Time for a Lecture...Part 1

Since I only have a week left in Seoul, (which is really hard to believe, by the way), I thought I'd share a little more of the academic side of my life in South Korea. Now don't worry, I don't plan to literally transcribe any of the lectures. And some of them weren't the "conventional" lecture, anyway.

For the conventional lectures, we've had Korean Contemporary Issues, History, Language, Economics, Religion, Politics, and Architecture. I got some good background on Korea that really helped me to appreciate other aspects of the program more. Here is a picture of us right before one of the lectures.

Diana, Soo Min, Min Ji, and Yoo Shin (one or two of us did not want a picture taken :-)

Now for the not-so-orthodox academics...

Traditional Korean Instruments:
A Korean percussion group came and performed their music for us, then taught us how to play the instruments. That was a lot of fun...although the kwang jing (a Korean gong-like instrument) was a bit loud.

Learning the janggu (traditional Korean drum)

Traditional Korean percussion group

Incheon Pottery Village:
This is a place that has a museum for traditional Korean ceramics (a big part of the country's heritage), as well as a shop where I bought some of the work of these artists. So beautiful! And then we got to make our own pottery and decorate it. I put my name on it in Korean: 로라

Me making a traditional vase with the help of a true expert...this man teaches ceramics in a university!

Korean Music:
This definitely wasn't typical. We were treated to performances by some of the most famous traditional artists in Korea, all in beautiful hanbok (the Korean traditional outfit) What is hanbok, you may ask? Well, keep reading...

Either a gayageum or a geomungo...it depends on how many strings it has.

Either a daegeum, a junggeum, or a sogeum...which one depends on size and again I'm not sure. 

That's a good start...I'll continue with more details of our hands-on lectures soon.

Until next time,

Laura