Chusuk Holiday and food pictures 9/7/2014

This week is the Chuesuk (spelling) holiday in Korea, so Monday - Wednesday are all off school.  It's essentially the equivalent of Thanksgiving in America.  I'm not doing anything special though.  I think I will just try to travel around the city and find interesting things while I have the days off, and relax.

I had my first snowboarding class last Friday.  This was the only class I signed up for that was not taught in English, but Korean.  I think I may have to drop it, since it is quite confusing.  It was only ten minutes long, since it was the first week, but I understood absolutely nothing of what he said.  Except when he called my name for roll call.  It's a shame, I am really interesting in learning some winter sports, but I don't think I can take a class all in Korean.  I think I will just join the snowboarding club on campus and tell them I am new, haha!

All of my other classes have been great so far.  The one I am most worried about is still Human Capital and Labour Market Analysis, but it is too late to switch now so I will just have to deal with it and hope I don't die.  All my professors speak great english, even if some of them are a little eccentric.  A great thing about Korea is that it is much cheaper then I had planned for.  Textbooks are MUCH cheaper then I thought they would be, with an "expensive" book being 43 dollars.  Ha!  That was the one class where one of the students was going to photocopy the book and make copys for people because it was expensive.  I had budgeted $1000 just for textbooks, but it looks like it isn't even going to cost 1/5 of that! 

The same thing happened with the insurance I had to buy.  It was around 140 dollars, to be covered for the entire year!  That's crazy.  Even the food is way cheaper then I envisioned.  I had budgeted for $15 per day for food, and I thought that might be too little, but it turns out even if you go out to lunch and dinner to a restaurant (around the university) you end up being within budget!  The cafeteria is even cheaper, with the MOST expensive dish costing 2200 Won, or about $2.30.  That's super awesome.

I have a couple more Korean meat dishes that were excellent.  The first was a dish called Samgyupsal, which is a pork dish that is grilled at the table.  It is pretty popular and it tasted extremely good.  And it was super cheap.

The first photo is of the plate they brought the pork out on.  For $6.5 per person (4 people) we got as many vegatables and sides as you wanted plus two plates of that port.  You could wrap it in lettuce and onions and eat it like a little roll.  This was extremely good.

The second was a pork plate that I ordered at a restaurant myself.  It was also good, but not quite as good as the first.  I'm also not sure what the actual title is, but it is pork belly.

There are a couple aspects of korean restaurants that are different than in the U.S.  When you arrive, you just sit wherever you want.  Then, in most restaurants, the bill or ticket is already at the table and you just check what you want and take it up to the counter to order.  This varys from place to place but it is common that the waiter won't really do anything for you except bring you your food.  In the restaurant where I got Samgyupsal, you had to get your own side dishes and vegetables (which was actually fine since you could of course grab as much as you wanted!)  And in almost every restaurant I've been too, they either bring you a container of water at the start, and these little water cups, or you get up and go get your own water.

I've also noticed that it seems like Korean people tend to not drink a lot of water with their meal.  The cups that they serve water in everywhere are extremely small compared to the US so I tend to drink 4-5 cups, whereas the korean people I am with drink only one or two cups at most.  Also, it seems like they sometimes drink water at the end of the meal, not during it.  In the cafetera at my university, everyone gets water at the very end of the meal, grabbing a cup and drinking by the water station.  It is definately different than the U.S.

Anyway, that is my update.  I think I will add more as I remember in smaller, bite sized stuff since this is a casual journal-esque blog.

First Week Stuff

I got here on Wensday, August 27th.  It's now Wensday, September 3rd, so one whole week!  I have had 3 classes so far, and they are all very interesting and won't seem to be too much of a problem.  I have had Human Capital and Labour Market Analysis, Urban Administration and Trade issues and policies.  They have all actually been very interesting so far.  One funny thing is, now two of my professors have somewhat singled me out in a funny way.  One of them, trade issues and policies, is a white professor.  He was talking about his background, and how he had planned to come to Korea for a year to teach or something.  Then he looks over at me really quickly and says "you may have to watch out for this" and then looks back to the rest of the class, "I met a girl, got married, had kids, and now I've been stuck here for 13 years".  Hahaha.  It isn't as awkward as it sounds.  My Urban Administration professor did a similar thing to me, threading questions about relationships into his lecture on Korean homogeniousness.  It's fuuny.

A good thing about studying abroad is everything is cheaper.  I paid $43 for a brand new textbook, one that probably would cost around $80 in the U.S.  I just paid for my insurance for the entire year, which was only ~135 dollars.  That's crazy.  I can also get food in the cafeterria for like $1-2 dollars for a huge meal!  And it is pretty good food too, although mostly i have just had Ramen since I can't read the main dish menu (It's all in Korean!).  I can read what all of the side dishes are though, with my limited korean, so that is helpful!

Food is even cheap in other places too.  I went to a restaurant with my roomate, Gong Son, for dinner the other night.  I had "JeyukBokkem", which came with the main dish of some sort of incredible meat (maybe beef) and 5 side dishs, along with rice and seafood soup, for 5 dollars.  pretty crazy!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Korean_cuisine-Jeyuk_bokkeum-01.jpg

My room is pretty nice.  The dormitory is extremely quiet at all hours, which is unusal and did not happen in Hilo.  The desks are nice, there is air conditioning, and the shower is hot and powerful.  It also came with a mini fridge!  When I first got here, there was a bunch of stuff already in the room, like some random pencils, lint cleaners, a large coat rack, and 30 different shampoos.  I thought it was my roomates, but it turned out he thought it was my stuff, as he didnt even arrive at the school until sunday!  We got a dirty room right off the bat...  But the advantage was, someone left a bunch of soda in the fridge, so we can't complain too much.

Korea is pretty nice right now.  It has rained the past few days but it is generally sunny and nice.  An interesting tidbit I noticed today is, even though it just started a very light rain, EVERYONE has an umbrella.  Literally everyone.  In Hawaii, if it started raining, sure some people would pull out their umbrella, but not everyone would have one.  Here, every single person I saw today had an umbrella.  It was a little surreal.  Even for a tiny light misting.

On that note, it is a little shocking sometimes to be here.  For example, when you are the only white person on the subway, or the only white person in the entire cafeteria.  I normally just act normal and pretend like I belong but it is a little surreal sometimes.

Yup.

August 18, Sunday.... Flying home.

Welp, last day!  Some of the kids were leaving very early in the morning, so I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to my roommate even.  The California group were leaving the hotel at 1300, but we, the Hawaii kids, didn't get on the plane until 2100!  How lucky.  We were the only 2 people with free time that day.  I spent it eating some amazing Korean pork BBQ, and just taking the subway one last time...

It was actually a pretty good time to leave, since I could sleep on the plane (I had a whole row to myself) and when I got to Hawaii, it was 1000.  

Oh well, it was a fantastic trip!  I really hope I'm able to go back to Korea at some point, and hopefully even for school!  

August 17th, Saturday... Farewell dinner, and SeoulLand!

Today, we could finally wake up at 9:00, had to be in the lobby by 10:00.  It was nice...  From there, we took the bus to the Han river (river which flows through the center of Seoul) to take a cruise on a boat.  We had some closing remarks and had lunch.  It was actually a very nice closing ceremony...

One of our Korean chaperons, very nice and helpful

The closing ceremony on the boat

2 of the other Korean chaperons, also very awesome and nice

More people joining...

This was our home stay group, all the people who we traveled with.

Mr. We, our program director.  Very chill guy!

From here, we had free time the rest of the day.  We decided to go to Seoul Land, the amusement park near the zoo.  It was a really long walk, and I was running low on Won, but when we got to the ticket desk, the sign said $25 per person, which we didn't have...  But!  There was, of course, a foreigners discount, $12 per person!  talk about lucking out!

There were a few larger rides, but a lot of the park had kid rides, and small little rides.  I would have loved it when I was nine, but...  It still turned out to be quite cool.  i had never gone on an upside down  rollercoaster, so it was really neat and exciting.

It was at night, and I had a hard time holding onto the camera...

There also was a firework celebration at the end of the day!

It was a nice way to end my last night in Seoul!

August 16, Friday: Samsung d'light exhibition hall, KPOP dance class, Miso performance, and fish spa

This was the last day of any normal activities for the CIEE trip.  Tomorrow will be the closing ceremony and free time, and then the plane ride home.  But there was a lot of memorable experiences today!

We woke up and headed to the Samsung d'light exhibition hall, which was in Gangnam, in the southeast area of Seoul.  Many people will obviously recognize it from Gangnam style, in which Psy, I believe, is making fun of the area...  It's mainly a rich business district.  Like Manhattan or something.  Anyway, the exhibition hall had a lot of interesting samsung products and different technology's.  There was a large Augmented reality dance floor, many computers and cell phones etc.  One of the things that stood out to me the most was their 82 In. 4K resolution TV.  It had absolutely amazing resolution, better then real life (haha).  The only downside is the cost: 40 million won, or $40,000.  They also had some interesting school based tablets, that interacted with the teacher and seemed really nice.

There was also a really nice LED light cage, which could be manipulated from a wall sensor.  From working with LED lights in robotics, I know that it's actually pretty difficult to do this....

After spending about an hour and a half here, we traveled a few minutes the BBoys theater to learn a KPOP dance.  It was... an interesting experience.  I don't have a video of ourselves yet, but I can put up a video of the actual song and the actual, non BUTCHERED, dance.  hehe.

It's pretty catchy.

Next, we went to the MISO theater performance.  It was a musical about a love triangle, and it turned out to be really really good.  Special effects, and really nice dances.  No cameras were allowed, but
http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_6.jsp?cid=622552

From here, there was free time.  A lot of the others wanted to go and try live octopus, and I really wanted to film it, so we went.  It was pretty interesting.  You have to buy $70 worth of octopus at the time, which wasn't a problem with 15 people, but when they served the octopus (still squirming on the plate) it was on two HUGE platters.  It became apparent pretty quickly that the 9 people who actually wanted to try it were not going to be able to eat everything, so all the people who had come to take pictures had to try some...  I had about 4 pieces, it really wasn't too bad, but it was very squishy...

Me and 2 other guys headed to Myengdong by subway after this, to go find a fish spa.  A fish spa is a place where you can put your feet / hands into the water and have little fish eat the skin or something, I'm still not too clear on what they ACTUALLY do...

It took a while to find one, but we eventually did:

It was quite a fulfilling last official day!

August 15, Thursday: DMZ, Kim il sungs beach villa

Annyeonghaseyo!  This was the last day of our excursion outside of Seoul.  Korea is a really beatiful place, in the countryside.  There were mountains EVERYWHERE, greenery everywhere, and lots of rivers, and nice beach's.  This was the mountain range behind our hotel, which is apparently very famous in Korea.  I cannot find the name, but they are very similar to the Kumgang mountains in North Korea, which I will get to shortly.

So from here, we ventured on towards the DMZ, which is the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.  No military is allowed to be in this zone, which runs across the peninsula along the 38th parallel.  However, it is still the most militarized border in the world.

I realize it will be hard to tell from a picture, but everything past the small island connected to the beach is North Korea.  We actually got very unlucky on this trip compared to the last edition of the trip.  We went to the Goseong Unification Observatory, which is the last civilian viewpoint of the DMZ, but the previous trip went all the way to the JSA, the Joint Security Area, where there are actual North Korean soldiers and meeting rooms.  I was a little disappointed with this, but it was still very very nice.  

The Kumgang mountains are to the left, harder to see, but I will put some more pictures up.  They are very tall, and are considered to be the nicest mountains in the Korean Peninsula:

  

 
So yeah, it was still very interesting!  Being that close to one of the most notorious and isolated country's in the world.

The next destination was Kim Il Sung's beach Vila before the war.  It was put onto South Korean territory when the DMZ was put into place.

After this it was a 4 hour bus ride back to Seoul.  Only a few more days left...  Technically, only one with actual activity.  

August 14, Wensday: Limestone cave, Archery, and a Korean beach

Annyeonghaseyo!  That is hello in Korean ;P  So today, we woke up to go to a limestone cave somewhat near the Korean border.  During the war, nearby people went up and lived in the cave to hide from all the fighting.  It's a nice cave because it manages to stay very, very cool all year around, something like 9-11 C.  It had been recently "renovated" for tours into the cave, and is now protected by the government.  One interesting thing about this save is that they created an entire network of walkways and even put in a water feature in the center of one of the ponds.  I thought it was strange because in America,  I don't think people would mess with the cave in any way, they would just lead guided tours and you would have to struggle through the save by yourself.  I guess they wanted to make it more accessible to tourists.  It was pleasant, since is was super hot outside, and pretty interesting.

From here, we went onto an archery class!  Korea has a very good archery heritage, with the most gold medals in archery out of any country.  Most people who go to this archery center would have about 2 weeks of training before they actually used a bow, but they made a special exception for us.  The masters there were very good; they hit the targets all the way at the end of the range 4/5 times.  They also had bows that they would pull without looking strained at 70+ lbs.  Everyone got 3 arrows, and we also pulled a bow that was around 25 lbs.  It was a lot of fun, I would love to do that kind of thing again.  In between all of these events, we rode a bus for about an hour an half.  There was quite a lot of bus riding...  These areas are on the east sea of Korea, up somewhat close to the border.

After this was a beach trip.  I don't have too many beach pictures because I didn't take my camera with me, but we swam for about 2 and a half hours, and everyone also got to ride on a banana float, which is a long inflatable that looks like a banana, which someone on a jetski pulls.  It looked like a beach from California, mostly, and the water was brisk.  Also, the shower room was similar in concept to a spa's sauna, in that mostly everyone is completely naked...

For dinner this evening, we had mud roasted duck, I believe.  It was actually quite good.  It was similar to kalua pig in that it was buried to be roasted, which makes it very tender.  One thing that is somewhat common in Korea is to take a piece of lettuce or seaweed, put some rice, meat, flavoring and maybe some kim chee in it, and the wrap it like a roll and eat it.  It tastes really, really quite good.

At this hotel, I believe I went to the fitness center at one point, and there was what looked like a fully function climbing wall with hooks and harness's behind a glass wall.  I asked if we could use it, and the employee managed to tell us that is was just a MODEL of a climbing wall.  That was really weird.  A model!  Very disappointing...  Tomorrow, the DMZ!