Photos

Keep being asked for Photos so will give you a sneak at a few!! You see more of the whole group at; http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=256673920343&ref=ts

KIAF

Korean International Art Fair!

Best day ever!
Tons of Art all under one roof, loads of inspiration, amazing talent, fantastic techniques, and a notebook full of names I need to put in the black book of lovely artness!!

What more can I say!!

Oh yeah, on the way back we walked past a promo event for energy bars, the guys were packing up and we asked if we could have the mile long banner, of course he said yes! We will use it to make O-dong a fabulous banner when he next plays football at uni! He doesn't have a clue!!

Classes again

We have now had all our classes, some more successful than others!
Computer art is great, teacher is fabulous, speaks very good English, shows us cool DVDs and many more!

Our project for this class is to look at our adaptation from day to day, interesting! Its cool because we have noticed the difference in ourselves and it is exciting to do some art out of this!

The next is screen printing, vvveeerrryyy excited to be doing this class, but a little disappointed when we went to our first lesson and the teacher had not been informed of our arrival, therefore she had not ordered any materials for us to make frames, and screens and chemicals! So we had to sit in a three hour class while all the Korean students got their hands dirty!! Sooo frustrating!!

Finally Oriental painting!! ahem!! We eagerly arrived on Friday morning to learn this amazing art we had seen everywhere. This is the subject that had been highly recommended to us, and as we are in South Korea, why wouldn't we do Oriental painting! The teacher again had no clue that we would be their, looked very shocked, a little bit miffed, and after about a 15minute disappearance he told us(through a translating student) there is no point us sitting there for 3 hours while he talks theory in Korean!!! AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH

Deep breath!

After visiting the most amazing art shop on Saturday, we bought everything we needed for screen printing, Oriental ink, brushes, and specialised handmade Korean paper, we are ready for round 2!! Fingers crossed we will print some screens this week, and even more fingers crossed...learn some oriental painting!

Food I miss!!

A small list of food I am missing!

Cereal!
Chocolate Brownies
Balsamic vinegar
Continental's Cottage pie!!!!!!!!!!
Black pepper
Rice that isn't stuck together
Cous cous
Blue dragon sweet chilli sauce
Pears
Fruitella from homebargains
Chips- not that i eat that many in England but I cant have them here!
Fish for with my chips!
Cherry beer after my shift at work!!!

Hmmmm probably loads more but i understand this is not the point if my blog!

However if anybody wants to send me a package of any of these thinngs in that would be hamazing!! email for my add if you dare!!!!

So-ju...........

The traditional Korean spirit, made from sweet potatoes, so not too different to vodka! We went to a bar across the road from our dormitories, John had been here with some guys he had played football with. This time we were joined by his room mates, O-dong and Yung-Kill.

After three of pitchers or Cass beer, two bottles of So-ju and a platter of crinkle cut chips we were all thee best of friends. Talking about home towns, football, exchanging phrases and the odd bit of cheeky banter! Three of O-dong's friends walked past and they were invited to join us, which they did graciously even though they had an hour long bus ride home afterwards!

When we asked for the bill, the guys said it would be on them as a Korean tradition of meeting new friends, but as English traditions go we agreed that we would all pay dutch!(hmmm) We gave 5000won each, but we had a feeling that this wouldn't cover half the bill. (5000won - £2.50) But they never fail to amaze me with their kindness and generosity!

Classes..........

Update on the classes, we found out some extra options, so now I am doing Computer Art, Oriental painting and screen printing!!!!!!

Sooooo excited! First class of this is tomorrow!

Computer Art we had on monday and it was fabulous, far better then I imagined, well I tried not to think of anything! The lecturer was lovely, very good English with an American twang, so he has clearly been over! He gave us great stuff to think about and a good project to be getting on with!

Oriental painting is Friday and I have this with Jae-eun and Hana!

Traditional Korean place.

Tuesday awoke to whispering, as usual! I could hear Korean and then “Hari” (my Korean name), this caught my attention, “Are you talking about me?!” followed by giggling! Conversation then followed about my plans for the day.

Hana and Jae-eun had classes but Chan-mi wanted to take me out to a traditional Korean building. Conferred with the other English and most of us were free so we headed out.

The traditional place was an old Palace and its gardens, recently a national heritage site the tours took people round and explained what was what! After an hour and 20 minutes we had seen the in’s and out’s of the site. The elaborate carvings and decoration, the amazing planning of where each building lay, to the size of the doors, which were smaller then your average!

The day was thoroughly enjoyed by all, Chan-mi was pleased to be our leader, and although she claims to be shy she definitely had us all wrapped round her little finger! Every few minutes I would hear, “Hari?!”, she would be looking for me to tell me to take a picture of this or that, always getting the best spot so I could take the best photograph! Loved it!!

We took loads of gorgeous photographs of the place and I cannot wait to work with them in my projects here!

Korean Cinema................

Well not quite, we went to a Korean cinema to watch the animation film 9! But the Korean trailers at the beginning were amazing! They definitely go all out on the jingles!

The point of this entry is to rave about my fantastic housemates even more then I have done so! Chan-mi, Hana and Jae-eun went completely out of their way to help us organise our trip out. They found which cinema the film was on, as all the websites are in Korean obviously and the cinema we had planned on just turning up to did not show it anyway!! The girls suggested we book in advance to get cheaper tickets, and Jae-eun put 8 tickets on her card because we do not have Korean bank accounts! They were upset when I went upstairs to tell them we were ready, because the cinema only had bad seats left, and we were stuck with the back row. I started teasing the girls about John who was joining us, and explained that in England, a boy will take a girl on the back row if he wants to be close with her!! I said I knew they had planned this all along so they could have john in the middle of them! Blushing much!

We arrived at the cinema an hour early to have a look around the streets and all the funky shops in the area. This was what we had been waiting for! The hustle and bustle of the city was so exciting and very different to the laid back atmosphere around campus. Mega bright lights stretched across the side of every building advertising singing bars, beer and fried chicken. Plenty of girlie boutiques with gorgeous shoes and specialist make up shops. Street vendors selling tasty Korean snacks (yes, I said tasty!!!!) The only disappointment of the evening was the lady giving out ice-cream samples had run out by the time we had chance to get through the crowd to her!

We had curfew, the dormitories are locked from 12am-5am so we got straight on the bus home and back to our rooms after the film had ended at 11.15! On Mondays there is inspection and roll-call(!) And Chan-Mi, who is a student warden disappeared off to inspect the rooms on our floor, only to return 5 minutes later with a clipboard giggling her head off as she passed our room!

Its who you know!

Taught by those who know..........................

Well after readying myself for bed and climbing into my top bunk, a head appeared by my side and asked if I would like to learn Korean. Now? YES!!

After jotting down a few phrases and making me say them back to her - hundreds of times, because I wasn't getting the pronunciation quite Korean! She then told me I would be tested in 10minutes time! After getting a bit of help from a hand held translator she owns, Chan-mi told me repetition was the key! And so began a night filled with me doing very curious Korean accents to get my words just right. So after perfecting the first lot of phrases I was then given another - one particular lets me ask for chicken(chik'in cheseo), noodles (kur-su cheseo) and vegetables (ya-chae cheseo)! As ordering off menus is something of skill!

It ended up to be something of a very corny night, the 4 of us sat on my top bunk (when Hana and Jae-eun's curiosity got the better of them and overcame their coyness to join us!), giggling and gossiping about film stars - namely RPatz, Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom! They couldn't have made me feel more welcome!

Jae-eun brings me food presents to test what I like, today it was a packet of pepper steak flavour crisps (after the squid flavour disaster which they laughed about!). Also a sausage shape cheese with crab in it! (Not quite sure how to break it to her that was definite no!)

Well thats all for now, cho-un-ha-ru (have a nice day)!

Upon Arrival....................

Well after a good time traveling from Manchester-Dubai-Incheon we arrived in Seoul! Fought our way through the rush hour traffic and arrived to our home for the next 2months! Surroundings around the uni are beautiful, tall green mountains in most directions that are amazing!! In the centre of the campus is a football pitch, running circuit and basketball courts. All in brilliant condition! No excuse for not joining in the fitness regime now!!

First Korean meal this evening, Rae-man (I think it is pronounced!!) Noodles and spicy soup! Side dish Kim-chi; fermented cabbage, and some Miso soup! You fight so hard to keep the long noodles on the chopsticks you deserve another meal, but you get too frustrated and end up giving in and slurpping! Ma-shiss-oss-o-yo! Delicous! However the squid flavouur crisps I bought are not! Met some lovely tutors and think we have our timetables sorted: Monday- computer art Thursday- Film and Movies (making, I think!) Friday- Oriental painting and Contemporary art theory. Until then we have the weekend to explore and get our bearings! Much Love!