IES Abroad Trip

I’ve already mentioned the Seoul Tower and the DMZ trip in another post so here’s the other IES Abroad trips :)

Jeonju - Hanok Village

For this trip Allison and KS were the advisors for this trip and we got to dress in Hanbok.

One of the things we did was painted our own fans. We were given a little history lesson before and then were given a blank white fan where we were given the freedoms to paint and draw whatever we wanted. Some of the people in my cohort who were more artistically inclined had some very pretty fans in the end, many drawing cherry blossoms of course.

One of the main aspects of this trip was of course dressing in hanbok. The hanboks were honestly way more comfortable than I had originally thought they were going to be.

Han River

For this trip Joy and KS were the advisors for this trip.

This trip was later in the day so we were given a bit of the day to ourselves to go around the Han river to see the cherry blossoms on our own time before meeting up. However, for us it was raining so there wasn’t much of an interesting view to see. We had some food before getting to board the cruise. There was a violinist performing and we were able to go on top the cruise, where again it was raining occasionally. I honestly think this trip would’ve been a little better if the weather were more favorable.

Gangneung Overnight Trip

For this trip Allison and Joy were the advisors for this trip.

Because it was an overnight trip we were allowed to pick roommates and some had singles due to circumstances that IES Abroad does account for. The advisors were very understanding of us whenever we needed to explain what was happening that needed accommodating.

We went to the Arte Museum in Gangneung and the displays were really cool! They had many smaller rooms that were all themed and scented to the theme.

Later we made tofu in smaller groups. We put soybeans in a specific grinder for tofu and took turns stirring or adding soybeans. In the end we were allowed to try each other’s tofu and some tofu that was made by the workshop and everyone thought it was delicious!

Because we were about a 10-minute drive away from the bus stop in the BTS music video Spring Day, a friend and I woke up super early to go and take pictures. We were the only ones there for a couple hours so it was nice to be able to just enjoy the view and the moment.

After we went on a hike and the view was really pretty. I’m personally not one for hikes, especially if there’s no view to see, so I and a couple others headed back down earlier while the others continued up.

Before we left to head back to Seoul, we were given some money and taken to Gangneung Market to get ourselves dinner or any knickknacks we wanted.

~ Honorable Mention ~

Allison’s little class thing

Professor Yu holds a class for local Yonsei students to help improve their English through conversations and Allison invited us to join so we could all ask each other questions about anything that came to mind about each other. After we were put into smaller groups of one foreigner to an amount of local students where we got to leave and hangout with each other.

I thought this was a lot of fun. They were all at varying levels of English, but it was still easy enough to understand the point of what they were all meaning. It was honestly a little bit awkward because many of the students were definitely a fair bit introverted, but I still overall enjoyed it.