This weekend, I went with Jin Ju, Belle, Carrie, and Jin Ju's friend to Icheon. We stayed in a traditional Joseon Dynasty house, went to a temple, and made pottery. When we arrived yesterday afternoon, we walked to the temple, which is similar to all of the other temples in Korea. I like to go to temples and find what makes it different from other temples.
After we explored the temple, we went back to the traditional house that we were staying in, which was connected to the pottery building. The house was definately rustic! The room didn't look like it had been cleaned and the sheets were dirty! Oh well, it was an experiance that we will remember. We had a great dinner: Beef BBQ, Korean style. Belle cooked the meat outside. After it was cooked, we wrapped the meat in a leaf with kimchi, garlic, and other spices. It was really delicious, especially since beef is not a common meat in Korea.
After dinner, we went to the pottery building where the host gave us a brief history of pottery in Korea. He spoke in Korean so I have no clue what he said, oh well. He helped us mold our pottery pieces, I chose a serving dish, which is a large plate with a small edge. After making our pieces of pottery, we went back to our "rustic" room where we turned on the floors (all of the heat in Korean homes comes from the floor) and played cards. Carrie and I taught the girls seven different card games. They loved playing all of the games, we played for about three hours.
Today, we woke up and etched designs on our pieces of pottery. I was not feeling to artistically inspired, but it turned out ok. Carrie made this really cool Bamboo design on her jar. We left in the late morning and began to make our way back to school. It is about a two hour bus ride from Icheon to Cheonan, which is another twenty minutes by subway to school. When we got to Cheonan, we had lunch and went shopping in one of the markets. We went to two of the famous cosmetic stores here in Korea: The Face Shop and Skin Food. They are like Bath and Body Works except they have a lot of facial skin care products. Women in Korea are obsessed with the appearence of their face. I like to go to these stores and pick a cheap facial product to try for fun. It is a huge part of Korean culture: the desire for the perfect face. The Korean girls in our group were buying all kinds of products, it always surprises me how they are so focused on their appearence. I have been taught to value inner beauty, and it breaks my heart to see women who do not feel confident in themselves unless they work on their appearence for over two hours each morning (there really is a girl in my suite who does this). Don't get me wrong, I like to glam up from time to time, but it is not a defining factor of who I am to the point that I would feel incomplete without appearing a certain way. I don't think this obsession for so called beauty is only a Korean thing, you can see it in every culture. I just wish that we could look past our outer appearence and value people for the person inside, argh!
On Tuesday, I am going to a conference in Seoul. It is a seminar for college students about the growing trend of buying local and how it is benefitting the global economy. It sounds interesting and will be a good reason to leave campus to learn something different.
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