Friday, June 12, 2009

Orientation Day

Today was orientation, which was pretty cool. I met a lot more people, we had an awesome (free) lunch, toured campus (it is huge -- I had no idea how big it was -- it has multiple museums in it), and went to a showing of Nanta. For the record, Nanta is a musical show borrowing from stuff like the Blue Man Group. It has a premise of chefs working with a deadline with the manager's nephew added last minute as a chef, though the story is somewhat unimportant.I met some AU students, too, and have had various chances to practice Japanese. (At the market yesterday, with some students today). I've exchanged numbers with one of the AU students (Jim) and we all intend to go out, sometime. Should be cool. After the show, a few of us went to dinner, which was great like all the other food here. We ordered one and a half chickens, which was cut up and cooked in a fairly spicy black sauce with various vegetables and clear noodles. Out of the 4 of us eating it, I don't think we managed to eat half of it. Afterwards I picked up a "T-Card," essentially a SmartTrip card that works in subway, bus, taxis, and some stores. I don't have many pictures from today as I was mainly on campus. I will, however, take pictures of the campus at some point later on when I explore it again on my own.

Tomorrow we go to a Folk Village out some ways from Seoul, and on Sunday we are going to try to find the Electric Shopping District. I have been told both that I have to go there, and that it has everything/anything I would be looking for. Monday classes start, and I will probably start posting less frequently.

As for my impressions on the country so far, it is pretty impressive. I'm rather comfortable being here, as things feel rather familiar. I think it's because of the time I've spent travelling alone in NYC/DC, and my trips to Tokyo and Italy. Cities are cities, and language barriers arepretty simple to deal with (when you speak English, might be harder if my only language was Swahili). Also, although I am loving the food, I fear i might hurt my stomach if I eat like this the full month. Everything is spicy, lots of things are sour and/or salty. We'll see what happens.

--Daniel

P.S./Edit It may also be worth mentioning that almost everyone here is aware I missed my plane, somehow. It was mentioned by a Korean girl during orientation, without name mentions (I had not met her), and was brought up a few times by concerned faculty that wanted to make sure everything was alright (I did arrive yesterday).


1 comment:

  1. I feel I should clear a contradiction in my posts that has arisen, immediately after it has risen. Nanta is NOT singing like my first post says. I wasn't sure what Nanta was at the time, and based on listening around it sounded like a traditional singing event. In fact, it is a modernized version of traditional Korean music (Samul Nori), kind of. I say kind of because it is more of a variety show, and the Samul Nori elements are not overwhelmingly present (though I am no expert, so I may be missing subtle references, there are obvious references, too, though). It's pretty much a musical variety/comedy show, held together with a loose plot. By variety I mean it has everything from playing Samul Nori on kitchen items, to having audience members compete in making cakes(I think they were cakes) as fast as possible against each other a la "I Love Lucy." Pretty good stuff.

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