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!
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!
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:
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.
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!
So this is day 2 of of excursion outside of Seoul! There was a lot of bus riding in between all the various places we had to go, so we were going all over the countryside. The first place on the agenda was the Ridge of Wind, a large mountain with cabbage farms spattering the side and a gorgeous view of the surrounding countryside.
It smelled of cabbage, but that wasn't particularly a bad thing. It was really really sunny and roasting, but very nice. I think we were lucky in Seoul, since there are a lot of clouds most of the time, but we got to see some pretty cool sights.
After this, it was off to the 365 Safety experience center, to run through the tree track (a somewhat military esque training exercise) and to learn about natural disasters in a 4D theater.
All Korean men are obligated to go into the military when they are 21 or so. It's not a choice; you have to go for about 2 years. It's apparently the source of some controversy in Korea at the moment; according to one of my chaperones, the higher ups would force the newer members to do menial tasks for their entertainment, and it was always boring and harsh (such as playing rock paper scissors with the mirror until you won). But the actual military exercise was fun. Climbing ropes and swinging logs, as well as a zipline.
We had to take a lift up the mountain to get there. I believe I was the only one who fell on one of the exercises, walking across logs. It was... embarrassing
I don't have any pictures of the 4D experience, but it was essentially a 3D movie that had a rocking and rolling seat / car you sat in. Haha, it was very interesting.
For dinner, we had Bulgogi, which is a type of marinated Korean meat cooked on a fire. I really loved all the meat in Korea; it was just so amazing. For this dish, a dome shaped grill rests in the center of the table. You pile the raw meat, mushrooms, noodles and onions onto the dome while the waitress lights the fire, then you slowly cook it until the oil on the sides is boiling, at which point you drop the meat into the oil. I could just not have enough of this dish. Korean meat is really just to die for.
That was it for this day, we went to a different hotel and got ready for the next day.
