Volunteer, Advocate, Trekker.

Man, talk about sucking at life! I feel like I start every blog with "Sorry I've been so busy for WEEKS!" My life should not be so busy that I can't chronicle it to remember it by. So, although I have a bunch of back-stories to catch up on, I'm skipping ahead to today. Woke up dead tired, went to Geography class (test on the Arabian peninsula! 100% I'm betting. I rock at maps.) Could BARELY stay awake for the lecture after the test, I was like head-falling-over falling asleep. But I did wake up for the brief 30 seconds when the teacher explained why Asians love tea so much: the water there used to (pre-indoor plumbing) be inherently really bacteria filled. Probably related to the fact that Westerners used cow manure for farming fertilizer, but in Asia human manure was much more popular (which observing long term trends probably relates to how Europe pwned the 20th century.) But I digress. Because the water was so bacteria filled, it could only be consumed af...

(Comment, from the future!!!) Haha, I put this off waaay too long and don't remember what I was going to write. But I had the songs so I'll just leave those. Song of the Day: I don't know it's Korean name, but it's some happy birthday-y kind of song that all the Korean students sang *at* Sean earlier, it roughly translates into "he who doesn't sing, doesn't find a woman." He then sang a song in front of everyone at the wedding place!!! It was awesome! Khaled also sang a song in Moroccan in front of everyone at the wedding place, which recieved great applause! Excellent job to both for singing on a stage like that!!! At a podium no less. Song of the Month: (Not of the day, so as to avoid repeats.) And the song of the month is.... anyone in UIP guessed it, "NOBODY" by the "WONDER GIRLS!" This was the unofficial (if not downright Official) theme song for the UIP program! A hit (a year ago) in South Korea, we're gonna do wha...

:( the programs almost over! Today was our last day of class, tomorrow is the final and going away party. I've made great friends from around the world here, and I hope sincerely we stay in touch after the program is over! Those are the flags of all the countries represented in the program. It's been a blast, and the friends I've made are excellent people I hope to stay in touch with and contact and even visit in the future! So, the morning class was ~boring~ as always. The afternoon class was awesome! "Prepare for a debate on North Korea." I studied up some, but not as much as I should have. None the less, the time came and we went to Ulsan City Hall, and met with the Vice-Mayor (a post we don't have in most American cities.) He did his schpeal, showed us a promotional video of Ulsan, and then it was off to the City Council chambers. In there, we had a mock-debate sort of. We all randomly selected Dion as speaker, who went up to the big shiney podium. Then w...

Blah. So, a dozen Michigan State Univ engineers have been randomly merged into our program for the last week. And they're Annoying. As a Canadian friend I've made put it, they're the stereotypical Americans we were all glad had not been present on this trip. They are not here for the culture, they are here for internships they're getting paid for - which wasn't even work according to them, basically they took tours of the Hyundai plants for 3 weeks, and did nothing to learn about Korean culture. The other night a bunch of us were at WaBar (Waba is Korean for Western, so its a "Western Bar" where you can get beers from Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.) And a group that decided to try putting up with them for a party night walked by and they went up to the Kareoke bar on the second floor of the building across from WaBar (me and Dion's favorite place to frequent.) One of the Canadian girls came up to us, and we were like: "Oh my god..." ...

During the previews for Harry Potter, me and James saw one (among many) that actually looked Good. Called "Haeundae" (named after their most popular beach, in Busan.) It's a disaster flick with a huge tidal wave, and it comes out this week (7/23/09) but no where in Korea will have subtitles for it :( I may just see it anyway. Coincidentally, the next day I went with some others to Busan and Haeundae beach. Katy Kameo (time index 4:27) So, before I left for Korea, my favorite song was "I Gotta Feeling." (At present, it still is.) But I only ever heard the song on the radio twice, because I found it elsewhere on the "Boom Boom Pow" CD. Low and behold, I'm finding it's risin to #1 on the World Charts! (WOOHOO!) I found a song before it was popular, GO ME! This is like the first time this ever happened to me :D and unlike the whole indy-rock band thing with 3Oh!3, my hope was my song would become popular. And to make this song all the more awesome...

rofl. That is my quote of the day. I'll explain later. (Wow, Ron looks pi$$ed.) UGH, Harry Potter 6 sucked dragonballz. (haha, note the pun...) It was like 3 hours long and NOTHING HAPPENED. I almost fell asleep, most of the people I went with did. I am a fan of the HP series and I thought it was horrible. There was almost action at like 2 points, but then there wasn't. The climax was dull and predictable. Very disapointing. On the brightside, the lead up was more interesting. Me, Danielle, Sarah, (no, not the ones your thinking of) 'Puma', James and Jin-sik took the bus down town to the Lotte-mart Cinema. (Puma being his western name, haha, when Koreans pick western names it cracks me up. See Also: Van De Kamp.) We first got food at a *gulp* dog restaurant :( yes, its true, dog meat is a Korean delicacy. But modern people almost never eat it, its more of an older people thing. Danielle, Sarah, Puma and James agreed to try some, me and Jin-sik chickened out (haha, anoth...

Aww, I just saw another Seoul-pun as someone's blog title I liked! "Seoul'ed Out" TOTALLY would have fit for the last day. Kudos to them. But what did we do more recently, oh, toured the Hyundai and SK-Oil major factories. They were HUGE! Like, the Hyundai factory was about the size of a city all its own. Hyundai heavy industries that is -- freighter building, uber-large sea ships. SK-Oil (or South Korean Oil) is a chemical factory and water reclamation center. It was sort of interesting, but mainly it was us being told not to take pictures. At the first place, (or maybe the second?) they had a small museum dedicated to the Asan guy, who single handedly revitalized Koreas economy. The part of this that annoyed most of our group however? They had the SAME items on display at the other place!!! Ie: the "authentic" medal awarded by the Olympic Comission for running the Seoul Olympics, and some medal given to him by the Soviet Union for peace talks. As Alan put ...

S ome of our group is unfortunately starting to get homesick, as the study abroad advisers invariably warned of. I am not quite there yet, but I expect I will be by the end of the week. I am still of the impression this is one of the greatest experiences of my life -- and it has been -- and I don't want it to end! It's like summer camp, but instead of learning to make fires and identify leaves, I'm learning about foreign cultures and traveling a bunch! AHHH! I LOVE IT n.n I love it so much I'm already brainstorming my next trip! After staying in the Youth Hostel in Seoul, they are (often) an affordable alternative to hotels and they cover the globe! I'm thinking Europe should be my next destination, in particular the scandenavian countries: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland. Or maybe the Czech Republic to find the home of a majority of my ancestors. I've also been invited to visit new found friends in Canada, Germany, and China. And I've been advised not to...

(Survivor, Amazing Race, whatever...) Haha, oh man coming up with these puns is fun sometimes. So in our final night in Seoul we went shopping. Our final day we went to the border of North Korea, then returned to Ulsan. Shopping was interesting, I found the hanbok [traditional Korean clothes] I wanted - but it was [the equivilent of] 60$ and it was uncomfortable material. I did buy some hanji though (traditional korean paper craft) cause I think I'll make a scrap book of my trip! With all that free time I have :/ Song of the Day: "Every Girl" by Lil Wayne, ft. Young Money. This song is so bad, lol -- its about how he wants to f**k every girl in the world. (Unfortunatly I do not hear current music in the U.S. here, so I'm googling the US Top 40 lists. This is somewhere over 10, so I youtubed it.) Haha, this song is sooo stupid but kinda entertaining. "I'm about to get my Bill Clinton on, and Hillary could [Rodham/ride'm] whilst I get my pimpin on......

Haha, if only there was a tag for "bad puns." So since Seoul was such an experience, I'm dividing it into three posts. Non-chronological just to confuse me :/ Lets see, on third day I think it was? We visited Ulsan University College of Medicine. Haha, but you have to say it like your the announcer in a 1940s Superman short. "The UNIVERSITY of ULSAN, COLLEGE OF !MEDICIIINE!!" which is how the oddly enthusiast, the fluent, English Narrator of a brief promotional video sounded. 4 largest hospital in the world, largest in Korea, the UNIVERSITY OF ULSAN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE was actually interesting. They fed us like a 4 course western dinner, and then let us wander around their library for a couple minutes (a professional medical library, I don't know whose idea that was, 57 rambunctious twenty-somethings supposed to use their indoor voices.) But then we went to this museum built into the hospital dedicated to the Hospital's founder: nicknamed, Asan. Asan is ...

So the last four days were a blast! Field tripped to the Capital of South Korea, Seoul -- where 50% of the S.Korean population lives! 10 and a half million people in one city, craziness. After the 5 hour bus ride (where many of us slept) we had fun at Korea's largest theme park - Everland! A Disney-world like place, with cartoon creatures walking around (from no particular story, just fairy tales in general it seemed.) We rode the "T-Express", the steepest wooden rollar coaster in the world! And there was an epcot-style building that had creeeeeepy dolls representing many of the worlds interesting-er countries. America was represented primarily as a football stadium with a new york dance show built into it. It was actually fun to watch every country's people with us go "that's not what _____ is like at all..." like Julia and Germany, or the Japanese students. But as someone who likes flags and foreign cultures, I found it entertaining -- and it was air c...

So over the course of Friday and Saturday, a majority of the group took a roadtrip to Busan (a major port city and tourist attraction ala` Cleveland to Ulsan's Akron.) The first group partied and clubbed as mentioned in the previous blog, the second group left in the morning and took taxi, bus, subway, other subway - and mainly went shopping. Led by our fearless leader - So-Yeong (who was awesome, she really stressed herself out trying to keep track of 19 students running across a city she wasn't even from.) we went to a big shopping center. Remarkable observation: I'd noticed in Korea that the "popular" name brands were kind of everywhere. Not like, American Eagle or Hollister, but Polo, Ralph Lauren, Nike, Adidas, K-Swiss, etc. While talking with Kyu-hun (who eventually met up with us while we were shopping) he implied you have to buy names in Korea - because non-name brands are probably badly made Chinese imports, that fall apart after you wash them once. Its i...

Stayed in a 1362 year old Buddhist temple. Just for my own math, it was built in 646 AD. Korean words of the Day: Interesting : Whom-mean-dinn Remarkable language barriers of the day: While trying to explain how Buddha is in everything, our teacher (who's an awesome translator most of the time) did not quite understand Christianity enough to use it as a metaphor. Also, he was under the impression 90% of North America was Christian -- and me and 2 other students explained Christian denominations to him. Regardless, while referring to God, he would always say "the Jesus". ALWAYS with a the, I found it entertaining. Me and a Canadian student (this isn't really language barrier so much as accent barrier) were complaining about the food at the Buddhist temple and she mentioned how it could use some something and "paper." I'm like "What?" and she's like "What?" and that continued and I'm like "Paper???!!" and eventually I...

Happy Canada Day, eh? The Canadian school "University of Regina" in Seskatchewan is the largest delegation to this program with 10 people from that one school. (Akron, by comparison, has two.) So it was a biiig deal to celebrate July 1st -- Canada Day, er, their independence day? I dunno exactly what happened on this day but its important to them. Walkin down the street somethin' caught my eye. No jk; in the Campus bookstore -- lol, but HOOOLY cow, this book was AWESOME! It was in Korean so I didn't buy it, but I bought a book of Hillary's 7 "greatest speeches" that was left side in English right side in Korean (to help advanced English speaking Koreans apparently.) Since it was half in English, I bought it! Only 13,000 won or about $10.40. Yesterday we did paper decoration, or 'Hanji'-work, which was cool. And then went to a traditional pottery place. Later that night, partied it up on the Korean night life in celebration of Canada day!!! And in...

Day 5 (if you start from where I started.) Technically, its the second day of the program. Regardless: I'm LOVING Korea! This is an awesome trip! It's practically a vacation, the "classes" don't require much work - just exploring aspects of Korean culture. Yesterday we learned about Hangil the Korean written alphabet, and did two hours of practicing that. Also were invited to the awarding of an Honorary Doctorate to a national celebrity, and today we learned about Korean history and the differences between Korean culture and western culture. The first two days were unbearably hot and sunny, thought I'd sweat away my ... I dunno, there's not "DeF. phrase" for this situation. But since then its been very rainy, muggy, wet. But cooler, woohoO! Everyone else hates it, I'm loving it. Remarkable Observations: Koreans rarely wash their hands in the bathroom x_x I still have. Because of that, there are sinks but *NO* paper towels/air dryers. ANYwhere...

Andrew's log, Korea, Saturday June 27th - Day 01. I am presently in a Starbucks at Seoul Gimpo airport, enjoying an "iced orange black" (i presume tea.) Though they have free wifi, you need to be a Korean citizen (and have a draft registration number...) to access it. The trip here so far has been largely stressless, thank God. (P.S. The American song "can you believe, they put a man on the moon..." is playing. In English. How odd.) Delta Airlines was average by all measures. Korean Airlines was very hospitable, as Mrs. Marx said they would be! The touchscreen built into my seat was kind of annoying, but I was glad it existed at all for my 13 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Seoul Incheon! During those 13 hours, I slept for 2 hours, had two meals (Chicken and Beef, the chicken came with a side of sushi I tried and did not like.) Haha, I was totally offered wine but declined. During the trip I watched (in entirety) Taken, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Bride Wars, a...