Helen, Katie, Lori, me, Chris and Kevin in the back row at the Korean Folk Life Village
Friday afternoon? we celebrated the last day of Kevin’s course and Chris Carter’s last class ever as a GSLIS student. Two gorgeous cakes: Green tea sweet potato and a fresh cream cake with berries were consumed by students, faculty and staff with great enjoyment after the guest lecture ended. Then the students and I went off for a night of shopping, consuming far too much chicken in various forms and a little soju enjoyment as well.
Saturday was a long day spent at the Korean Folk Life Village: http://www.koreanfolk.co.kr/folk/english/main.html? We saw various traditional performances, wandered among the traditional houses from different regions of Korea and I particularly enjoyed their Folk Life Museum. It was set up as a calendar year, starting with New Year’s Day and ending at the end of December. Very informative even if only parts of each exhibit were in English.?
Traditional music performance at the Folk Life Village
?Saturday evening we were wiped and headed to a very tasty Italian place right by campus called The Kitchen. Had my first real salad since we got here and very good pasta.??
Tomato, mozzarella, wild greens salad with pineapple.
Sunday everyone went off in different directions. I went to Itaewon which is an international area near the US military base. I saw more white people than I have the whole trip. I can’t say that was my favorite part. I did have an amazng Turkish lunch and went to a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jjimjilbang?which is a Korean spa. It was fantastic. For only 8,000 won (about $8 usd) you can stay all day/night, use all sorts of services and just nap on warm floors if you’d like. I really enjoyed Itaewon overall, especially once I got off the main drag. There are African, Turkish, Pakistani, and Chinese restaurants to name just a few. People from all those countries and more live in the area. There is also a mosque on the hill which I didn’t visit because I wasn’t appropriately dressed but they do normally welcome visitors. Itaewon is also known for being the only area of Seoul that is at all gay and lesbian friendly, the GLBTQ community is not one that is particularly welcomed in Korean culture at this point.
From there I went to Seoul Forest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul_Forest?which wasn’t exactly a forest but was a very neat, very large park. A portion of it goes right down to the Han River which was really neat. There is a sculpture garden, lots of ponds, a huge deer corral and a concert venue. There was music playing as I left in the evening and lots of families sitting on the grass listening.
I went from the forest to Seoul Tower.?? In retrospect not the most exciting part of my day. Long lines going up and down and it really wasn’t that interesting to me. Some of the students had gone earlier in the day and they walked up the long, long hill in daylight and said it was very cool. I went up by taxi in the rain and by the time I had to stand in a line to go in the elevator and then wait again to go back down I was perhaps a bit cranky. It was pretty to see the city and all the lights at night but not really worth it in my opinion.
Seoul Tower
Today is Monday, August 8th and Dean Cloonan’s class just started a few hours ago. Three of the Simmons students are taking it with 13 of the Yonsei folks. We’re all looking forward to another interesting and fun week. We visit more libraries on Tuesday and Thursday and have our farewell dinner Thursday night. I can’t believe we’re already making plans for departing on Saturday.
I’ve added more pics to the food section on Flickr and a general file of photos of Korea. http://www.flickr.com/photos/65914161@N03/sets/72157627355259012/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65914161@N03/sets/72157627256775357/