Global Educator

Saturday involved ice skating!  I forgot how tough it was on your feet and legs.  We went to this place called Lotte World, which is an indoor amuesment park connected to the subway system.  Jay our RA treated us ladies to ice cream as we took a break! After ice skating I head out alone for some much needed and deserved R&R.  I checked into the Koreana Hotel in downtown close to shopping! I was really excited because it had a sauna with baths.  When I arrived in my bathing suit to enter, the woman gave me a really weird look and said, "no, no, no!  It is for men only!"  What kind of sexiest place is this!  Well I got over the blatant sexism of the situation and enjoyed a really nice soak in the bathtub in the room.

Day 20 Sports Day Today was a day of Sports!  Fun activities outside and then inside because of the rain.  We were divided into two teams and out team won (cookies).  As always I was a great cheerleader!  My event was canceled :( but I was not really that sad. The rest of the day I worked on my Term Paper, on Education!  Talk about fun!  I thought I had finished school.  Day 19 Korean Dance We had a professional, traditional and modern Korean dancer teach us or attempt to teach us some dance moves.  This was a great 3 hour workout first thing in the morning!  Nobody fell asleep during this class.

This morning we had a very interesting lecture if you can call it that.  We watched a taekwondo performace and then participated in learning kicks, punches and fighting movements.  It was an amazing workout :) At the end I was called up to break a board.  It took 3 times before it broke but I did hit it all 3 times (maybe I was not shouting loud enough). After the fact I was told not to hit using my toes, which I did the first 2 times.  My middle toe on the right foot is still hurting but I don't think it's broken.    Here I am preparing to kick.

Our first stop was to the National Museum which was a truely beautiful site.  The most important thing I learned was that gold is the most common material used for jewelry in Korea. I think I should buy myself some while here.  What do you guys think?    There were many other very interesting aspects about the museum, however it is midnight for me as I am writing so my goal is to just spell correctly and write a complete sentence.  Sorry to all of you history buffs for not going into more detail about the tools of the different dyansties, the pottery, buddhist paintings and writings.  After eating dinner we went on a Han River Cruise.  The Han River flows directly in the middle of Seoul and is connected with 25 different bridges.  To make some of the bridges more attractive the government added some special features, which you will see in the pictures and video.  Enjoy!      

Today was a great first day back; we started with music and ended with costumes.  Here are some pictures of me wearing the Traditional Korean outfit called the Hanbok.  I also learned how to formally bow and bow when among friends and was asked to present the speaker with a gift. Finally there is a picture of the entire group.

Sunday 7/11 What a relaxing day:) I got to sleep in until 9:30 am.  I then joined Claire's mom for breakfast, coffee, talking and watching Korean TV.    Just after noon we went out to the COEX Mall (on right) to watch "Knight and Day", personally it was not very good but the underground shopping center was impressive. After the movie, walking around the mall and having a coffee we went to visit a nearby temple.  The picture below is of the buildings in front of the COEX.  Bongeunsu Temple was in the middle of all these massive buildings, the temple itself is on quite a large property.  They offer short temple stays in English from 2-4pm on Tuesdays so I am hoping that next week I will be able to return. I am just going to post some pictures for this one but the white lanterns represent the deceased, I am cleaning up after drinking water and the tall Budda statue is 23 meters high and was only built in 1996. The last 2 pictures are of Claire's parents and us whil