April 2nd - 8th

This week the cherry blossoms started to bloom! They are almost everywhere in Wonju and Yonsei and it makes the campus look really colorful even though most of the plants are still brown from winter. There is a cherry blossom festival going on in Seoul right now and there's a group of GV students (including me) that are hoping to go to Seoul next Friday to see it! This week for our field trip, we went to a food academy right here in Wonju and they let us make some Korean dishes. We got to make Gimbap, which is kind of like sushi, but it usually doesn't use raw fish. Instead the recipe that we had used egg, ham, cucumber, carrots, burdock root, and raddish, wrapped in rice and seaweed. The second dish that we made was kimchi pancakes. It's basically what it sounds like. You mix water, flour, onions, eggs, and kimchi together, then you scoop it into a pan and let it cook like you would a pancake. You have to be careful not to make them too thick, otherwise it will burn on one side and still might not be cooked on the inside. To make these, the chef showed us how to make each dish first and then had us split into groups of 3 people to start making them. I teamed up with Marie and Marisa and our Gimbap turned out pretty good (even though we struggled a little with rolling them) and our pancakes could have been better but they still tasted good. On Saturday, I went to Incheon with Marie, Eevie, Josue, Arturo, and Gyu-Min to watch a baseball game between the SK Wyverns and the Samsung Lions. I wasn't really sure what to expect from the baseball game because I've never been to a professional one before (not even in the United States). It wouldn't have normally been what I would have enjoyed, but I figured it would be a good opportunity to experience something new. We took the bus to Incheon and then we had to take the subway to the sports center. We got there a little late, so the game was already started by the time we found our seats. The Korean that we were with (Gyu-Min) was really helpful in finding our seats even though he didn't really know where he was going either. We weren't able to sit together so Marie, Eevie, and I sat on the Lions side, while the other 3 sat with the home team (the Wyverns). Even though it was windy, we still had a really great time. Each team had people standing in front of the stands leading cheers and I'm pretty sure they had a cheer for everything and when even the smallest thing would happen in the game, they would start blaring music and start singing something; it was a blast. Between each of the innings, they would do a little something like a dance cam, kiss cam, dance groups, little kids dancing, etc. The Wyverns ended up winning 4 - 3, but we had to leave a little bit early because we still need to get back to Wonju (we have a 1:00am curfew). To get back we decided to take the train, so we had to take the subway for about an hour before we got the the train station, but when we got there, we had just missed the train back to Wonju so we had to wait another hour before the next one (which was at 11:20pm). We also got our tickets for that train a little late, so there wasn't any seats left and we had to sit on the floor. We got back to Wonju at about 12:40am and by some miracle (and a speedy taxi driver), we got back to our dorms at exactly at 1:00am so we didn't get in any trouble.