This weekend, I went on a "Friendship Fieldtrip" with some of the students from SCH. The school created this program for international and Korean students to travel together somewhere in Korea. The school provides some of the funds for the trip to encourage students to partake in this program. I went on this trip with Bernice, Maiko, and some of their suitemates. Along for the trip also included Jun (Maiko's Korean boyfriend), his roomate, and one of Bernice's exchanges. We went to Seoul and ate....a lot.
The Korean suitemates told me, Bernice and Maiko that they would plan everything, but I don't think they are very organized. I received several different plans for our fieldtrip: Busan, camping, Seoul shopping....yeah, I didn't know what we were doing even as we traveled there. It really didn't matter to me what we did, since the school was covering the funds. We ended up staying in a traditional house in downtown Seoul. It was really nice, there were even stairs up to the roof to see the sunset over the skyline! We walked around the neighborhood, which was made famous by a variety show here in Korea. It is one of the oldest areas of Seoul, in the shadow of Gyeonbukgung.
After walking around, we went to Cheonggyecheon, which is a man made stream built in the heart of Seoul. It is several kilometers long, so we walked a portion of the stream. There were a lot of families walking along the stream, as well as some street performers. After this we went to one of Seoul's largest markets to buy our dinner. There was an assortment of foods, including live squid, dog feet, and the ever so lovely fried silkworms. We passed on these entree options, instead buying fried vegetable pancakes and Samgyeopseol. I think the girls did not know how much meat to estimate for our dinner because they bought 5 kilograms of meat (about 9 pounds). When they told the butcher to prepare the meat, I was shocked! I asked them if they were sure they wanted to buy that much, but they were worried that it wouldn't be enough. We then carried our purchases back to the house to cook.
Sure enough, we had too much meat. Way too much! After stuffing ourselves for two hours, we still had 5 kilos left. It was ridiculous. We had more the next morning, but we still didn't finish it. One of the boys decided he would take it home. I just hope his family doesn't get food poisoning. He lives in Incheon, about an hour out of Seoul. On top of that, he spent the entire afternoon lugging around this mass of raw meat while we stopped at a cafe. I think he probably carried this meat around for a good seven hours before reaching home, hopefully his mom was cautious about eating pork that has been out in the heat of the day for hours. After breakfast, we went to a nearby cafe and ate some more. We had waffles and a fruit ice dessert, which is really popular in East Asia. The trip was fun, but I wish I knew what we were doing more than five seconds before going, I think I would have appreciated it more.
Today is the Korean holiday Hyeonchung-il. It is the Korean Memorial Day, where the soldiers from the Korean War and the wars since are remembered. The president has a special ceremony in Seoul where he pays respect to the soldiers laid to rest in the National Cemetery. For the rest of Koreans, it is just like American Memorial Day, relax at home with family.
Today was also my friend Amanda's Birthday, so we celebrated by going to see a movie in Cheonan. We had lunch at a Korean restaurant near the theater and then went to see KungFu Panda 2. It was nice to spend the afternoon celebrating her birthday.
This week is the last week of regular classes before finals! It is hard for me to believe that the semester is already at this point, but it is coming to an end! This semester zoomed by even faster than the first. I haven't figured out all my summer plans, but I will keep you all updated as I arrange them.
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