Corea

While talking to my Korean friend, Juno, I had learned a very intersting fact. The country Korea was once spelled as Corea prior to Japanese control. Japan didn't want the country to be named Corea because they did not want the people to walk out before Japan for any international games like the Olympics and such. Because C is before J, Corea would always be ahead of Japan. So during Japanese ruling, they changed Corea to Korea to be behind Japan. I am sure you all know K is after J in the alphabet! So that was just a neat fact that was worthy of sharing.

As for updates on me, I have been keeping low lately. Money is running low because everytime I go to Seoul it's $100 for two days! Food, travel, accomendation etc. Another thing is that I just booked my flight tickets from ICN (Korea) - HKG (Hong Kong) for $313 so trying to save money for that to pay off my debt.

Weird weather

The weather here in Asan has been really weird. In the morning the sun is out and somewhat warm then by mid afternoon, strong winds come in and rain accompanied with lightning and thunder. Last night the loud thunder woke me up at around 2am and it was pretty freaky. Ill try to post pictures if I can capture any.

Victory Dinner!

So remember a while back my suite won the roommate challenge? Well we finally had our celebration dinner. It was at the local bar EZs. Sadly, not all of our suitemates could make it. It's ok, we had fun. I only have limited photos because I was too drunk to take more :)




After drinking we went to a norabang which is a KTV (Karoke T.V.) room. Again, only one picture.

Roommates presentation

Last Tuesday my roommate Hunjoon had to do a presentation for his Police Administration class. It was about anti-terrosim. His group mate was Falcon (Jiang Jun) so I was happy to help them by attending their class and participating. I also basically typed their whole project out for them and helped explain some difficult words. Their presentation needed to have their summary in English but they thought it would be good to type the whole thing in English.

I appologize in advance for the blurry and dark pictures:






After the sunseangnim (teacher) came in, the class got a bit more serious:









I think the teacher was very impressed with Hunjoon and Jiang Jun because they were able to bring international students to the class to participate. I hope my roommate gets an A+ for this project.

Saturday Dinner

We got a bit hungry so we decided to grab some food. The following pictures are pretty cool because you can see all the signs hanging from the buildings and all the restaurants. Its very compact compared to back home.



Look how bright this street is. It has lights everywhere!


Then on the floor there are piano keys!



BAM! Hmm...where should we go?


We ended up going to a Korean BBQ house:


Sorry for the blurry picture. The total cost was 4500won per person which is pretty cheap for all the food we ate.

Saturday late afternoon!

After shopping (oh I bought a cellphone accessory and a t-shirt) we walked to the independance day square where the speech was held for the independence of South Korea from Japanese control in 1945. More info can be found here:Wikipedia site for Gwangbokjeoul.

Saturday Afternoon, Myungdong Market

After the Musuem last Saturday we continued to go shopping at Myundong Market. It was very vibrant and had lots of shops. There were also tons of vendors right in the middle of the streets selling cellphone accessories, fake DVDs, fake shirts and much more. It was pretty neat to see.

On our way to Myundong Market:

Some tall office buildings:

Look how busy the traffic is and how many signs there are:



Finally arrived at the Market:




Korean drivers are crazy! Or maybe it was us the pedestrians that are crazy. Cars drive through busy roads and everyone just gets out of their way. In Vancouver, that would never happen and that car would be stuck there for the whole day.

This was some wierd street performance. I think they were trying to promote the soccer game, but I am not too sure:



This was a cool direction sign that I found on the road. Those are all our feet!

Korea vs Uruguay- Soccer game!

I was going to write football game because 95% of the world uses the term football to describe soccer, but in Korea, they use the term soccer so that is why I put that there. I believe only Korea, America, and Canada uses the term Soccer. Anyways, on Saturday there was a friendly match between Korea and Uruguay and I was lucky enough to attend. It was my first soccer game ever (in Canada, soccer is not big at all. I don't even think we have a national team) and it was so fun. We got to the World Cup Stadium (Korea co-hosted the 2002 World Cup with Japan) a bit late because we went shopping earlier. We had to run for 30 minutes and switch subways 3 times. It was a mess but we eventually got there. During the game, I was so determained to start the wave (Pado tagi 파도 타기) and I was able to get my section and the next two to do it but it died after that. I tried at lesat 5 times until I gave up :(. But at least I can say that I started the wave in Korea World Cup Stadium! During the end of the game, there were also a few Americans who ran across the field which I thought was very funny. Sadly, Uruguay won the game by the score of 2-0.

We kind of took our time eating and shopping so we were pretty late to meet our other peers. The following pictures are of us leaving Myundong Market.



Finally we arrived at World Cup Stadium:


And inside!



Here is a stolen picture of the subway train after the soccer game:


Blurry picture of my soccer ticket:


This is when my camera died. I will try to steal my friends pictures so I can show more of the game. My friend John also has a video file of me attempting to start the wave but he has been too lazy to upload it. I will go threaten him now.