K tigers performance as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flqt2edBtbk 

I'm not sure which performance I liked more. They were both pretty awesome. 

Ever since the opening ceremony they have been keeping us really busy with lectures and classes. Some are fun but mostly just boring stuff about how to be a better teacher and advice and instructions on working with our schools/principals/mentor teachers/students/co-teachers/ etc....

The building where our classes are. 

Everyday, we have to get ready and eat breakfast before our first class at 8:40 then we have class till after 8 at night with only lunch and dinner breaks in between. On top of that, we have to do lesson plans and get ready to teach real student's (for our practicum on Monday) in our own free time (8:20pm - whenever we want to sleep). I feel like they are trying to make us feel like Korean school students who go to school till 10 pm then still have homework to do when they get home. Although it is a bit intense at times, overall it has been a great experience thus far and I have learned a ton that I know will help me out as far as teaching goes. In a lot of ways it really reminds me of the MTC (in a lot of ways its nothing like that but in many ways it is very similar). 

A picture of our lunch the other day. We are well fed. 

Not all of the classes are boring. On Saturday we had Tae Kwon Do (yes im still sore) and arts and crafts (I know my girlfriend is amazing!). One day we also had a 단소 (danso, korean flute/recorder) lesson, it was very hard to get it to make sound. We also have a Korean class every night and since I can read and speak Korean ( to an extent) I get to go to the K-pop class where we get to learn songs and learn dance moves. Our teacher is way cool. He is my same age and he was on The Voice of Korea (pretty much the Korean version of American Idol). He has a great voice and its fun to learn from him. 

He is the guy in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLjkvxUqvBA 

One day I sat by him at lunch and we are pretty much best friends now, haha (but really he even requested me on Facebook ;) ). We had a really long talk and it was great language practice for me. It made me realize how much of the language I still don't know and also how much I have forgotten. 

Saturday morning we had a medical check up which was quite thorough. (urine test, blood test, sight test, hearing test, height, weight, all kinds of other stuff). Then Saturday night after dinner, scholars fled the campus to various areas, mostly Seoul. We were all ready for a break after the long week of lectures. My new friend Kendall and I took a taxi to the train station and took a train to Seoul to visit some of my friends there. I will talk about that in my next post. 

The people here at orientation are amazing! I have made so many friends from all over the world. Everyone seems really smart and put together (not surprising since they had to figure out all the paperwork, forms, etc. to get here). 

Props to Ka Lo for making this awesome video of our first week here: 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_nCJsFxTs16b0dhWm1ZOUF4Mlk/edit  

I'm bummed I can't get it to upload so I just have to give you the link. 

Korean Folk Village

I woke up Sunday morning, still tired but ready to go explore Korea. It was still foggy outside and sprinkling but it wasn't very cold out. I got ready and went down and ate my first meal in Korea. We had quail egg and pork jang-jo-rim (that was the first time I have had quail eggs and they were quite good). We also had kimchi sundubu (kimchi soup with soft tofu), and, of course, it wouldn't be a Korean meal without kimchi and rice. I keep forgetting to take my camera to meals so that I can get pictures of the food.
After breakfast I went to the lobby to see if I was one of the lucky 40 who would get to go on the field trip. Since I was on the wait list I didn't think I would get to go. They went through all the people then started naming people on the wait list and telling them they were in. I was 4th on the wait list and Amy (my fellow Idahoan) was 5th on the list. And guess what, they ended up taking the first 5 people from the wait list! I was psyched when I found out I got to go. The bus ride to the Korean Folk Village was much calmer than the bus ride the night before. It was light out so we could see more of what Korea looks like however it was still foggy and wet so our windows were all fogged up again. I was surprised how brown everything is. I didn't think it would be more brown than Idaho. Although, it is very hilly and all the hills are covered in trees. I am really looking forward to the spring because I think it will be very pretty then. I was also surprised that it was more rural than I thought it would be. Shoving 50 million people in a country smaller than Utah I didn't think there would be much space anywhere. But there was actually numerous fields and open space, as well as countless small hilly forests. It was funny because there would randomly be an extremely high apartment building or a couple tall buildings here and there, but they seemed so out of place surrounded by fields and much smaller buildings. It took almost 2 hours to get to the village. TaLK provided our tickets to get in and they also bought us lunch at a restaurant while we were there.
The village was pretty cool. It had a lot of Korean traditional stuff and it showed a lot of buildings from the Joseon dynasty. Here is a link that shows a map of the village:
 http://www.koreanfolk.co.kr/folk/english/guide/guide_map.html

Most of the buildings are from the Joseon dynasty which was from 1392 - 1897. The houses with tile roofs are upper class and the buildings with straw roofs were where lower class, poorer people lived or worked.
It was super muddy because it had been raining, and it was foggy the whole time we were there but it didn't rain while we were there and the air was kind of refreshing even with the fog.

Korean Totem Poles

Some Cool Shrines

They had some intricate wood carvings

 Some cool structures and scenery 

 Very artistic Buddhist shrine. (these statues were pretty big) 

Buddhist Temple (this was the prettiest building inside and out)

Inside

Huge Buddha (Very cool!)

This was just in front of the temple.

A really old Bell

There were various performances while we were there. 

Here is a video of this one. 

You write your wish on a paper then tie it to the rope. In the fall they burn the rope and you wish will come true (or something like that)

Horses and Horsemen did a cool show but I didn't get a video

Some great bridges for pictures. 

More scenery of the village. 

There was a separate part of the village that had a amusement park with rides and everything. There was also a section with various museums and art. 

Don't I look amazing?

Fun in the jail

Watch your head when you exit (love the Engrish)

The ride back, everyone pretty much slept on the bus because we were all understandably tired. I was unfortunate and sat right in front of the only people who didn't sleep. Instead they just talked the whole way home so I couldn't sleep. 

Sunday night we had a pre-orientation that was pretty much orientation for the orientation. 

Had a great time at the village! So glad I went even though I was jet lagged! It was a cool experience and a great day.