I realize that the last time I wrote about any excursions was a month ago. I have actually had some kind of outing every weekend since then. Rather than have people think all I do is study for midterms, here is the run-down:
Oct. 17: A lovely day spent at the Korean Traditional Village in Suwon, about 40 miles south of Seoul, with a classmate. Gorgeous fall weather, wonderful day spent wandering around this multi-acre recreated traditional village - many many houses and shops and paths and shows and interactive activities and people in native dress pretending to go about business the old way - no crowds - really a nice day.
Oct. 23: A visit to "Seoul Forest" with a Korean friend, Mi Kyong, whom I met through Clara Song. On that day I disappointedly forgot my camera again (picture is from the internet) - not that I wanted to capture Seoul Forest, but I wanted to capture my friend. Oh well - next time. Seoul Forest is not quite a forest - trees have been planted to try to make a park out of this old race track area, and as you can see the trees haven't grown too much yet. But we had a great time walking around. Mi Kyong speaks a little English but mostly we talked Korean for about 3 hours! Most of our talk went like this:
Me: What is that?
Mi Kyong: That's a tree.
Me: A tree. And what is that?
Mi Kyong: That's a bird.
Me: A bird. Oh, and what's that?.....
And so on. I don't know how Mi Kyong held up for 3 hours but it was great practice for me.
Oct 31: Another excursion with classmates. In the town of Icheon, about 40 miles south of Seoul, is a hot springs spa attached to that big hotel - you can see a water slide jutting out. We spent a couple hours in the coed sauna section, and then a couple hours in the women's only hot springs pool room. You walk around and go in all the pools ... naked! Those are a couple of my classmates in the picture. Hazy gray skies.
Believe it or not, we spoke mostly Korean the whole day on this trip. There were 3 Japanese women, 2 of whom speak little English, and 3 English speakers (one from Hong Kong, one from Singapore, and me) who speak no Japanese, so Korean was our language. Very elementary conversation, but fun and useful to practice with each other.
Actually, I've been having a very good time.
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