I'm getting a bit behind in my posts. I'm still a bit sick, not feeling all that bad, but I sound horrible, and am quite sleepy in the evenings. Our term papers are also due soon, so I've been devoting most of my writing skills towards completing that.
Yesterday in the morning we had a lecture on Korean music, which featured a lovely performance of traditional music played on traditional instruments. This was different from the activity we had a week or two ago where we got to play instruments - those were more folk-song and festival-music oriented, these were more classical-music and court-music like (and we didn't get to mess with these).
In the afternoon we took the SWU school buses to the National Museum of Korea, which is a beautiful building filled with tons of artifacts from Korea and the rest of Asia. Unfortunately the majority of the signs were in Korean, so I didn't quite understand how many of the items fit into the general scheme of things. But it was nice to spend the afternoon in a beautiful building surrounded by Korean history.
After that, we took the buses over to the 63 Building, which, until a couple of years ago, was the tallest building in South Korea. We wandered around the bottom of it, which has shops and a food court, and had dinner (once again) at Lotteria (I told you I'm turning into a junk food junkie). I had the bizarre combination of french fries, cheese sticks, and a waffle with strawberry sauce. You gotta love pieced-together meals. We all also got ice cream, which definitely hit the spot after all that salt. I also saw my third LUSH store for this trip, which makes me wish that we had this density of LUSH shops back at home.
Just a short walk away from the 63 Building is the Han River, and the six of us from Cedar Crest relaxed on some steps under the Wonhyo bridge. In the movie "The Host" this bridge plays a big part, and it felt so neat to be there. Aside from any associations with monster movies, it was a very relaxing way to spend an hour or so, just observing the scenery and taking in the setting sun. There was also a jet skier out on the water and he kept performing tricks for us, so that was entertaining as well.
At 7pm we met up with all the other students in the program to go on a river cruise on the Han River. The timing was perfect, as the sun was just setting, and I managed to get some pictures in before it was completely dark, which is when my camera completely gives up and won't take any decent pictures of anything. The cruise was very relaxing, and we passed under a number of the bridges on the water, which was neat as the one was a bridge for trains, and a number went over as we were crossing under.
Last night after that was quiet, as I just finished up the rough draft for my term paper, and then went to bed. Tonight I plan to edit my paper and then print it, and that will be the end of that. The deadline for the paper was initially supposed to be tomorrow at 5pm, but due to that fact that IT will be doing network maintenance tonight and no one will be able to access the internet from 1am to 8am early tomorrow morning, they decided to give us two extra days, until Sunday at 5pm. But I plan on continuing to pretend that the paper is due tomorrow, as I'd like to have it off my plate and no longer on my mental to-do list.
Today's activities included two lectures, the first on Korean dance, and the second on Korean architecture. The dance "lecture" was more like a dance class, as I don't know anything more about Korean dance than I did before, but I do know a few moves. However, there were so many people trying to learn from one professor, that it was next to impossible to see the instructor, so my moves are not very good.
The afternoon lecture was supposedly about Korean architecture, but it felt much more like an overview to Korean thought about space. I kind of wish this lecture had been earlier, because I really feel like it helped me to understand how Koreans think in general. Maybe that's just because I've been here awhile and can relate to what he talked about (taking off shoes before entering a room, approach to personal space and manners, approach to education, etc), but it was one of the best lectures of this program.
Tonight seems like it will be a quiet night. After dinner, some of us went and got snacks from the convenience store down the road (which is probably making a killing off of all of us junk-food-hungry international students), and since then I've been writing emails and this post, helping my roommate with some citations for her paper (do you know how hard it is to cite something in MLA format when the source is in a different language that doesn't even use the Latin alphabet?), and doing laundry. I haven't used a dryer since I've been here, given that the ones I've found are usually out of order, but my roommate showed me a hidden dryer room that I plan to use in order to avoid the funky-smell plague that is a result of air-drying clothes in this climate.
Speaking of that, my wash should be done. I should go check it.
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