House warming or jibteri

It is a Korean culture to invite friends and relatives to one’s newly built or rented house or homeJ So, we did, too.

We invited some friends to come over and have the food that we prepared and see where we live. Most of them were my friends from other countries who happened to be studying in Korea.  As the pictures show, our friends Laos (Changmi), Ghana (Felix), Uzbekistan (Jobirson), Japan (Chika & Akane), Kazakhtan (Ilya), Cambodia (Borey), China ( Arin & Iwol), Algeria (Maya), Indonesia (Wawan), and our family. Others were also coming afterwards to have dinner with us. 

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The house did become warm since lots of us came and sat together in one place. I thought that the house was big enough to hold all of our friends...but....then....it felt like so small...but that was the whole point. Being one in a two-room house would make the house warm.

NIIED friends from HUFS & KDI

After the last session of the first day of orientation, we kinda felt cold due to having to be in the auditorium for several hours. Since it was still daylight in the evening, we rushed to the front of the building to make ourselves warm. We managed to take some pictures. The white long-sleeved t-shirt that we were wearing was not actually  a uniform that we must wear, but since it was an occasion where lots of us came from different background, a sense of being united as the new member of NIIED scholarship recipients, most of us did wear it.

It kinda soothe the feeling being one.
Oh, I forgot to turn off the 6-frames-in-a-minute shot that I set up earlier, so when my friend took the picture, it automatically took 6 frames continuously. That's why I kinda shouted at what was happening.:)

Orientation for 2011 KGSP Scholarship Student (part 4)

After a series of lecture on Korea's Success Story from Prof. Kim Byoung Kwan from Ajou University, we were presented with a series of Korean cultural shows. It was a good thing that some of the performances did highlight the pinnacles of Korean traditional and modern cultures, in this case through dances.
A dance with samulnori (사물놀이)musical instruments, e.g. janggu (장구); a dance with traditional fans (fan dance, 부채춤) were only some of the shows being presented.

I think most of us did enjoy it since most of us did not yet have any previous experiences of seeing the live performances of Korean dances.
I think this was pretty much helpful to give a preliminary hint of what we may come up with during our stay in Korea. The songs and ambiance that accompanied the show were typically suited to the ear of first listeners, except the loud songs of samulnori percussion that for some may be deafening if they had no prior experience of seeing them being played. But, it was a good that the performance did up to the standard.

Orientation for 2011 KGSP Scholarship Student (part 3)

Now it was the time to take group photo session. Since there were around 270 people, it was impossible to take the whole group into one frame. First, we were about to squeeze ourselves into one, but it turned out to be quite perplexing to do. Eventually, we took turn to take pictures. After a while, it took us about 10 minutes for each group to take picture since it turned out to be a difficult job to direct the whole group. We did, though.

I did not waste a chance to get the pic of myself with half of the group being the background so as to keep a memory out of it. I wonder what the guy behind me doing. I am pretty sure that he must've been taking pictures while I did the same thing. It's just that he was standing on the chairs, then.:)

Lunch with my friends

from up front (left): Jobirson, Elmira, Borey, me
From up front (right): Felx, Nassef, Maya

For the first time....after a week of living on our own money or expenditure, today..we received our scholarship. It means I could give back the money I borrowed from my friend. It means my friends do not have to spend their own money on daily stuffs. It means my friends could start eat something decent starting from now on. No...it really DOES.

We were off to a restaurant where fish is served. Nasseff, our friend from the Phillipines, suggested a restaurant he went to yesterday. Off we went. It turned out that Maya, my friend from Algeria, loved it so much since it was the first time that she ate something decent. Out of 8, six of us are Muslim, so it is a bit hard for us to find a restaurant that serves only fish or any food with no pork or ham in it. But, eventually, we did it.
Nasseff ate 3 bowls of rice in addition to the already huge fish he had.
Felix, my friend from Ghana, turned out to eat not that much. I was wrong about him, though.
Wawan seemed to enjoy the fish he had, so did Jobirson, my friend from Uzbekistan.
As for Elmira, a friend from Kazakhstan, she found the fish she had as something delicious, too.

A Decent Meal at Last

Too bad, that my friend, Borey from Vietnam did not like the food she ordered simply because it did not look like the picture she saw on the menu. (imagine a McDonald ads. which looks so yummy with lots of veggies on its burger...yet it has only small amount of it.....) just like that.
Since I am the only one who cannot eat met or fish, I ordered dolseot bibimbap as usual.:)