Orientation: First Day

Today was my first day of orientation. I woke up and went to breakfast, which was... haha... "Western style". By that, I mean it was hamburger patties and fries. Mmmm! Masshisoyo! (It's delicious!)

Afterwards, I went to my first meeting in my group (people are grouped here according to which province they will be teaching in. We learned each other's names and were prepped for today's activity: a scavenger hunt in Seoul.

We had lunch at 10:30 (early!) and then got on the buses to go to Seoul. This time, our bus was permeated by cigarette smoke, probably still lingering in the frilly purple curtains hanging from the windows. Regardless, our bus driver was.... similarly excited to get us to Seoul as fast as possible.

In Seoul, we went to the headquarters for the Ministry of International Education (our benefactors) to attend a welcoming ceremony.

Speeches.

Then they gave us a cultural program! We watched a performance of pangut (I don't know the translation) and you can watch one too with this YouTube video link:

Pangut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFVA9GA9LM

The next performance was by the "Rainbow Choir" which was a bunch of little kids from different ethnic backgrounds. To be honest, it was kind of like "It's a Small World" come to life. They even danced a little bit. It didn't look like they were enjoying the performance though, none of them smiled, they all sort of just went through the motions :S

Rainbow Choir (last year)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAV1bnDSn2A

The final, and most amazing performance of the day was done by a Taekwondo group called "K Tigers". It was mindblowing, they were so good!! They were chopping boards and flipping and screaming and punching. Such coordination!

K Tigers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqs9rZf0ZCE

After the opening ceremony was over, we went on our scavenger hunt. We were split into teams, given a map of a district in Seoul, and told to go take pictures at certain checkpoints. Luckily, we were going around Gwanghwamun, Insadong, and Jongno (which is where Bo took me :P) so it was easy not to get lost. TaLK gave us each a 10,000 note and told us to go eat somewhere nice. Our team decided to eat at a place called Shinpowoorimandu, a dumpling restaurant (Mandu is the word for dumpling). They were SO delicious, and cheap too! It only cost 3,500 ($3.50) for a steamer basket of dumplings. You could easily eat well for $5.00 here.

Finishing up, we came back to Jochiwon (same driver, this time he absolutely floored it coming home and we were the first bus to arrive for 10 minutes :)

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I forgot to mention! I've got some good cultural stories.

- The other day, Bo and I were in the subway station, when harabojii ("grandfather") came up to me and asked, "Canada?" To which I answered affirmatively. He then proceeding to say "Vancouver! Montreal! Toronto! Ottawa!" and then talked about "Indian" and made a gesture towards the top of his head. I thought he was talking about East Indians, but then he started to make a war chant, so I knew he was talking about First Nations people.

- Today when we were walking around Gwanghwamun, I saw a truck drive by with a giant screen on the side. "Ooh a mobile commercial. How clever." I thought. Then I saw what the truck was advertising was not a product at all, but it was a video of dogs being cruelly mistreated in Korea's food industry (yes, they sometimes eat dog here). The advertisement claimed "Dogs are friends not food."