Greetings Friends! I apologize for the delay in posting about more of our adventures in Seoul,….but the weekends here are exhausting and unfortunately we only get one weekend. We did as much as we possibly could since we leave this Saturday morning (incredible sad – we want to stay!). Friday night a few of us hit the town and explored the ex-pat district called Itaewan. Our good friend Changwan took us out to meet his friends so I’ll update later about that awesome evening. Saturday we all did different activities so I’ll get a few different posts. Laura and Lisa actually had traditional Korean dresses handmade and are able to pick them up today!
Sunday we all journeyed to the Korean Folk Village with Ju Hee (a Yonsei student who just spent a year at Simmons with us) and Youn Jung who will be making her way to Boston in a few weeks to join us at Simmons. It was a great day, but a bit too hot to really take in all the different aspects of Korean culture that were on display. The Folk Village is kind of like a theme park that tries to re-create the experience of traditional Korean culture through dance, music, horse-back riding, and wedding performances. We all agreed that our favorite part was the music and dancing! Here are some pictures of our day (my favorite part was getting to pet horses!):
Horses!
These guys were incredible!
More tricks!
Tight rope walking to drum beats.
Fan tricks.
Bibimbap & Makgeolli for lunch with my Simmons bottle – represent!
5 colors representing the 5 elements in the Confuscian principles.
Korean Wedding Procession.
Hi horse!
Traditional Korean Dance for the Harvest.
Dance!
All in all we had a pretty great day and we were so glad that Ju Hee and Youn Jung could join us. The heat was a little bit TOO overwhelming so perhaps we might settle for National Theatre of Korea next year. The Folk Village was about 1.5/2 hours outside of Seoul so it was a pretty long journey in a hot bus which left us in a pretty grouchy mood. Either way, we enjoyed it and were glad to get a taste of traditional Korea after spending so much time in the fast-paced modern streets of Seoul!
Cheers,
Bethany