Field Trip

August 23, 2010

So today we had a field trip where they took al the EPIK teachers to the JeonJu Hanok Village and the Keumsan Temple. We met this morning at 9:00AM and it took about 30 minutes to ride from the JeonJu University campus to the village. It was a pretty cool village…however, the weather was not so cool. I think I would’ve enjoyed myself much more if it were not a million degrees outside and if the humidity was not like 98%. I mean really…everyone…and I mean everyone was sweating in their baby blue EPIK polo shirts that they made us all wear. It was horrible, just wretched. The village was nice and very authentic but is was just too hot for anyone to enjoy themselves. But there were some highlights like the making of a traditional fan which ended up being like an arts and crafts session for one hour; Fun stuff! Then we watched the Samulnori Performance and it was really neat…I just couldn’t stop thinking about how extremely hot the performers had to have been with their outfits on! I mean just ridiculous! I could see the women’s faces melting off. It was so hot that we were supposed to have a guided tour throughout the Village but it was called off/cancelled because of how hot it was going to be! They made us go anyway… to explore on our own, in the heatstroke worthy heat. It was THAT bad.

We then arrived at the Keumsan Temple which was really pretty cool and just beautiful decorations. There was a fresh water stream that flowed through the grounds and it was really quite nice. After we explored through the temples, we relaxed in the stream (very cool water); took off our shoes and sat where our feet could sway in the water as we cooled off. It was very relaxing. Families were everywhere; it was wonderful; very family friendly.

I just got back from an outing with friends. We went to the same places but the first place was out of draught beer so we ate a plate of chicken and moved on to the next place that has the slushy soju. This time we brought a deck of cards with us and played drinking games with those. We had a great time and no one got really drunk; we just had a great time socializing, drinking, and laughing. I like all of the people in my class (we’ve been separated into classes depending on the city you will be teaching and I’m in class 3 for Daegu; Daegu has 3,4, and 5 because we’re the largest group). Everyone is very nice and extremely easy to get along with. I can’t wait until we’re actually placed into our schools and then get to hang out with each other on the weekends!