Soccer & Dinner

Once a week me and my roommate meet a couple of Korean girls to do sports and have dinner afterwards. Last week we played basketball (which was surprisingly a lot of fun even though I usually hate basketball) and this week we played soccer. Wow, these girls were playing tough but after more than an hour we settled on an even result of 2:2 and headed out for dinner. It took us some time to decide what to eat and in the end we decided to have Shabu-Shabu (샤부샤부). Shabu-Shabu is a Japanese dish, where you boil different vegetables, meat and noodles in a broth and then eat it together with a spicy dipping sauce.

샤부샤부

HYmaster - English Debating Club

I never thought I would go to a Debating Club but here I am in Korea and just became a member of the HYmaster - English Debating Club of Hanyang University.
Two girls from my Qualitative Research Class asked me to go there with them and I thought I should just give it a try. There's nothing to loose, right?
The English Debating Club meets every Wednesday from 18:30 to 20:30.
First the president of the Debating Club introduces the topic of the week and gives a very short outline of the question or topic. Then the students are divived into small groups (we were all in all around 15 people, so we made two groups with 6 and 7 participants each). In those small groups some small group questions are discussed. These questions are mainly about personal experiences and opinions. I really liked this phase of the meeting because I learned a lot about Korean culture and mindset. Afterwards there is a big group debate, where the pro-side and con-side discuss with each other. During this phase the president acts as a moderator.
Today's topic was "Does competition in education contribute to the improvement of the society?".

I have to admit that I actually had a lot of fun during the English Debating Club and everyone spoke English surprisingly well, so it was no problem to have a debate in English with them. It was a nice and welcome change from everyday university life as well. The people there were also really friendly and nice so I was quite happy that I went there today and I will try to go again next week!

Royal Asiatic Society - Korea Branch

Yesterday evening I went to a lecture organized by the Royal Asiatic Society - Korea Branch. The RASKB is an organization which was founded in 1900 and serves the purpose to enhance the understanding of all aspects of Korean life, culture, language and history. They organize tours, publish books and a journal and have a lecture series. You can attend everything even if you are not a member but members of the RASKB get a small discount. Attending the lecture series is for free if you are a member but even as a non-member you pay only 5000 won (~ 3 €).
The venue of the lecture series is Somerset Palace Seoul which is probably the most high-brow hotel I've ever set foot in. I nearly didn't dare to go inside ;)
The topic of yesterday's talk was "The fruits of vandalism: Early Korean printing in its East Asian context" and was given by Dr. Peter Kornicki, a professor of East Asian Studies at Cambridge University. Movable letter type printing was actually developed by Koreans more than 100 years before Gutenberg did so. The talk was really interesting and also included many information on some East Asian writing systems such as Korean and Chinese of course but also about the Tangut and Khitan script.

The lectures are 1-2 times a month and I think I will try to go there as often as possible!

I was also able to buy a book there which I wanted to possess for some time already: "Hamel's journal and a description of the Kingdom of Korea 1653-1666" by Hendrik Hamel (translated by Br. Jean-Paul Buys, of Taizé). Long story short: in the 17th century some Dutch guys stranded in the so-called Hermit Kingdom (Korea) and because of the circumstances had to stay there for a long time. Korea was not really open for foreigners so that's why it was called the Hermit Kingdom (just in case you were wondering ;) One of the Dutch shipwreck survivors wrote a journal about this time and it is really interesting. Unfortunately this book is really hard to obtain in Germany. You could buy it used on amazon for more than 150 €, or you could buy it here in Korea for 12000 won (less than 8 €). The RASKB published a lot of other books as well and I think I will have to buy some more :)

Spring...Finally!

After it has been snowing only a couple of days ago, spring arrived here in Korea very surprisingly! Yesterday when I woke up and went to the language institute, everything seemed quite normal...but when I went back to the dorm from the student cafeteria after lunch I saw several beautifully blooming trees! I could swear they weren't there the day before and had to look twice to ensure that the flowers were actually real and not made from plastic! It seemed to me that some mysterious Heinzelmännchen-like creatures must have glued the flowers to the trees over night! Cherry-blossom time should be here or at least near as well and I can't wait to go cherry-blossom viewing!

And by the way, I had the most fantastic treasure-hunt-soup yesterday. I thought it only consisted of spicy red pepper sauce and cabbage but I found so many different things inside, it really was like a treasure hunt. I found dumplings, rice cakes, sausages, some kind of glass noodles and ham. Nice right :)

My treasure-hunt-soup

One of the side dishes was spicy green peppers pickled in a spicy red pepper sauce. I was really brave and ate one completely at once. For a few seconds I couldn't feel anything but then a red hot wall of spiciness hit me right in the face! I didn't eat the other one...

Who would have guessed that this is spicy?

GSU Membership Training

So called MTs (Membership Trainings) are quite popular among Koreans. A group of people, usually belonging to a certain network (like freshmen of a certain department, members of a student club, etc) rent a place somewhere in the countryside and go there over the weekend to bond and drink alcohol (or maybe the other way round, to drink alcohol and bond). So if you are going on an MT be prepared to drink (a lot!). If you don't want to drink or just drink a little bit, I guess it's better to just stay at home straight away.
On Saturday around 80 people (half Korean, half exchange students from all over the world) left from Hanyang University to attend the membership training of GSU (Global Student Union). We were asked to be at the student union building at 10:30 but we didn't actually leave before 12, which was really stupid because I would have liked soooooooooooooo much to sleep a little bit longer. I'm always tired as you probably already know by now ;)
On the way to a secluded spot outside of Seoul by bus (and by secluded I mean really secluded! there was nothing around our house, except another house for MTs ;) I guess they do that to not get any complaints about noise and so on), we stopped at a place to make traditional Korean masks. You get a mask-shaped cardboard piece and different colored modeling-clay and then you can start working. It is supposed to either look really scary (so all the bad demons get scared away) or really funny (so the demons laugh so much that they can't attack you).

Mine looks like this:

My mask...do you think it's scary?

I hang it over my desk so it can watch me studying...hehe, quite some motivation ;)

Mask-making in progress 1

Mask-making in progress 2

One of the Korean girls at my table made a really cute one! Don't know whether it can help scare away the demons though ;)

Cutest traditional Korean mask ever

After arriving and settling at our house we had a Korean food cooking contest. Three teams prepared traditional Korean foods which were then rated by the president and vice-president of GSU.
My team prepared some kind of Korean pancake/pizza which doesn't taste like pancake/pizza at all though. You basically mix up flour, water, salt, egg, spring onion, normal onion, octopus (yuck) and kimchi (traditional spicy pickled Korean cabbage). We made some without octopus though, which I was quite happy about.

Our ingredients

Full action cooking

Our team got second place in the cooking contest and after cleaning up we played a couple of funny games. At the end we had a big balloon fight, where you tie a balloon to your ankle and then the members of both teams have 30 seconds to destroy as many balloons of the other team as possible. The team with most balloons left after 30 seconds wins. My team won both times ;)
Afterwards we were all really hungry so we had Korean barbecue outside and after eating the real party started! It was a lot of fun, but sleeping arrangements were really uncomfortable. We were all sleeping on the floor and since we were too many people the rooms were really crowded. We had two small rooms for the guys, one small room for the girls and one huge common room for everyone where the party was being held. The floor was heated which was really comfortable at the beginning but after some time it was really too hot. When I came back to the dorm on Sunday afternoon, the first thing I did, as you might guess, was taking a long nap! But then there was also Korean homework to attend to of course...

Random Food

Since I didn't really post last week, here a recap of my meals (hehe, yes I do love posting about food):

왕만두

왕만두 (Wangmandu) were one of my favorites when I was in Korea last time, but somehow I couldn't really find them yet anywhere close to the university. I had these on Sunday when I was shopping and I was quite happy to find a place which serves them (it's not close to the university though). 왕 means king and 만두 translates to dumpling. So these are the king's dumplings ;) ohh they are so delicious and really filling! You just dip them into soy sauce and that's it. The only problem is that they are a little bit difficult to eat with chopsticks :)

Pig Barbecue Grill

I've posted plenty of times about Korean barbecue (because it's my all-time favorite), so here just a picture of the funny barbecue grill which was at the place where we had barbecue last week. Of course you make pork on it...poor piggy...

Sushi and Japanese Noodle Soup

I love Sushi! Probably even more than Korean barbecue so I really enjoyed this dish. The sushi was great and the soup plain fantastic! Not really Korean but at least Asian ;)

Now I wanna go to that Sushi-Buffet again...I went there last weekend and for 12.000 won (less than 8 euros) you can eat as much suhsi as you want. Even drinks (non-alcoholic) are included and the sushi is really good!

Fried rice with brown sauce and side dishes in the cafeteria

Usually I eat in the Chinese cafeteria though. It's very close to my language school and has good food. It's nothing great but cheap and good. Unfortunately the meals available don't change a lot so after some time the menu gets a little bit boring...and of course it's rice everyday ;)

Random cafeteria soup

My Desk

As a proof that I'm quite busy these days, here a picture of my desk:

I use the Nintendo DS as a Korean-English translator, so unfortunately no gaming :(