June 11th - 17th

This week was the first week of finals so everybody was pretty stressed about them. I had two on Monday and I think that they went good for the most part. For part of one of my exams, I had to read a section out of a Korean story in Korean and the entire class, including the professor, had to grade me. It was a little nerve wracking, but I managed to get a section that I was fairly confident in reading. On Tuesday, I had my last class and we were supposed to have a final the following Tuesday, but the professor decided to just have us write an essay instead of taking a test during the class. Since I was done with classes and its my last weekend in South Korea, I decided to take a trip to Busan and meet one of my professors from SCSU there, since she was there visiting family. Since everyone else was going to Seoul for the weekend, I had to get their on my own. I took the KTX to Seoul with a group of other students, then I had to transfer to a different one to get to Busan. Once I got there, I met her at the train station and we decided to get the city bus tour. We started off by going to a place called BIFF Square, which was like a street market with a bunch of shops and street food. After that, we took the bus to a little place where we could look out at some of the islands just off the coast, and we could even go onto a little skywalk and look down at the sea. Once we were done there, we then took the bus to Songdo Beach and spent a little time there. One thing that they had there that we did was taking a cable car over the sea to the other side of the beach. On this side, they had a little park set up, and since Jurassic World had just come out, they even had big dinosaur statues set up that moved and made sounds. Once we were done there, we started to make our way to Haeundae, which is where my professor lives and where my hotel was. Before we called it a night, she took me to a spot where we could see Gwangandaegyo (광안대교) Bridge. I believe that this was the bridge that the movie Black Panther had shot its bridge, chase scene. We stopped at a restaurant that overlooked the bridge and we ate gomtang (곰탕), which is a Korean, beef soup that can be eaten with either rice or noodles. The next day, her brother and his son joined us and they actually had a car, so they were able to drive us around. Our first stop was by her brother's recommendation and it was to a Hilton hotel that had just recently been built. This place was very nice, it was kind of like its own little town all in one building, plus it was right next to the ocean so it had a really pretty view. We decided to eat a Chinese restaurant there, and then after we stopped for coffee at one of the cafes that was also part of the hotel. I was really excited about the next place that we went to because I had been wanting to visit it since before I had even gotten to South Korea. The next place that we went to was Haedong Yonggungsa Temple (해동 용궁사), which was also next to sea and we could actually see it from the Hilton. Unlike a lot of Buddhist temples in South Korea, this one was situated on the coast instead of up in the mountains. We spent a little while there looking around and it was really beautiful. I was not disappointed. Our next and last stop was to Haeundae Beach. We stopped at the Nurimaru APEC House, where world leaders met in 2005. It was really close to the beach, so we were able to walk along the beach for a little bit before I had to go. On Sunday, I met with the family that had first greeted me when I got here to South Korea. They came to Wonju for the day and I was able to show them around the campus for a little while. After we were done looking at the campus, we then went to a little water park that I found in Wonju so that their children could play in the water for a little bit. We spent a couple hours there, and once the sun started to set, we decided that we should probably try to find a place to eat. I took them over to the little street market in downtown Wonju, and we ended up eating at a place that we could use a little grill in the middle of our table grill little beef strips. Once we were done eating, it was getting to be time for them to start heading back, but we stopped for dessert first. We stopped at a little place that sold macaroons and the people there were really nice and gave us the macaroons for free. Then after that, we stopped at Baskin Robbins before it was time to head back.