Orientation - Field Trip to Jeonju

After a few days full of classes at orientation, we got the chance to go on a field trip to Jeonju. After giving us a few hours to roam and have free time, they had all sorts of cultural experiences planned for us. This included seeing the first church ever built in Korea, learning the basics of playing the traditional Korean drum, making paper fans and getting our first taste (at least for me) of Korean made bibimbap!

Before they released us to wander in our own little groups for our free time, we traveled with out class (class 1) to the meeting point for the day. Jeonju isn't a huge city, and the tourist and sightseeing area that we stuck around was even less the size, but it was nice to have something to base your wanderings around.

Jeonju was full of the little things that make me want to take pictures everywhere. As soon as I realized this, I was so sad because I'd forgotten to bring my real camera! Later on back at the campus though, I realized it would have been futile to bring my camera along anyways because I had accidentally left my memory card back in the states.

A small group of us hiked the small hill at the center of the city to see the temple at the top. This was my first real experience with the Korean temple, and I immediately fell in love with the colors and the painted patterns.

On our way hiking back down the hill, we got a great view of the city that gave us more perspective. Jeonju is large, but we were only in the old and traditional part of it that all the tourist go to. In the distance, you can see the more modern constructions.

This is the church in the old part of Jeonju. It was the first church ever built in Korea. We used this as the meeting point for our class and took a big group photo in front for good measure. It took a while for us to set it up and fit everyone in. Some of the Korean tourists were very annoyed with us because we were blocking their photos. Others were waving to us and saying hello because they were so surprised and happy to see so many foreigners in one place.

 After the group picture we walked to a nearby restaurant that catered to the entire orientation crowd for lunch (spread out at different points during the day to be more manageable though - there were 6 classes with about 50 people in each). We ate bibimbap! This is a very typical Korean food were there are all sorts of veggies, leaves, dried meat, egg mixed with rice in a red pepper paste. At this point in time, I was no where near prepared for how spicy Korean food normally is and I actually wasn't able to finish my lunch. However, it was a great first experience!

After lunch, class 1 made its way to some other traditional buildings were we got to learn the basics of playing the Korean drum! I got lucky and was put in the smaller class of the two. It was extremely fun to play the rhythms they taught and try to interpret what our teacher was telling us since he didn't speak English.

After our drum lesson, we went to a different building where we spent the next hour making our own paper fans! It was a simple process, but involved a lot of glue and got a little messy. I finished first out of anyone at my table, so I decided to take a few of the extra paper pieces and make a design on mine. The instructor loved my creativity, and after a few other people noticed it, everyone started copying me.