DAY 8 (July 18 2010): Play Day!

Today was our first “excursion” day, AKA play day! After being carbed up with rich breakfast (as usual), we headed for the Jeju Tourist Complex.

Breakfast was big as usual!

Russian eating a cookie with chopsticks. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

We walked a lot today. First we walked to the amazing volcanic rock beach. The rocks looked like they were blocks or man-made concrete! I’ve never seen anything natural that looked as elaborate and polished.

Near the volcanic rock beach, in front of a huge seashell

The water was beautiful blue/green

Don't they somehow look man-made!? Looks like a bee-hive.

On the way to the Botanical Garden on foot, we saw a lot of interesting plants/objects.

Palm tree flower?

Tequila flower? Aloe flower?

This was viewed from a bridge on the way to the Botanical Garden. It looks like a miniture model...

Then we decided to go see the waterfall and this turned out to be the highlight of today.

On the way to the waterfall, we saw a temple! *snap*

The sound and the view were magnificent, in addition to the spray from the waterfall being very cool.

A rainbow!

Lunch was at a very American style restaurant. But before we ate, we played pool! The Russian Catherine turned out to be a very skillful player, so was the Price from North Korea.

Catherine breaking the balls

Jin doing her Korean trick

We all ordered different foods, some ordered Lasagna, some ordered burgers, I ordered chicken curry. It was very surreal to hear Simple Plan or Fall Out Boy from the radio in Korea.

Very spicy (but good) chicken curry

Then we went to the Jung Mun beach, which is the best beach in Jeju according to my Jejuan roommate. The beach actually had sand, which was surprising to me because all the beaches we saw so far were made of volcanic rocks. It was the best beach weather with sun and heat! At this beach, we saw tourists from other countries such as China and Russia, but my shy Chinese and Russian friends refused to talk to them!

Best beach in Jeju?!

Garrett has to surf, he just has to.

Mermaidizing JH

Dinner was Chinese food, but again the Chinese students told us that the food was “indigenized” to Korean style. I don’t know if it’s because we walked so much today, or because the restaurant was the best in town, but the food tasted fan-testicle! Almost all the plates were emptied, which we don’t see at every meal due to the tremendous volume of Korean style food.

Noodle, fried rice, orange chicken, yellow radish, kimchi, etc.

On the way back from the restaurant, we saw the Teddy Bear Museum. We didn't have time to go inside, but we managed to take a picture at the sign!

Teddy Bear Museum. How bizarre.

On the way back to our dorm. Dima is in the next world.

At night, Jim presented us the final version of the model we will build. It incorporated all the models created by the students, plus his and the government officials’ inputs. It looked very curvey or round compared to most of the models students made, in addition to looking “buildable.” We only have three weeks to build this park so this is important.

Final model

Jim's concept drawing

Tomo

DAY 7 (July 17 2010): Creation? Clayation! Making Models with Water Clay

There hasn’t been a day when we didn’t have any outside activities since we got to Jeju, but today we stayed at our dormitory all day to create models with water clay.

Before making models, we divided into groups of six people with different nationalities (except for Koreans since we had the most number of them). I think this gave a very whirling dynamics because usually a lot of the students work with their nationals, speaking in their mother tongues. But here we had to speak in a common language: English. It was quite interesting to see who takes the lead, who jumps in to get their hands dirty, and who focuses on expanding concepts and drawings before making any model.







Lunch was pizza and fried chicken (which I missed), but what was fun was afterwards, we went to the beach right outside of our dorm! To get there was like the movie Ramboo, we had to walk through trees and go down the hill with no apparent steps or aid. Also the ocean had a bunch of rough rocks, waiting to mark scars on our skins. A lot of people got cuts and bruises after swimming in this volcanic rocks beach.

The rough surface of Jeju volcanic rocks are not friendly to human skins.

It's just impossible.

After the unplanned swimming in the spikes of volcanic rocks, we went back creating and polishing the models with clay. Before dinner, each group made a presentation of our “clayation.” I was very impressed with how real the models looked, and how well-thought-out each of them was. Kyle and Jim are right thinking that we needed all the “cultivation” in our heads, as the trips to the Stone Museum or the Jeju April 3 Peace Park, in order to come up with such sophisticated models.

Team Mike

Team Galel

Team Prince

Team Dima

We took a nice walk to the restaurant we would eat our dinner at. Usually we just drive straight back and forth to our dormitory, so it was nice to take the time and walk around the neighborhood we stayed in.

On the way to the restaurant

The dinner was Jeju original Heuk Tway Ji (black pork). It was so delicious! It actually had a lot of fat, which made the meat very soft and juicy. I had a ton of Soju, so by the time I left this place I was drunk out of my freaking eye balls.

On the way back from dinner, in front of our dormitory's sign (ghosts!?)

Tomo