Author Archives: lmp5203

Almost Over

Well, once again I don’t remember the last time I blogged. I’m really bad at this. I’m bad at keeping up with it and remembering what the last thing was that I posted about. Anyway, I’m doing it now! I have a little less than two weeks left, and I’m beyond excited to come home. I’ve learned a lot being here and I wouldn’t give it back for anything, but four months away from home is a long long time – and I’m really ready to see my family and friends again. Since I wrote last I’ve been busy spending time with my friends and keeping up with school work.

A couple weeks ago we went to a place called Andong – a traditional Korean village where they have the traditional houses and temples and stuff. It was a nice weekend away and I made national TV! Apparently dancing with Korean locals makes you a celebrity. The Buddhist temple was sooo pretty. It was over 600 years old, tucked away in the mountains. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing trip, but it was nice to see more traditional stuff.

The drum that the monks play is in the upstairs part of this temple. It was so pretty and so quiet. When we foreigners were there though, it wasn’t so quiet. It looks over the mountains and the countryside – so pretty.

The next day we went to the Traditional Korean Dance. It was super crowded and once again, I got picked out of the crowd to dance in front of everyone. Got some free Korean rice cakes as a prize for embarrassing myself and they were sooo good. So cute too. Shaped like the Korean masks.

The different masks are all carved into the wood, but at the dance a different person is wearing each of the masks. They all have different parts and roles – its pretty entertaining. The few weeks after that I just sorta worked on school work. Not much exciting happened. Just had to make sure to keep up with work and do my projects. But finally, last weekend we took our last trip in Korea to Busan. I love Busan so incredibly much. Maybe it was the people I went with, maybe it was the beach, either way it was one of the best parts of Korea. We had such a relaxing time. When we first went, it was just three of us girls. We stayed at a youth hostel, and the guy who owned it suggested we go to a place called Gwangali Beach. It was a nice area with lots of big buildings and lights. A pretty bridge was lit up at night. It was just really really nice to get away from Seoul.

Being on the beach was fun, but sitting at the coffee shop listening to the live jazz band that was playing across the street, just watching the ocean was so nice. It was very relaxing and just really nice. However the next few days more and more people started coming. The whole trip was really really nice, really relaxing. After the first group arrived, we finally went to the beach. While we were there on the first day, we met a guy who had a stand to do sea kayaking and surfing. We started talking to him to see how much it would cost, and he ended up being pretty good friends with us! Jeff was his name and he kept telling us he was the “Busan Boss”. We got to do lots of sea kayaking and he even got us some free jet skiing 🙂

When the last group of people was coming to meet us, we waited for them at the Busan Train Station. At night the fountain they have a show where the fountain lights up and they synchronize music to the water. It gets a big crowd and people try to walk through the water and the police come and yell. It’s really nice to sit and watch, so we did that while we waited for the last group to come.

Later that night for dinner we did the tourist thing. We went to Millak Fresh Fish Market, where you pick your fish and they cut it in front of you. We were extremely overcharged, but it was an experience. Not everyone wanted to try it, but I did. And thats all I did. A little too fresh for my liking.

This fish wasn’t very good in my opinion. We had one before this that tasted a little bit better when i drenched it in soy sauce. There were some other ones that sorta looked like snails, and it was really really really hard to eat, pretty bad to look at too. So I’ll spare the photos.

The next day after we rested a little bit, we went back to the beach. There was a Sand Festival there, and there were huge sand castles. There was even a sand castle village!

The group who woke up early enough to see the beach before the crowds came. We saw the sand castles and the sand statues and sculptures. Fun festival stuff. But As it always is, I got sunburnt really quick and decided I didn’t want to get skin cancer so instead of spending the last day at the beach, we went to the Aquarium.

Unfortunately the aquarium was not so good, and we paid 18,000 won for admission. It was part of the Busan experience though. The whole aquarium was underground so I guess that was kinda cool, but it was just so little. We ended the day at the Jagalchi Fish Market which is supposed to be like the worst smelling place on the planet. It didn’t smell too terrible, and it was cool to see all the different things people were selling. Except no one wanted to sell stuff to us. We finally got someone to sell us one piece of fried fish to try, and it was pretty good actually. But she didn’t seem to happy to sell it to us.

All of the ladies selling the fish seemed unhappy. Maybe thats why they wouldn’t sell us anything but either way it was an experience.

We came back to Seoul at 1am and I spent the whole day doing nothing. Should have been studying and doing homework but we had the day off because its Labor Day in Korea. I have my last three days of class this week, then my mom is coming to visit me this weekend with her friend! I’m really really looking forward to showing them around my “home” and letting them experience some of the things I’ve seen and done. Then they’ll be here for a week and then finally, it is time for me to come home. This was definitely the experience of a lifetime, but I’m really looking forward to being back home.

Love to all my family and friends! See you all soon!

Location: Busan, South Korea

Children’s Day and Buddha’s Birthday

After we came home from Jeju, we had midterms. Unfortunately while I was trying to study for midterms, I was really sick. So sick I had to go to the hospital. After doing chest x-rays and ruling out tuberculosis (huge relief) they told me I had pneumonia. I got some antibiotics and the doctor told me to sleep as much as possible. So after spending 10 days mostly in the dorms sleeping and trying to get better, I finally ventured out again last weekend!

While I was still taking my medicine, I felt okay enough to go back to the zoo with my friends. We had a pretty interesting ride there, people not feeling well and going home, getting on the wrong trains and off at the wrong subway stations, but eventually we made it there!

We were supposed to go on a ferry ride along the Han River at night, but we took too long getting there, so we just took a walk instead. Not exactly the most successful night, but it was still fun.

After classes last week, a few friends and I went hiking in Seoraksan National Park. Its about 3 hours away from Seoul, and its soooo nice. It was just four of us, but anymore would have been hard to coordinate. We left the dorms at about 6:00 am, and took the bus to the East coast of Korea, got on a city bus, then ended up in the park at about 10:30. When we first got there, we took a cable car to the top of the mountain, unfortunately it was so foggy at the top that we couldn’t see anything. But the background being completely white makes it a little scary I guess.

With the Korean flag at the summit! There was a small gift shop at the top of the mountain and the guy kept trying to get us to buy some kind of gold piece to prove we had been to the top, but instead we just had him take our picture to prove it. After we took the cable car back down, we visited the giant Buddha statue at the park in honor of Buddha’s Birthday (which was May 10). Lots of people were praying and buying prayer candles, so we decided to do it too. We bought a candle and simply asked that we’d be able to meet each other again someday. We all signed it, wrote the date and then lit it in the glass case they display the candles in. I’m not sure what word I’m looking for, but it was something I’ll remember for a long time.

Just so you can get an idea of how tall it really is the glass cases where the candles are is taller than I am! It stands taller than most of the trees there! We followed a path that was supposed to take us to a cave. We were a little disappointed at first, because we were just walking on flat ground for about 2 kilometers, but we finally got to an area that was so pretty. The water was so clear, and the rocks were massive. It was a really breathtaking place.

Most places asked us to stay off the rocks, but we climbed around on the few places that didn’t have any signs asking us not to. It was just so pretty it was hard to stay away. Still a little disappointed that we were walking on a flat path, we walked on the rocks a little more then kept going on the path. Finally we started having to actually hike. When we got to the top of section we used stairs to climb, we got to see the whole valley, which was incredible.

The last .4 km or whatever it was was brutal. It was a direct climb up, and I thought I was going to die a few times, but it was a good hike. The “cave” they were talking about was really just a tiny hole in the side of the mountain where they had 3 more small Buddha statues where people can pray. After such a hard hike up, it was a little bit of a let down, but it was still nice to see. We had planned on camping at the park, but it was raining and all the tents and sleeping bags had been rented out, so instead we came back to Seoul at about 1:00am. It was a long day.

The rest of the weekend we just relaxed and enjoyed our time together. My time here is coming to an end quickly! A little over 5 weeks left until I’m back in State College! Its gonna go fast.

Location: Sokcho, South Korea

Half-way point

Officially at the half way point now. But once again, it’s been ages since I’ve written anything. I feel like I’m always so busy here that its impossible to sit down long enough to write a blog that actually tells people anything! In my last blog I know I said I was going to Thailand this weekend, but unfortunately that didn’t happen 🙁 But there’s been lots to do anyway! After we got home from MT, it was a pretty normal week. My friends and I went bowling one night, and it was just as you’d expect. Normal bowling with a lane and ten pins (there weren’t any bumpers which I thought would be bad, but I still won – 129!) Bowling wasn’t something I thought I’d do in Korea, but it was still fun!

We took lots of pictures while we were bowling, but some Korean lady yelled at me… She told me we were “disturbing” her. Not in the disruptive loud way, the “you’re scaring me” way. She told me our group didn’t understand Korean bowling etiquette and if we couldn’t learn it we should probably leave the bowling alley. So instead we stopped taking pictures and just finished our game.

Later in the week some girl friends and I searched for the Hello Kitty Cafe. We found it in some scary alley, but the cafe itself is soooo super cute.

Everything inside is pink and if there is some sort of Hello Kitty appliance or picture or anything, this place has it. You can buy coffee and snacks here and all of that has Hello Kitty on it too. Even my coffee!

Everyone else in the dorms thought the Hello Kitty Cafe was so cool that they arranged a group coffee date there on a Friday night! Kinda funny to see all the boys getting excited about anything Hello Kitty related. After we were at the Hello Kitty gathering, we walked around Seoul a little bit. The weather is getting really nice out now, and last week the Cherry Blossoms were blooming, so we decided to see them while they were out. While we were walking we stopped at a street vendor to get a real meal (kind of) and there’s this really popular street vendor who makes chicken and people make huge lines by his stand. Its basically a chicken kebab, but he puts all sorts of sauce and cheese and stuff on it.

I’m sure its absolutely terrible for you but people here love it. There are four different flavors you can get, and they’re measured by spicy-ness.

I tried the level 1 🙁 still a little bit spicy. But it was pretty good! Most of my friends got the level 3, but one of my friends asked for the level 4 (the hottest one they make). The guy who was making the food tried to talk her out of it, but she kept telling him it was okay and that she liked spicy foods. Well she tried it, and was in so much pain she had to take a taxi home. So if you come to Seoul and are looking to try some street food, stay away from the number 4.

The cherry blossoms in Seoul are so so pretty, but unfortunately they’re only out for about a week or so, then the trees just look sorta like normal trees. Some friends of mine went to Osaka for the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival – unfortunately I couldn’t go, but the trees in Seoul are just as pretty!

The cherry blossoms are everywhere, actually. I thought you’d have to go to one area to see them all, but they line the streets in some areas. Even my campus has them all over the place.

They’re so pretty, but like I said before they only last for about a week. They are already gone now, but at least that means summer is coming! The past week I spent a majority of my time studying and trying to get ready for mid-terms (starting Monday the 25th) and packing for my trip to Jeju Island – the Hawaii of Korea! 11 friends and I went to Jeju for the four day Easter break and we had such an amazing time. We left on Wednesday night and we got a flight to Jeju for only 17 dollars!!! Once we got there a little after 9pm, a friend of a friend met us at the airport and took us to the pension house we stayed at the first night. We had a good time talking and just relaxing that night. A couple of us walked around the island a little bit, but it was late and sorta chilly and it smelled pretty bad in some areas. We really wanted food, so we walked for at least two hours trying to find something to eat, and eventually we flagged down a cab to take us to a convenient store to get some things to take back to the house with us. We got in the cab and the driver asked where we were from, I told him America and he turned the light on and pointed to himself and said “Nelson Mandela”. He did look strangely like Mandela once he pointed it out.

The next day when it was nice out, we stopped at a small convenient store to get breakfast and it was right across the street from the ocean. Jeju Island is a volcanic island, so there’s lots of volcanic rock there. The north part doesn’t have very many beaches, but the coast still looks pretty!

We rented a 15 person van for the 12 people and all our luggage, and used that to drive around the island. So after breakfast we drove to the lava tunnels and on the way there we stopped at a small field of flowers. They were really pretty and there was nice white sand. I only got a couple pictures there, but it was just a place we stopped at on the way to the tunnel. Anyway once we got there we bought our tickets and went into the cave. The cave was formed by lava a long long long time ago, but its kinda hard to see anything inside, so I only got a few pictures. After the cave, we went to U-do, an island off the north coast of Jeju. We went there with the intention of riding scooters around the small island, but unfortunately a normal drivers license wasn’t enough to rent a scooter – you need an international drivers license – so instead we just rented bicycles and rode around the island. The weather was nice and the bikes were cheap, so it was a good way to get around the island. While we were riding bikes, we saw a group of older women sitting in the rocks on the coast, but we couldn’t figure out what they were doing.

We finally found out they were picking seaweed out of the rocks, and eventually they sell it in huge piles along the street. Sounds a little gross to me, but a lot of people do it so I guess its popular. It was really hard to take pictures while I was riding my bike, so most of the pictures look like this where they’re a little bit blurry, so most of them aren’t worth putting up. There’s another spot on the island that is a popular beach spot, but it was way too cold to swim. But the water there is so incredibly clear its hard to believe its ocean water.

After we went to U-do, we went back to the main island and got dinner. Black pig is a Jeju Island specialty (one of the only Jeju-foods that aren’t fish) and we ate it Korean bbq style. It was really really really good, and it was nice to have a full meal finally. Later that night we went to a place called Love Land. It was one of those things thats really difficult to explain, but it was definitely shocking. If you’re really interested, you can google it, but I think its best if I don’t post any of the pictures I have from there. After that, we were all exhausted so we went to our pension for the night and crashed. The next morning I made breakfast for everyone. We took our time getting ready because it rained all day so Friday turned into museum day. We went to a Teddy Bear Museum (cute, but not cute enough for $7.00) and Chocolate Land (has nothing on Hershey) and we also went to Jeongbong waterfall and Cheonjiyong waterfall. These were definitely my favorite parts of the trip.

At Jeongbong waterfall, trying not to slip and fall on the wet rocks.

Cheonjiyoung Waterfall. So so so pretty. This was definitely my favorite spot on the whole island. The area around the waterfall was so nice too. Just a beautiful place all around. Something you can see all around the island are these tiki-like statues. I’m not sure what they are called in Korean or what exactly they represent, but they’re all made out of volcanic rock from Jeju. I bought a tiny little one as a souvenir for my desk when I get home 🙂

Got a group picture at the waterfalls too!

As a finale to our museum day, we ended things at the OSulloc Jeju Green Tea Garden. It was raining and cold at this point, so we stayed outside long enough to take a picture of the tea field and then we ran inside to buy some hot tea to warm up.

After a really long day of sightseeing, we spent the night at a friend of a friend’s house in Jeju City. It was so nice of them to offer their house to 12 college students for the night and we had a really great time with them. Couldn’t have seen as much as we did without them!! The next day they took us to the Samyang Blacksand beach. The beach itself was really pretty, and the sand wasn’t actually black, but it was pretty dark (volcanic island). The boys all swam, but it was way way too cold to even think about swimming, so we sat in the sand and watched the boys freeze.

The day started late since we finally got to sleep at a house, so after the beach, we grabbed a quick lunch then went back to the house and slept for a little bit. We ended the day and the trip with a walk to the top of a mountain in Jeju City to watch the sunset. Sitting at the top of the mountain to see the coast and the ocean was so nice and relaxing. However I think we were some of the only people who were there to enjoy the sunset. At the top of the mountain there are all sorts of exercise machines… monkey bars and stretching posts and benches for crunches… its basically an outdoor gym. Anyway, we sat on a bench and just watched the sunset. Perfect end to a busy but exciting and fun trip!

Now I’m back in my dorm in Seoul – I keep calling it home! I know its not, but at least its starting to get more comfortable 🙂 I have midterms tomorrow, and I’ve done about as much as I possibly can to prolong studying, so now I’ll start studying for political development. Midterms done on Wednesday, then another long weekend 🙂 Hope this enormously long post makes up for the lack of posts the past few weeks!!! Miss and love all my family and friends! <3

Location: Jeju-do, South Korea

1 Month In!!

So I’ve been here for a little over a month now! Its hard to believe that its been that long already! When I think about it, I’ve done so much but it doesn’t feel like its all happened in a month! Mid terms are two weeks away, which means my time here will be half over then!!! The past week or so has been pretty exciting! We went to Bukchon traditional village and it was a really nice change from being in downtown Seoul. Even though Bukchon is in Seoul, its a lot less crowded. There are lots of small shops where local artists sell jewelry and pottery and clothes. Its just a really cute place. Plus, the houses are sooo cool to look at and some lucky people get to actually live in these houses!

It was hard to take too many pictures of the different houses. Since people do live in them, the fancier houses are blocked off by gates and its hard to get any pictures that turn out well. Anyway, most of the houses look something like this one. The village itself is so cool though. Its a lot of hills and a lot of little streets and alleys, but its a really cool place to walk around. Plus the weather was really nice when we went!

Maybe its sorta hard to see, but our group of people were pretty much the only people on the streets. Completely different from the Seoul I live in and am used to! I know I said I was going to go on a bike ride along the Han River, but that never happened. The people who wanted to go with me wanted to go in the morning so they could see the sun rise over Seoul, but it’s still a little bit too cold to be out that early in the morning. I think I convinced them to wait a couple weeks til it warms up enough to enjoy it. Instead, my friends and I went to Myeongdong, a popular shopping district in Seoul. They have lots of clothes and makeup stores… girly things. Apparently all the Japanese tourists who come to Korea loveeee Myeongdong. All the signs are in Korean, English and Japanese. While we were walking around we stumbled upon this cookie stand where two Korean guys were talking to us in English. He asked us if we had tried them before and we hadn’t so he gave us a little show:

I didn’t let the video go long enough for everyone to see what the finished product looks like, but if you look here, you can see what they look like. There’s an almond, peanut, or walnut mixture inside them and you’re supposed to eat them when they’re frozen. It’s soooooo good. The guy told me they stay good for up to 2 weeks meaning I can bring some home with me!!

Once again, I had my four days of class, then on Friday I started my weekend. A friend and I went to the Seoul Zoo. It’s such a nice area and the Zoo itself is really really big so it took a long time to walk around the whole zoo, which we didn’t do. We decided we could go back again because it’s so cheap! The entry ticket to the zoo is only 3,000 won (about $3.00!!). We decided to get the package that let us go to the Dolphin and Seal Show for an extra 2,000 won. The dolphin show was really cool though. I didn’t have really high hopes for it because I’ve been to dolphin shows before, but the dolphin show here had 5 dolphins performing at once!

It was hard to get a picture of them all at once because I couldn’t use flash inside, but I think you can see most of them. While we were at the zoo, we went to the baby animal nursery, where they have the babies that are born inside the zoo. They had mostly baby monkeys, but my favorite babies were these guys

They were sooo cute and sooo playful. They’d follow people walking along the glass and they’d jump up at the door. A little boy was standing next to me looking at the lions and everytime they’d jump up he’d sorta squeal and laugh and it just made everything that much cuter.

The next day, we went on our HUG trip outside of Seoul. Unfortunately I wasn’t too impressed with the area outside of Seoul. Lots of the places we drove by were really dirty and there isn’t any grass anywhere, just lots of dirt and hay. It’s nothing like driving through the country at home. The air quality was still bad, because we weren’t that far away from Seoul, but you can’t even see things when you’re in the country. Anyway, we went to a “beach” but it wasn’t a beach like you’d normally think of. It’s was low tide, so there wasn’t any water hardly, and it was a cloudy day which made things cold.

Even though the beach itself wasn’t very nice, we still had a good time! After we were at the beach, we went to the house our group rented for the night. It was on a lake, and it was just a cool place to hang out for the night. We played dodgeball, with the strangest set of rules ever. They played with only one ball, and boys couldn’t hit girls, and girls couldn’t hit boys. Once you were out, instead of sitting in jail, you got to go stand on the sideline on the opposite side of the court and throw the ball to get people out still. None of the Americans really liked this version because it took sooooo long especially since we had to wait for the ball each time someone threw it. Anyway, my time ended up losing 🙁 Since we lost we had to wait to eat dinner. Most of the people who ate got Korean barbeque, but since we had to wait til the winners finished eating, we got a little bit of the barbeque, then we got some hotdogs. I don’t really like hotdogs anyway, but these ones were really terrible. Losing really sucked that night. Luckily, the house itself was really cool! It was a giant boat!

I wasn’t able to get a picture of it, but at night there are lights all around the outside of the boat, but it was really cool! That night they played games and people drank, but we all ended up sleeping on the floor, mostly because thats all there was to sleep. The next day, we got to do something really cool. We went to the Unification Observatory, an area where people can use viewfinders to look at North Korea. It was a really cool thing to see, and we had someone from the Korean Marines who told us about his job and the significance of the area. He was actually a graduate from Sogang University!!

It was really cool to get to see North Korea, but I don’t think I’ll be making any trips there anytime soon. The strangest thing we saw at the observatory had to be this:

The big news for now though? Going to Thailand for Easter!! I’m really excited! Thats all for now though, I’ll post something again soon! Love to all!!!

Location: Seoul, South Korea

So much has happened in the past couple weeks!

So, once again its been a while since I’ve written anything. I’ve been busy with school work and trying to stay healthy. Last week, right after the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, foreigners in Korea really started freaking out about the radiation coming here. Despite what all the news said, people still were under the impression that the radiation was going to somehow make its way to Korea. So after a couple of city-wide sirens as practice for the city, a couple of students from my school decided they didn’t want to risk the chance of getting any sort of radiation poisoning and they went back home. As far as I know, the people who went home have gone home for good and won’t be coming back for any of the time they were supposed to be studying abroad (kind of a waste!).

After the radiation scare, things have pretty much fallen back into the normal routine (as much of a routine as an exchange student can have here, at least). Last weekend we took one of our French friends out for his last night in Korea, and then he left the next day. After he left, the exchange students went on a field trip to a performance called “Nanta”. I wish I could have taken pictures or videos, because just saying it’s a cooking show really doesn’t give the whole story. It’s a cooking show that has dance in it and comedy and gives the audience the opportunity to participate in the show… it’s a lot of things, but the amount of cooking they actually did was basically zero. Here’s the best video I could find on youtube. The banging sounds are all knives and they’re chopping vegetables, but thats basically all they do with the food. Cut up a lot of food, then throw it away. Too bad, really. It’s kind of a waste. But anyway, the performance was fun and it was something I think almost all tourists who come to Seoul, do. However, Nanta does perform in over 250 cities internationally so maybe some of you can hunt one down near you sometime 🙂 After Nanta, we walked around and saw the oldest Catholic Church is Seoul.

Since it’s the oldest Catholic Church in Seoul, it makes me think its probably the oldest one in Korea too, but I’m not certain about that. Anyway, there was a wedding going on while we were trying to look at it which made things a little weird, but the church was pretty and the stained glass was pretty, as always. We didn’t stay too long because it felt a little weird just standing in the back of someone’s wedding without knowing them. After the church, we went to the Korea National Museum. The Museum is huge. It’s really amazing how big it actually is. The museum itself is divided up into different sections, but for being such a big museum, it doesn’t seem to have a ton of stuff in it really. We had already done a lot of walking that day which made it hard to be too interested in seeing all the museum had inside, but even still, it was cool to go and see some of the things they have inside. We always go out for dinner on Saturdays because the dorm doesn’t provide dinner for us that day, so this time after all the walking we did, we went to a small Korean restaurant near the campus. We had to take our shoes off and sit on the floor and everything. At the beginning they bring out all sorts of little side dishes that you’re supposed to share, but they aren’t really big enough for more than one person, so most of the time when we come with such a big group, they bring a couple of those “side” dishes per table. In addition to those side dishes they brought us something called “Makgulli”.

Its traditional Korean rice wine, and to be honest, I hate it. It’s milky and has way more alcohol in it than regular wine. I think its one of those drinks that’s just supposed to be a compliment to the meal, but of course a lot of the kids from my school were drinking cup-fulls of it at a time and quickly started getting drunk off of it. Anyway, its not something I’d order for myself. Oh and by the way, the toilet paper on the table has been questioned a couple times. As far as I know, it was what we were supposed to use for napkins. There weren’t any other napkins on the table, and thats what everyone else in the restaurant was using it for. Really, really strange. The dinner itself was really good. I’m not sure what its called or even what all is in it, but the Koreans always tell us it’s a Korean pancake.

Its not a pancake because its much much thicker and there’s tons of stuff inside of it, so maybe its more like a Korean pizza. Either way, there’s potato and onion and squid inside. Its really really good. But it comes straight off the grill and its really hot at first. I think my picture even got some of the steam coming off of it.

That all happened on Saturday, and Sunday was the day I took to do my homework and catch up on sleep, unfortunately it didn’t really help. I’ve been fighting some sickness that everyone else in the dorms seems to have also. It hasn’t been fun and I haven’t had my voice for a majority of the week, but I’ve been sleeping as much as possible (which is why there aren’t many pictures from this week, sorry!). However, last night I decided to finally go out and do something to make myself feel better. My friends and I went to a soccer game at the Seoul World Cup Stadium which was pretty cool. Korea vs. Honduras.

I’m not usually a huge soccer fan, but the atmosphere is really cool. We had seats, but if you don’t want to sit down to watch the game, most people just walk up to the front part of the stadium and stand up to cheer and dance and swear and yell at the other team. As soon as we got there, we all bought shirts for the Korean team, and we also got scarves and the girls all bought these headbands with devil horns on them (the Korean team is the Red Devils).

Once we all had our Korean stuff on, we were all way more excited about the game itself. It was cold outside and there wasn’t really much to warm us up other than to stand up and be part of the big crowd towards the field, but it was fun to be in the middle of all the people who are really serious about soccer. Oh, and Korea won!

Today I’m planning on going to Bukchon Hanok Village. It’s a traditional Korean village that has been preserved in the middle of Seoul. After we go there, we’re going to go for a bike ride along the Han River. Lots of pictures to come after today!

Hope everything is going well at home. I heard about the snow! It sounds terrible. It’s cold here, but at least we don’t have any snow! As for the people who don’t live in State College or in an area where there was snow, consider yourself lucky! I’ll try to write more this week once I have some more pictures to post! Lots of love to all.

Location: Seoul, South Korea

So much to do in Seoul

Ahhh I’ve been so busy! Its been hard to have enough time to sit down and write a full length blog! But I’m sick now so I’m staying inside all day to do homework, and to finally write a blog. I’ve done so much already and I’ve only been here two weeks!

First I went to Gyeongbokgung Palace. Its the biggest palace in Seoul, and its really big and really pretty. Went there the first weekend I was here with Jin Young Choi, and went back the next weekend with the HUG group at Sogang

The main gate at Gyeongbokgung Palace. Guards stand at all the entrances dressed up in traditional Korean clothes.

Entrance to the Palace overlooks one of the many gardens in the Palace.

The side of the room where the King’s throne is. Biggest and prettiest building.

My favorite place in Seoul so far. I’m really looking forward to visiting here when the cherry blossoms are blooming!

In front of the Blue House. The current Korean President lives here. Its behind Gyeongbokgung. Doesn’t have quite the security that the White House does though.

After visiting Gyeongbokgung, it was time to start classes. I’m taking four classes here: Popular Music, Jazz Music, American Film in a Global Context, and Political Development. All my classes are taught in English, and I’m even getting a curved grade in one of the classes because most the people in the class are Korean and they are all worried about taking a class where English is the only language of instruction. Most of my homework is just reading or watching movies, so I haven’t had too much work to do yet. All my classes are in buildings that I can see from my dorm room which is really nice. Really different from PSU classes.

Every weekend, the HUG group plans a field trip for us. The first weekend was to Gyeongbokgung, but this weekend’s trip was like a scavenger hunt. We split up into 8 different groups and each group went to a different place in Seoul. I went to a place called Dongdaemun. The area is known for the Oldest Gate in Seoul as well as a busy shopping area. Unfortunately the shoes here are all too small for me almost so I didn’t buy anything yesterday. They do have lots of street food vendors though. There are places that have things like hotdogs, but they’re hotdogs covered in french fries, then deep fried. Then they dunk them in ketchup. People everywhere were eating them! I guess its more convenient than carrying around french fries separately from your hot dog, but its still a little strange… On the other hand, they have smaller vendors that are making Bundigie. Its silk worm larva that they put into a giant bowl and essentially fry. They smell terrible and look pretty bad. Couldn’t bring myself to try them.

One of the German guys in my group tried them and he said they weren’t bad, but they honestly smelled so bad that I couldn’t do it. The Japanese girl with me tried it but she spit it out as soon as she took a bite. Also while we were in Dongdaemun we went on a ride on the side of the street called “Disco Jump”. Its a big circle where you sit down and have to hold onto bars around the outside. It gets lifted up and starts bouncing you and shaking you. It was fun, but really scary and I’m pretty sure our group of people were the oldest people on the ride. Unfortunately I have all sorts of bruises on my arms now from holding on. I couldn’t take my camera on the ride, so I found a video of it on youtube.

After our tour of Dongdaemun, we met the entire group of exchange students at the Namsan tower (Seoul Tower). It’s on top of one of the mountains in Seoul and if you go up to the observatory, you can see all of Seoul. It’s really pretty but I think its better to go at night because when we arrived at dusk, you can’t really see much. Its too foggy or maybe its just bad air quality, but either way, its cooler to see the lights from the building at night.

It’s still hard for me to believe I’m living here! But its cool to see all the different parts of Seoul and to see just how big it is. We actually found our dorm from the top of the tower! Can’t see it here, but you can follow the writings on the windows there to see how far you are away from different cities in the world.

If you can’t read it, I was somewhere between 11,180.48 and 11,061.86 km away from home!

I’m staying in the rest of the day now to do homework. Not sure where the field trip for next weekend is yet, but it’s our last tour of Seoul. Then we start going on tours outside of Seoul to see other parts of Korea!

Will blog again later! Love to all my family and friends!

Location: Seoul, South Korea

I’m in Seoul!

So I finally got to Seoul last night. The flight here was interesting. My first flight from State College to D.C. was not so great. We had to wait for the plane in front of us to be de-iced, then we had to have our plane de-iced as well. So my 6:00 am flight turned into a 7:00 am flight instead. It normally would have been okay except I had to catch my plane in D.C. at 7:45 or something like that so I sprinted across Dulles to get to my flight in time. The flight from D.C. to Seattle wasn’t bad. It went quickly all things considered. But the flight from Seattle to Seoul took foreverrrr. First of all, I had a window seat. It was nice to have something to sleep against on the way there, but the lady who sat next to me was very old, and I felt bad asking her to get up. So I sat in my seat for the entire 12 hour flight. The lady who sat next to me was also very generous. For the first meal, she didn’t like what she asked for, so the flight attendant changed her meal for the only other thing they were offering (which was some sort of Korean dish). Her tray had a bowl with meat and vegetables in it, a cup of broth, a package of rice, and some other small side dishes. Anyway, she looked at me and said something in Chinese (she wasn’t able to talk to any of the Korean flight attendants and didn’t know any English), and then sorta shoved her bowl of meat and veggies into my hands. Then she just sorta sat there and ate all the other things on her plate. So I sat there holding this woman’s food for like 15 minutes and finally I tried to ask her if she wanted to eat it, and she just shook her head and pushed it back at me. So I made room for it on my plate.

Then I started eating my food, and she started offering me her food from her tray to eat. She only offered me the food she didn’t like because I would see her try it and make a weird face then offer it to me. She tried offering me kimchi, and I told her I didn’t need to take hers because I had my own on my tray. Apparently she thought hers was better or something because she kept trying to give it to me and I kept trying to politely say no. I shook my head and said no thanks, then I tried telling her I couldn’t eat it because it was spicy, then she just decided she would feed it to me. So she literally put a piece of food in my mouth while I was trying to tell her no. She offered me everything she ate the rest of the flight. And every single time I finally fell asleep on the plane, she would hit me and wake me up to let me know the flight attendant was walking by. I guess it was thoughtful, but by the time I got to the airport in Seoul, I was exhausted.

After I went through customs, which was surprisingly quick, I got my luggage and met my “buddies” from the university. They rode the subway with me to the hotel, and dropped me off there. The guy who worked there was very nice, and he helped me carry all my bags upstairs to my room. I slept really well for a couple of hours then woke up every few hours, but the worst time waking up was when the fire alarm at the hotel went off. It woke me up and freaked me out because I didn’t know if I should grab my stuff or not so I threw my computer into my backpack with my passport and my camera and things and ran out of the hotel, to find that it was the guy cooking breakfast who set the alarm off. So I went back upstairs and tried to fall back asleep but the alarm went off again. I didn’t even bother going out for this one since I just assumed it was probably the cook again. Once I finally woke up I got ready and went downstairs because they said they had an “American style breakfast” and I hadn’t really eaten anything after I held my friend from the airplane’s food forever. So I went downstairs and I was the only person there. The table they sat me at was right by a giant glass wall and I felt like every single person who walked by was sorta watching me eat and just amazed that I had blonde hair or something. It made me a little self conscious but oh well. They made me a huge breakfast. It was way more food than I needed.

After breakfast, two girls from the school picked me up at my hotel and took me to the dorms. Luckily, they had a place to buy bedding outside the front of the dorms so I bought a comforter and pillow for about 70,000 won (probably too expensive but the girls I was with didn’t have any idea of where else to buy it). Anyway, I got into my dorm and unpacked and didn’t have a roommate until just a little bit ago. Her name is Jessica (she’s from China. She told me how to pronounce her name in Chinese and I tried… she’s like “just call me Jessica”). So she seems pretty nice. She’s quiet, but I feel like I’m the loudest person here anyway. So far everyone has been nice and everyone has known English, which is helpful to me. But there aren’t many exchange students here yet. So far, I feel like I’m the only person here with blonde hair or anything like that. I’m hoping as the weekend goes on there will be more people coming who are trying to make friends quickly like I am.

Anyway, everything is good so far and my dorm is nice. I even have my own bathroom in my dorm! (way better than PSU dorms…) Tonight is “club night” or something like that. You pay something like 15 dollars and get into all the clubs in this one area. But I don’t really think that I’ll go. I don’t want to go alone, and I haven’t heard anything from the people I’ve met so far. So maybe I’ll take today to continue to catch up on sleep and start to get my body adjusted to the time difference. I’m going to go to one of the palaces tomorrow and hopefully get some sort of cell phone set up so I can actually contact people I want to do things with.

I’ll post again later! Here are a couple pictures from today:

Bathroom at the dorms. Small kind of but its clean.

Shower room in my room. Its actually a room. But I don’t really think I’m going to fit under the shower head. I was too tall for the last shower.

My bed and desk. Luckily I think its going to be tall enough for me. The hanging stuff above my bed is the only space I have to hang things so far. Luckily there is lots of space on my desk. Even have a phone to call other people in the dorm.

Location: Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea

About Me

Hi! My name is Lindsay and in the spring I’ll be studying abroad in Seoul, South Korea. I’m majoring in International Politics, so naturally I’m studying abroad (in a place that seems to be having some political issues… good for my major?). Currently I’m a junior at Penn State, and hopefully after studying abroad I’ll still be able to graduate on time. My family lives in State College, so this will be a pretty big trip for me (other than the previous two times I’ve studied abroad). This will however be the furthest I’ve ever been away from home. I’m really going to miss my family and friends, but I’m excited to do something different for a semester away from Penn State and State College. So everyone should come visit me while I’m gone!

I decided I wanted to study abroad a long time ago, however it took me a long time to decide where I wanted to go. I’ve already studied abroad in Germany twice, so I wanted to go somewhere different. However, other than not wanting to go to a German speaking country, I had no clue where I wanted to go. After looking at programs in Senegal, Norway, Australia and as a last resort, even Germany, and after finding reasons why I shouldn’t go to each of those places, I finally decided Korea was where I wanted to go.

I looked at the program page and the pictures they had on the page looked pretty cool. The one problem I had, and still have, with studying abroad in a place like Korea is that I don’t know any Korean. I’m hoping with the time that I have before leaving I’ll be able to pick a little bit up, but really I’m going to rely on the kindness of Koreans to help me with the language barrier. I’m really excited to be going somewhere so different and exciting, but I won’t lie, I’m a little nervous to be going to a place that seems to be having some sorta scary problems. But I’m hoping by February things will have calmed down enough that my mother will allow me to go without worrying too much, and things will be safe there for me as well. As far as I know there’s only one other student from Penn State (UP) going to Sogang University, so I’ll definitely be making some new friends while I’m gone!

I’m excited to go to a place unlike any other I’ve been to before, and I’m looking forward to all the new things I’ll get to learn about and experience. Hopefully my next post will be from somewhere exciting in Seoul!

This is going to be my home for five months! Just a little bit different than State College…
I think Seoul is bigger than any place I’ve ever been before.

Location: State College, PA

Education Abroad GeoBlog

Penn State bloggers from around the world

Author Archives: lmp5203

Almost Over

Children’s Day and Buddha’s Birthday

Half-way point

1 Month In!!

So much has happened in the past couple weeks!

So much to do in Seoul

I’m in Seoul!

About Me