The first day of orientation was probably fairly similar to any first day of orientation for any program. We ate breakfast, tracked down an ironing board and iron (always necessary unfortunately). We then had a bit of free time before departing for lunch. We boarded our tour bus -- which would be our method of transportation for all the days to come:
The lunch was a Korean buffet, I'm still getting used to not knowing what anything I'm eating is called; but hopefully I'll gain the ability to do that soon.
After lunch buffet we went to the NRF office for orientation; which consisted of a talk from the head of the NRF, and then a talk from some alumni of the program who had managed to find themselves back in Korea. After this we had a several hour long language training program in order to get a jump start on learning Hangul and Korean.
The business day came to a close with dinner at a place called "Bugagi Brothers" -- which served bulgagi. It's a sort of steamed beef, and it's delicious. I have a terrible picture from dinner which was taken to showcase the abnormally large size of the beer bottles they gave us:
After dinner we returned to the hotel for just long enough to catch our breaths. Turning on the TV, there are couple things you can be surpised about. The first:
And then perhaps even more interesting:
Afterwards I finally got to meet up with Kalon again -- just in time to head out for Nori Bang. Nori means "song" and bang means "room"; and song-room means karaoke in a private rented room -- which is a big deal in Korea. It was a lot of fun -- there are pictures and videos floating around; but I'm not sure I'll be posting those!
After Nori-bang a few of us hit up the batting cages again before turning in for the night. This time I've got a picture:
Today was the first day of touring; we got up fairly early so that we could be on the bus by 8:30am so we could check out of the hotel and get on the mystical tour bus. The first stop was Seoul N-Tower which is on a mountain on the south side of old-seoul making the observatory an effective 400m about the city floor. The view was really amazing; however because of the fog I couldn't see as far as I had hoped:
We had lunch in the observatory -- another buffet with a main dish served. Mine was a sort of grilled chicken; very good, but very spicy. They also had whole shrimp, jellyfish soup and amazing rice cakes. At the base of the tower you see something fairly unique to it. The surrounding area is filled with locks attached to notes -- "lovers" will write a note, attach it to a lock, hook it up and throw away the key. So you get areas like these:
Our next stop was the Korean National Museum; where we were able to spend an hour cruising through a couple thousand years of Korean history. For brevity, I wont upload any pictures here; but they will be on the picasa album. We got back on the bus to head towards Gyungju. For dinner we stopped by a roadside restraunt by the river. The veiw was amazing:
Dinner was also pretty good; I got the fish, below is a picture of it in it's semi-devoured glory:
Lastly, an awkward angle shot of the super fancy toilet in the hotel:
Hopefully there will be more tomorrow!
Hiiiiiiiii Kalon!
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