However, to counteract the craziness of the past two mornings, I downed a perfect breakfast at the hotel. Koreans appear to love waffles (you'd think it was Belgium over here) and their Froot Loops, instead of being rainbow colored, are pleasant tones of maroon, orange, yellow and a kind of chartreuse color. They are delicious.
After breakfast, we made our way to Yonsei University (our "host" university) for our orientation. Our first lecture was on Hangeul characters (aka, the Korean alphabet) and basic phrases in Korean. Hangeul, unlike Chinese Kanji, is an alphabet. Although the characters might look like Japanese or Chinese characters, they are not representative of symbols, but of sounds--just like our alphabet. There are 14 consonants and 10 vowels (many of the vowel sounds are reeeeeeeally difficult to distinguish). Each word is broken up into syllables, with up to 3 Hangeul characters in each syllable. Many say that the Hangeul alphabet is the most "scientific" alphabet, and is the most comprehensive. Despite the difficulty of distinguishing/forming certain sounds present in the Korean language, I'd have to agree. Originally, Koreans spoke Korean, but used Kanji to write--making it very difficult to express themselves as the Kanji matched the meanings of phrases, but not the sounds. Thus, in the 15th century, King Sejong and his scholars created the Hangeul alphabet. Despite how comprehensive it was, it wasn't fully adopted until the 20th century...go figure...
As for speaking Korean, it's not as simple. First of all, even the Romanization of the pronunciation of their words doesn't accurately portray how a word is truly pronounced. For example, you might see 'gam-sa-hap-ni-da' as a way to say "thank you", but it actually sounds more like "kam sa ni da" and is very fast, each syllable getting slightly blended into the next. I'm still having trouble remembering phrases like hello, goodbye and thank you. Not to mention, a lot of the sounds I can't even pronounce with my boring English-speaking palate. Plus, all the words kind of start to sound the same...for being so scientific, it's not that easy.
Next, we had a campus tour around Yonsei. There is a park on campus that our tour guide said was a popular location for a romantic get-away. Sound like the arboretum, anyone?? Hehe :) However, a far more impressive part of the campus was the Samsung Library, which, as you can probably guess, was furnished by Samsung. They intended to have it as a paperless library (ironic, no?), thus there are tons of huge touch screens all over the library, each serving a different purpose. Some are used for the room/seat reservation system in the library (which I think we could use at UI since everytime I need a group study room, it's always taken by ONE guy who's just checking his Facebook...), sending/checking notes to/from other students, reading books, reading newspapers, searching student/university publications and much much more. It is by far the most high tech library I have ever seen.
They kept our feet busy at work with another walking tour, but this time of the surrounding area of Sinchon. Sinchon is comprised of hundreds of cafes, clothing/accessory stores and just about anything else a person could want. It is street after street of bright colors and interesting things to look at. It looks like somebody sneezed next to an artist's paint pallet and threw in some rhinestones and flashing lights. It screams Asia. Just like most other things in this city.
We finished off the official day with dinner at a typical Korean style restaurant. Ever present at every meal are different types of kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage), which is an essential staple of the Korean diet. I'm not exaggerating when I say they eat it at every meal, every day. It's like bread and butter to them. My first bite of kimchi was nervewracking. I like cabbage. I like pickles. I like spicy. But would I like it all together? My taste buds all said yes in a flurry of electric excitement on my tongue. Also important in a Korean meal is having many different side dishes (they probably have a full dishwasher after every meal, there's so many sides!). I pride myself in being able to say that I tried every single one! Did I like them all? No, but other than the "glass noodle" they were all actually pretty tasty. And despite how non-filling the cuisine sounds, I got full pretty fast and ate a lot more slowly, as everything is eaten with chopsticks (and a spoon for any broth, as soups are ever present at Korean meals). All the chopsticks here are metal, but I'm not really sure why...Luckily, I would say my chopsticks skills are well above par and eating with them has been delightful. I'll probably have to bring a set home.
After dinner, we were free to roam about the city. Being a girl that loves accessories and came with $600, I'm sure it's no surprise that I had to go back to Sinchon. However, I faced a problem, realizing that I didn't make any official plans to go shopping with anyone and I didn't know what rooms people were in...I decided to just randomly wander down to the lobby in hopes there would be a group meeting up there to go to Sinchon. There was! But they were all guys...Champions, I might say. They walked around Sinchon for 3+ hours, most of that time occupied by me wanting to go look at shoes, clothes and "girly stuff". And none of them complained. They actually seemed to be enjoying themselves and we all delighted in my failures at haggling (see next entry about haggling) and made fun of my obsession with cheap shoes. We found some strange things (shady motels, men lighting flares outside of a mall) and navigated using not a map but gut feelings and "hey, should we turn right?" "yeah sure, that looks good!". Our trail probably looked like a game of Snake.
But now I must rest these tired little feet--gotta let them get some beauty sleep so they can look good in the 4 new pairs of shoes I got...
-n
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