Action-packed Seoul

I have been to three art museums, heard two lectures, walked up and down many hills, had the heavens open up with rain, and toured Korea University, all in the past 48 hours!!!

Yesterday morning we visited the Korean folk art museum:

http://www.lifeinkorea.com/Travel2/80

There were lots of costumes and cloth and jewelry exhibits. Then, we went out for lunch to a restaurant where we sat on the floor - that was really fun. We watched them make our dumplings, boil them, and then we ate them. Delicious. In the afternoon, we went to the Leeum Samsung museum, which was incredibly fancy.

http://www.leeum.org/eng/main.asp

Apparently in order to go there, you used to need an appointment. It is funded by the Samsung family, and incredibly high-tech. We got these fancy audio tour headsets, fancier than any I've seen in the U.S., where you just had to stand by a piece of art and the headset would tell you all about it. You could also press all these buttons on the headsets and get other information about the artist, the work of art, other pieces of art you might be interested in if you liked that one, etc. We saw a lot of Celedon pottery - which is this beautiful light green pottery famous in Korea. There was also quite a lot of modern art there.

Today we went to Korea University, which was absolutely gorgeous. It was founded in 1905, and is an incredibly grand, expansive campus, with granite architecture.

http://www.korea.ac.kr/~eng/main.htm

We heard a four hour lecture on the history of Korea from ancient times to 1948... And we heard a lecture on Korean art, which was fabulous. The lecturer was a Korean woman my age who had gone to highschool in the U.S. but came back to University in Korea. I loved seeing the differences in portrayals of the Buddha through different dynasties.

Tomorrow I will post pictures. I will have the opportunity to bring my laptop to Korea University and use the internet there.

They are keeping us so busy, and I am still jet-lagged. I've been waking up at 5 AM ready to go! This morning, I went for a jog with some of the other people on the trip, and I hope to do the same tomorrow morning, if it doesn't rain. It feels very safe in this city.

Tomorrow's my lesson at the Korean highschool - wish me luck! I'm team-teaching with the other New Yorker on my trip, who is really nice. She teaches at a public highschool in the lower east side, and just so happens to have gone to highschool herself at the school where I'm currently teaching!

If yo uwant a more detailed perspective, check out my new friend's blog about this trip:

walkinthewoods at blogger