The day we’ve all been waiting for has come. Tuesday was our first day of teaching our SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) lessons to the kindergarteners at Woosong University Kindergarten. After some of us ate a filling breakfast at Sol-Geo’s West campus cafeteria, everyone met up in the meeting room to practice their lessons at 10 am, and at 11:15 am, the odd-numbered groups of 1, 3, 5, and 7 met up with Professor Duh at the front of our dorms. We took a group picture before walking over to the East campus, where we met up with our Korean Woosong University groupmates. Me and Alina worked with our Korean peers, Mia and Hyemin, to do last-minute prep and practice before our 50-minute teaching session with the kindergarteners. We met them in building W9, and the Kindergarten was one building over, so at around 12:50 pm, it was go time.
After we taught our lesson, all the odd-numbered groups had a quick debrief in building W9. We concluded that attention-getters were important and that even though the emotional lessons might be too easy for the 7-year-olds, Professor Duh reminded us that part of delivering our lessons is not just the Social-Emotional Learning, but the English aspect as well. It’s better that we deliver an easier lesson with the English barrier than overwhelm kids with a lesson they’re level but with the English barrier preventing the lesson’s message from getting through. Because of this, Professor Lee also noted that having a translated script is important since it reduces the amount of improvisation translation done in the moment. After the debriefing, the four of us went to have a late lunch around West campus at a place called Uncle Spicy Sausage Stew. We got side dishes for free: beansprouts, kimchee, and my personal favorite, fishcakes! We ordered Budae Jjigae, an Army Stew, and Hyemin said that it was invented while the US’s military was in South Korea. The stew was really good with I believe Korean hot pepper flakes adding a slight kick! The stew had a lot of sliced ingredients like spam, hotdog, bologna, bacon, some greens, American cheese, and buttered rice and ramen to eat the stew with. I jokingly said to Alina that I’ll have to watch what I eat after today after I ate all those processed meats! After lunch, we went to a dessert place called Danzi. There we got drinks to cool off and got small rice cake desserts. Two of them were super cute and shaped like small tangerines, and the miniature rice desserts were stickily crispy on the outside and soft on the inside! After Alina and I walked back to the West Campus, I went to chill on the roof with Mariela and Jared. I took a selfie for the blog with Daejeon in the background, and the picture had Jared admiring the sun and how it made the trees a vibrant green! We then met up with Sophia, and later, Rene and Andria, at a Racoon Cafe! When paying for meeting the animals, there was one pug who loved licking my legs, which made it super hard to pay since the licking was tickling and made me off-balanced. It was a good thing that the lady working at the café told us to empty our pockets and keep our phones in hand since the raccoons were set on going underneath our blankets to check our pockets for any goods. After the raccoons, we went to meet the meerkats, and they were super cute! The meerkats would rest in some of our laps, and at one point, Andria had 3 meerkats in her lap! Jared wasn’t as lucky though. The rest of us were joking that the meerkats didn’t like his feet because he didn’t have any socks on, but the raccoons and meerkats did like his pants a lot! I had meerkats on my lap, and when they started searching my chest pocket, it made me remember that I had business cards and a Halls cough drop that I forgot to take out because I forgot I had them! I quickly removed the items from my pocket before the meerkats stole my goods. After our time was up petting the animals, we got drinks to cool off (I got my first-ever juice poured in an ice cup Kiwi drink) and played a card game Rene learned from Fox Learning Center called Halli Galli. Each player takes turns taking a from their pile and putting it face up in front of them, and you hit a bell whenever 5 of a certain fruit shows up. Hitting the bell first makes you the winner of the round and you get to keep all the cards played, with the winner being whoever has all the cards at the end of the game. Halli Galli reminds of me another American card game called Slapjack, but instead of slapping the jack whenever someone puts down a jack. Halli Galli is interesting since you hit the bell whenever 5 of something shows up. For example, if I put down a card with 2 bananas, and the next person puts down 3 bananas, that’s the time to hit the bell since 2 + 3 = 5. Each person makes their own face-up card stack in front of them, so your previous card you put down gets replaced by the new card you put down, meaning a 5 can show up through subtraction like 7 – 2 (overridden card) = 5. There’s no penalty for hitting the bell when the fruit doesn’t add up to 5 and you can hit the bell even if you have no cards to get back into the game, so Sophia hit the bell randomly a few times and actually won a few rounds like that! Mariella with her Spot It! game experience and Rene with her Halli Galli skills had them in an intense 1-on-1 showdown, but the very nice and experienced-with-animals cashier lady told us that their closing time was 9 pm and that we had to clean up. Even though our fun was cut short, we all had a blast with the animals and playing Halli Galli! Rene said the Artbox near the Daejeon bus terminal had a Pokémon Halli Galli set, so I bought a Halli Galli set to bring back home from the Artbox in the Shinsegae department store! To end the night, after we did our Reflection #2 assignment on the street, me, Jared, Mariela, and Sophia decided to walk around Skyroad to see if any good-looking food would catch our eye, while Rene and Andria took a taxi back to the dorms. It was a lot of fun walking around the streets and seeing so many glowing signs and eateries filled with people, but we didn’t eat at any of them since we wanted a quick bite to go. We then decided to go the McDonald’s which was a walkable distance away, and I saw one of the entrances to Daejeon's underground mall that would be a preview of our short underground mall adventure a few days later. It was a big relief that the McDonald's we went to also had self-service kiosks like the ones back at home since we could change the screen to show English. We then took a taxi back to our dorms, and then Jared and I sat on the roof to talk with Victoria and Marina a bit while eating our food. The large fry I got was not as big as the large back at home and the salty fries were kind of soft and soggy, but me and Jared agreed that soggy McDonald's fries are pretty good and might be even better that way. The McChicken Mozzarella I had was good since it was a McChicken with a mozzarella bonus, and after a quick Google search, I learned it came with an Arabian-inspired sauce that was slightly sweet and spicy. A recurring theme in Korea is food being surprisingly sweet, for example, pizza and pasta sauce, but the extra spicy sweetness in the sandwich was a nice addition to the chicken and cheese. After returning to our room with Jared, I ate my chicken nuggets with the exclusive Sweet Chili and Cajun sauce while watching episode 10 of Demon Slayer’s third season. I liked the Cajun sauce more because the Sweet Chili sauce was too sweet for chicken nuggets. This day was my longest day so far, and it was a nice change of pace to sit on my bed to eat chicken nuggets and watch anime. Our program has been keeping us busy with days with a lot of action in them, but I think we’re all doing what we can to enjoy our time in South Korea. Teaching our SEL lessons is the main reason why we’re here, but I feel like the real memories we’ll be making is from the time we spent not as students, but as friends hanging out in Korea. We’re only here for 20 days, so we’re almost halfway through our scheduled time here, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we’re down to continue having a blast in Korea! This summer psychology faculty-led study abroad in Korea experience is one of a lifetime, so we’re all grateful to be here to make all the memories we can, together! -Jared Lai
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Today is June 19, a Monday. Tomorrow groups 1,3,5, and 7 will be going into the classroom with Woosong students. 10am-12pm practice session was hard today. I feel stressed more than ever. Meeting the Woosong students was wonderful and a great experience but working together will be hard due to the language barrier. We haven't practiced enough or had enough time to have a solid lesson plan down. I feel fustrated and nervous for tomorrow. I just want the kids to have a good time and for the teachers to know what to do. I pray that it will go well and the kids will have fun. I need to practice more to feel ready but part of me feels I am not. Me and my partner have been working really hard for this moment. Let's hope the kindergarteners will have fun and a good time. Let's have a good learning session with the Woosong students and work together.
Mariela and I started our days today around 6am. We had an early train to catch in order to make it to Seoul for our 11am color analysis appointment! We rushed off to the station and by 7:50am, we were on our way to Seoul via bullet train! A bullet train ride from Daejeon Station to Seoul Station only takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. As I sat quietly on the train listening to music, I slowly began to realize why these trains were called bullet trains! I hardly had even a moment to admire the landscape around me before it quickly disappeared. Fortunately, we arrived an hour and a half early for our appointment. With the extra time, we decided to walk around the area to find some breakfast and drinks to start off our morning. Our appointment was incredible. Color analysis is essentially figuring out what colors exactly suit your natural complexion and specific undertones best! It is a fun way to learn more about yourself, especially if you are into fashion at all. After our appointment, we decided to continue to stroll around the area, shopping at cute stores nearby. Eventually we found ourselves thirsty from the intense Seoul summer heat, so we went over to a 7 Eleven for a quick, easy drink/ ice cream break. We continued to explore the shops nearby and even stumbled across a self service thrift store! Eventually, Mariela and I worked up an appetite and went to a Korean Barbecue restaurant for lunch. After a little more shopping, we decided to head over to Gyeongbokgung Palace. Upon arriving at the beautiful gates, we quickly realized the 90 degree heat plus humidity with little shade was too much to handle at that moment. So we admired the palace from afar while enjoying the views of the beautiful gates and also enjoyed people watching. We saw many women wearing traditional hanbok. It was wonderful to see such beautiful dresses on so many women, and I was especially impressed that they were dressed like that in the heat! Eventually, we decided to take off from the palace and begin to head closer to the station. Unfortunately, that was the exact moment I checked my email to discover that my train tickets were canceled for no apparent reason. This was particularly interesting because Mariela’s tickets didn’t get canceled. After some unsuccessful repurchase attempts, I realized we needed a new plan. The next step was to get to the station to buy the ticket in person. However, we couldn’t get a hold of a taxi no matter how much we tried. In a desperate attempt to get to the station, we began walking in the direction of the station hoping we wouldn’t have to walk the whole 40 minutes. Fortunately, this unfortunate turn of events ended up being lucky! We stumbled across a World Cultures Festival, which was only in Seoul for 2 days. We were very excited to have found it. They were playing live music, had several water parks for children, free books to read and beautiful shaded areas to sit, and countless stands representing a wide variety of cultures. It was so wonderful to walk through and see cultures that we were able to quickly recognize and some that felt entirely new! My favorite part however was finding the stand representing Uzbekistan. My father grew up in Uzbekistan and I hardly hear about the country anywhere else! I experienced a joyful ruse of euphoria just standing there appreciating the beautiful stand in front of me. It was very touching, especially considering it was father’s day. This joyous moment was a great push that helped me get past our troubles. Shortly after walking past the festival, we struck gold and found a taxi that would take us to the station. I was able to successfully buy one of the last tickets for a train that would get me back to Daejeon on time. Mariela and I enjoyed a celebratory McDonalds meal before I departed from Seoul station. Although I would describe our day as chaotic, I had so many great experiences and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to see and explore parts of Seoul! I can’t wait for more adventurous days to come as we continue our journey in South Korea.
-Victoria The moment we have all been anticipating finally came! We met with our korean partners at Woosong. I was so excited to finally meet them in person as we had only previously met through zoom or messaged on kakao talk. It was such a fun experience meeting them. We had lunch together (which was really good), we did some ice breakers, and practiced our lesson. It was nice seeing how we would work together to bring these lessons to life. We were not only able to learn about one another but also learn from each other. It felt better being able to show them the lesson plan in person than through Zoom! I'm so excited to see how it all comes together with the children!
After our practice, we went to Daejeon Expo Park where we had a picnic with our group and two other groups! As we were walking to our destination we found a little vendor who was selling ice cream and beondegi, translated as pupa, which are bugs. Jared, Cameron, Devyn and I all tried and enjoyed it! We came to the same conclusion that it tasted like a bean. Jared even went for more! Our group members took us to different food trucks where we tried takoyaki, tteokbokki, potato, and rice cake and sausage. We sat down, talked and got to know one another more. Later, we got pizza and fried chicken for everyone! We watched a cool water show with music. Me and some of the other girls bonded over out love for the kpop group Seventeen! We heard Fighting by BSS and started singing and dancing to it! It was a really fun day that we spent with our new friends! I can’t wait to make more memories with everyone! - Mariela :) Today will be a core memory for the rest of my life. My day started bright and early as I woke up at 4am still getting over jet lag. An amazing opportunity came up when Andie asked in our group chat if we wanted to take a morning hike up the mountain near where we are staying. I am really glad I said yes, because when we took that hike we found a common interest and connection in a school and place I grew up called Mount Madonna. I went to school there for 10 years, and learned a lot under the teachings of Baba Hari Dass who was a guru and founded the community and center. Andie found the community herself when she was looking for similar values the center provided. The hike was beautiful, we found workout equipment in the middle of the woods, and I struggled to fully say “hello” or “good morning” in Korean but I was happy to try. The top of the mountain was amazing. Later, I worked on our lesson plan with Cameron and we finalized a lot of the ideas we had been working on together. Cameron, Alex, both Jareds and I all hung out for a couple hours before we decided to go explore Korea some more. The street was full of shops that had clothing, jewelry and more just lined up outside the store with no tracking tags at all. In America, this could never happen. People would steal these things and it doesn’t happen here because they have made a social decision not to. I think in part, it could be because Korea values the quality of life of their people more than America does. There would be lots of times where we would look at the price of something and our mouths would drop at how much cheaper it was here than America. We shared a steak dinner, something that in America could easily be expected to cost around or over 100 dollars, but it didn’t even get close to that at all. After leaving dinner and meeting up with more of our group, Jared found a spot with karaoke just under where we had dinner. We immediately found ourself in this room full of smoke, Korean songs and decoration. We truly were getting to live in this country first-hand now and the old woman who ran the place greeted us with open arms and kindness. We all took turns singing, partying and having fun. It was an absolute pleasure to experience that and that memory will forever go somewhere special in my library of adventures in my mind. After that, we all made sure we got back to the school before curfew at 11pm. We each made sure that everyone got home safe, which I think speaks to the quality of character everyone on this trip has. I went straight to bed after a shower. Overall, I have had an amazing time on this journey so far. It feels like so much has happened already and there’s still so much more to come. I am trying to do my best to just live in the moment, take each day as a gift, and get the most out of this opportunity. I have learned that the best thing you can do in life is to try your hardest to influence the things you can control positively while accepting the things you can’t control. Each day here I have felt like I have been able to do that, and it’s paid off tremendously.
-Devyn Today was amazing! In the morning, a group of us met for breakfast and then for coffee before a class session. In our class session we practiced our lesson plans for next week.
After class, most of the group had the rest of the day to explore the city and a small group of us traveled to the Fox Learning Center to work with several groups of children. Upon arriving, we were enthusiastically greeted by the staff and given a tour of the facilities. When we met the children it was very exciting to see their happy faces as they joyfully greeted us when we entered the room. We broke up into groups where we read and discussed books about feelings. As I asked the students what they learned from the book one of the students said, “it’s okay to be different”, which was heartwarming as we saw them soaking in what they learned in the lessons. Another moment that was memorable was a little boy who laughed at the story the whole time because he thought it was silly, especially when we would make faces that mimicked the story. After our stories we played games, one of which was Jenga. The students were very good and would pull blocks from the bottom without making them all fall, while we made all of the blocks fall each round. I think the best part about out visit to the Fox Learning Center was learning about all of the art projects the students work on, as well as seeing the social growth they had as we were teaching them. When we first introduced ourselves in our groups they were shy and less interactive but by the time we were at the end of our lessons and games, they were all talking, laughing and having so much fun. After finishing up our time at the Fox Learning Center, four of us stayed in the area to explore. We walked over to a water festival that had a fountain show, similar to one seen at the Bellagio. We walked inside a tall building and went up to an area that overlooks the city, so we took many pictures. After that we walked around, tried some snacks from local vendors and shopped around at the different craft booths. To finish up the night we took pictures of all the beautiful lights that lit up the city, and then headed back to our campus for the rest of the evening. -Rene Our group met at Seoul Airport & left on our bus together as excited as can be. It was about a 2.5 hour trip and I didn't finish a page in my personal read because I was so excited to chat with my cohort who had traveled up to several days and countries to arrive here in Seoul. Our bus driver dropped us off outside of the school parking gate which we soon realized was going to take two uphill climbs. I lugged a water bottle the size of my head, a suitcase the size of a St. Bernard, and not one but two carry ons. We found the humor in our situation.
Woosong University was so kind to wait for us until around midnight, handing out all of our room cards and bedding promptly. From what Dr. Paik has explained, the professors live half an hour away and waited way past their work hours to help us. As we got into our rooms we saw such sweet gifts: Woosong University book bags, water bottles, and t-shirts. We weren't able to access our outlets which took some furniture moving but overall everyone got settled in okay. The dorms were beautiful and spacious and all have a view of the city. In the morning, I got up and went for a jog in the beautiful forest nearby. It was a hike up a hill through beautiful green trees, and there were an incredible amount of elders hiking; they were all so friendly and greeted me kindly with smiles and "안녕하세요" (hello's). At the top of the hill I could see the sunrise peeking over the mountains in the distance, there were exercise machines that were surprising to find amongst the trees, and over the mountain I found home gardens growing beautifully with an elder tending to them with great effort. It was incredible to see the so much life at the start of the day. Our group met at 10am to overview our itinerary and around lunchtime went out to eat and shop as a group to get our essentials. We got everything we needed to feel at home and piled up together before catching our ride home. As some of us arrived on our beautiful rooftop we took photos of one another to capture such a special moment in time. I am proud of the group of classmates who are committing to this journey together, they all have such great minds and hearts. - Andria June 13/14
Today was an experience. I met Jared L when I arrived at SFO and met his whole family. It made me miss my family. We met Deyven at our gate and he had explored the airport. Later Mariela, Marina, Cameron, and Jared joined us. We all took a lovely group photo with cool vintage camera Marela and Cameron had. We then boarded. I was so impressed by the attire of the Korean Air flight attendants. The food was excellent but the flight was long. When we arrived it was a relief, we were in a new country! Finding Terminal 1 was a journey! Omg the bus ride was crazy and all our luggage was moving around like on a boat. When we made it, it was a relief to see Ms. Paik and the other students. We could say we made it and finally relax. Buying Korean food and spending my first dollar was really easy. I find I am spending a lot of money lol. Speaking and getting to know everyone was really fun and we are all tired and exhausted from the 12+ hour Journey. The bus ride was nice and everyone was having fun and laughing. The campus is so beautiful at night. We settled into our doorms and fell straight to sleep. Best sleep ever! - Jasmine The long wait is finally taking place, we are going to South Korea!!! Today is the first day where a few students and I start our journey. I am very appreciative to have this opportunity because South Korea is a destination that I have never imagined going to and I’m excited for the next days to come to meet all the Korean students and people. I’m ready to learn new stuff about the language and culture, eat different foods, and enjoy the experience with everyone! For me, I have never been outside of the United States so I was really nervous to go through multiple airports and long flights. The flight from SF to Canada went very smoothly but from Canada to Japan I was getting very squirmy in my seat and continuously looking at the map on the plane screen for the last hours! Overall, the flights went well today! I flew with Andria and Victoria and I really enjoyed getting to know them more and sharing the experience. It was also very helpful having travel buddies when I didn’t understand something which was often lol. Tomorrow will be our flight to South Korea and I am so eager to get there! I am very excited to see everyone together. With that being said I’d like to say welcome to South Korea cohort 2023! May we all have the best time together, stay safe, and enjoy the moment!
-Sofia |