April 23rd - 29th

This week has been very busy. I had my only midterm on Monday for my Korean Conversation class and I haven't found out how I did on it yet, but I feel pretty good about it. Right after I got done with the midterm, I met with Eevie, Marie, and Josue and we had to get a bus to Gimpo Airport because we were flying out to Jeju Island. We left the campus at around 3, got to the airport around 7 and our plane left around 8:30. The plane ride was really short, it only took us about an hour to get there. Once we landed we had to get a taxi to our airbnb. Once we got all settled in, it was already about 10:30 at night so we walked around the town a little bit and found a nice little restaurant that served ramen. We found a brochure that had a lot of places that you could visit while you are on Jeju, so we decided to each pick out a place or two and try to get to all of them. The next morning we started off by going to Loveland, which was a very interesting place, but we didn't get to spend a lot of time there since there was a lot of other places that we wanted to try to get to that day too. After we left there, we went to a garden that took us about 40 minutes to get to by taxi. It was really pretty there. They had lots of bonsai trees set up all around and they also had a couple little ponds too that were full of koi fish. For 1,000 won (about 1 dollar), you could also feed the fish. As soon as we started walking towards the fish food, all of the fish in the pond immediately started to gather around and we probably spent a good 15 to 20 minutes just feeding the fish. Eventually we started walking through the garden again and we ended up stopping at the buffet that they had set up and we decided to eat there. It was nice because the had a little fruit section in the buffet and fruit is a little more expensive here than I am used to so I don't get a whole lot of it. Once we were done at the garden, we only had time for one more place since a lot of the attractions closed around 6. We eventually ended up going to the Alive Museum. This place was a blast. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but I'm glad that we ended up going. The Alive Museum is a place that has optical illusion art, media art, object art, sculpture art, and provence art. It's a little hard to explain what it is, but I'll include pictures and I think that would be the best way for me to show you guys what it is. We spent about 2 hours in here and the time just flew by because we were having so much fun. We then went back to our place and went out and got some dinner at a pork restaurant. The next day, we went to a place called Dynamic Maze. This place was basically just a giant obstacle course that you could do with your friends. We did 2 courses. The first one that we did was a little easier than the second and probably the hardest part of it was at one point, we were in a completely dark room and we had to feel our way around to try to find the way out. The second course was more time based and you actually competed with one other person. I ended up getting a slow time because I didn't realize that it was supposed to be a race and I waited for the person I was with to finish the obstacles and then I got stuck behind another girl that started before me and was having trouble crawling through one of the tunnels. We were all pretty tired after this, so we decided to do something more relaxing and we went to a tangerine farm so we could pick some. In our heads, this was going to be a great experience, however, when we got to the place, it was open, but there wasn't anyone there. We couldn't find any staff either. Now, this wouldn't really have been an issue since there were other farms to choose from, but we were basically up in the mountains in a very small town and we could barely connect to any wifi so we couldn't get a taxi. Eventually Eevie got her app to work and she called us a taxi and we thought we were all set, but for some reason the app reported that the driver had picked us up even though we hadn't even seen one. So, she got us another taxi and about a minute later, it canceled on us. After that, we couldn't even get another taxi. Eventually we made our way to what we thought was the main road and had a local call a taxi for us. We were finally on our to another tangerine farm and honestly, the one we ended up going to was probably a lot better than the one we were originally going to. This one had lots of things for us to do. It started out with a little butterfly house, and that led into a building that had some big beetles and reptiles that you could interact with. After that, the path led to a building that had a bunch of butterflies and beetles on display that you could look at. The next part had a few animals, including a dog that you could pet and some chickens. The most bizarre animals on that path though, were 2 ostriches! They had some food set up that you could feed to them too. After the ostriches was the place that you could pick your tangerines from. I keep calling them tangerines, but I think what we were technically picking was a type of orange called hallabong. I'm not sure what the difference really is, but the samples that they gave us when we entered were very delicious. Once we filled our bucket and bag, there were some more animals for us to interact with. This time there were dogs, raccoons, pigs, deer, goats, and rabbits. You can tell that the animals get a lot of people interaction because all of them came right up to the fence to get food and to be pet. We could actually enter the rabbit area and if you had food, they all gathered around to get some. At the end, there was a little roller coaster type if thing that took us around the farm and showed us all of the trees that they had that had fruit on them. I'm not sure if roller coaster is the right word to use though, because it was very slow moving. After we stopped at the gift shop we went back to our airbnb and flew back the next morning. On Friday, we finally started our culture experience class back up, so we made the trip to the Independence Hall of Korea which was about an hour and a half away from campus. Once we got there, we quickly had lunch before we started with our other activities. The first thing that they had us do was pick between a plate or a mug to paint glaze on and they would fire it again and send it to us once they are done. I chose to do a plate and the only rule that they gave us was that it had to have at least one Taegeuk on it. The Taegeuk is the circle symbol that appears on the South Korean flag. After we were done with that, we started to tour. It's a very interesting place and I wish we had more time there because we only got through some of the buildings that they had. We had a schedule though, so we had to leave by 4, but I would definitely want to go back and look around some more, and maybe even with some of the Korean students because a lot of them were saying that they hadn't been there before. To end the week on a good note, I went to the movies and saw the new Avengers movie and I loved it! Some people that saw it didn't like the ending, but I thought it was good.