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3-week cultural exchange in Busan, South Korea.
At night, we decided to go for a drink at the nearby drinking shop at the university. As usual, people here drink with food, there’ll always be various food and the most common one is called the pa jeon (scallion korean pancake).
They also ordered a plate of fried potato and the Korean way of eating it that was taught by our Korean buddies was to dip it into sugar! Interesting! The taste? It tasted like sweet potato.
Also not to forget, a partial group photo.
How time flies!?!? The 3-week program ended yesterday. So much tears involved. It’s time to do the dreaded packing after so much shopping! Also, the dreaded heavy luggage -.-“. Will surely miss the participants. We’ve been looking after each other during this whole program.
I can’t bring my kite back 🙁 It’s too big for my luggage. I spent hours trying to untangle the string but now… It won’t be going back with me. My luggage is sooooo full and heavy, I hope it won’t go overweight.
I don’t think I will be updating for another few days. My flight is tomorrow night and I need to check out of the dorm at 10am to transfer to a hotel nearby.
That’s all for now. Happy Chinese New Year everyone! I’ll be back to Adelaide on 2nd day of CNY. Gonna spend my CNY eve at Incheon Airport.
Our seconda day of class…
Started with breakfast at the dorm’s cafetaria. Love this milk! Every morning, we will have heavy breakfast. Rice and kimchi are always on the menu. You’ll get kimchin 3 meals a day.
Our first special lecture was about Korean Wave. Entertained by various music clips, drama, and movie clips. Opsss… Repeated photo ;p We were given a taste of Korean dessert, some type of sticky cake wrapped in leaf and it has red bean paste inside. Sorry, no idea what it’s called. I’m still very much blur about the things epsecially the food’s name here. There’s no English menu so it’s a problem for me to introduce the dining places I’ve been to for this 3-week stay. -.-” Expect to see photo and general name of the dishes in coming posts.
After lunch, we went for Dado (Korean Tea Ceremony).
Here we are… No idea of the name of the place hahaha…
We were taught how to bow. These are just some of us. There’s 80+ participants (Korean+Non-Korean) in this cultural exchange programme. We were splited into 2 groups. I’m in group B. This is actually group B’s dado’s session. Group A went for it few days later.
Learnt to make tea with the help of my buddy.
Left: We had fun!
Right: The two lucky girls who got the chance to wear a hanbok.
Lastly, group photo before we headed back.
WOW! Time flies! I haven’t update this blog for almost a week and this is the final week for me in Busan. Will be flying off Sunday night and reach Adelaide on 24th January, 2nd day of CNY.
It’s been so busy. We had so much planned for us, very intensive indeed. I got an infection on the bottom of my right foot due to the splinter I got from Adelaide before I go to the airport. It happened while I took out the garbage. Thought that it would be fine since I couldn’t find anything and thought that it came out on its own but ended up, it didn’t. Some more with my almost daily drinking since I arrived, it didn’t heal and got worst. I went to the clinic in the university and was given with antibiotic and was told to stop drinking. *LOL* At least, now it’s getting better phew… Still I don’t dare to drink until it really heals. Amazing how I got consultation, daily dressings, and medicines without even paying a single cent! If this happens in Australia, I will be soooo broke I guess. However, I think my insurance should be covering it.
I just got back from weekend homestay. It was awkward but at the same time, it was interesting to see how Koreans live. Was also shocked to found out that I alighted the subway on the 9th floor underground! WOW! Actually, should say I was inside the mountain. We had to take a lift up to get out of the subway station. Impressive! The subway system here is amazing! Linking the whole South Korea going underground, inside hills and mountains.
The weather here isn’t that cold but once there’s wind, it’s really cold. In fact the temparature is around what I got in Adelaide during winter night. As compare to Seoul, Busan is much warmer. Seoul is freezing! Didn’t get the chance to go to Seoul due to packed schedule. Oh well… I’ll be in Seoul for my flight though ;p transferring from Gimpo to Incheon.
Having great time with the buddies here. Sadly it’s ending soon but at the same time I’m looking forward to go back to Adelaide, going back to the place without communication problem *LOL* Overall, things are not so bad here but still a bit hectic, crowded, and very limited English used here. It’s quite inconvenient when go shopping or order food without our Korean buddies.
Managed to shop quite a fair bit of skincare products, they’re really heavy! Thought of getting another luggage but I think I’m not going to do so. I’ll try to fit in everything into my luggage or else might just ship them back since postage here is quite affordable. We’ll see.
Time to sleep now! Anyeong!
We went to Seomyeon after UN Memorial Cemetery.
It’s one of the major shopping places in Busan. Another group went to Nampodong.
Random photos of the street.
Left: Their cafe is so unique! You’ll get a room for you and your friends and each room has different interior design. Must go there one day.
Right: The karaoke.
We were not in time to go back to the dorm for dinner so we settled our dinner here. I have no idea of the name of the place. Our Korean buddies just brought us here. These are just some of us, later at the night, more came to join us as we splited into 3 groups to roam Seomyeon. All girls, no boys. Those in Nampodong had mixture of boys and girls.
Left: Makoli, nice but it’s still alcohol. It’s not difficult to drink though. Quite light and fizzy.
Right: We have bibimbap and soup noodle.
Also, two different type of Korean pancake (jeon), tuna and kimchi.
Not sure of the total of the dinner but each of us paid KRW7000. So cheap! Definitely cannot have such feast with AUD7/person in Australia.