Soon Chun Hyang Opening Ceremony 순천챵대학교 2011 학년도

Today we joined the 2500 new students to Soon Chun Hyang University. We were taking a bus into Seoul and it took about 2 hours. The ceremony was held at Jamsil (잠실) Olympic Stadium, Seoul in the indoor stadium. This is where the 1988 Summer Olympics were held. It was a HUGE event there were cameras everywhere. If you did not know already, Korea is definitely all about presentation.

This ceremony was only for the brand new 1st year students coming into Soon Chun Hyang this March. We started to head inside the stadium and received greetings from "clowns" (they were not scary, thank goodness) that were making balloon animals.

Inside is where the ceremony was held, look at all the students!!! Unfortunately for us besides a translator telling us what will happen next, ie. The Dean of SCH will be giving a speech, EVERYTHING was conducted in Korean. So the ceremony felt super long and a bit boring. However, there was a game period where this freshman won 100 baek man won = 1 000 Canadian dollars and a Korean idol group was performing!!!

These are two famous news anchors in Korea.

2NE1 was at the opening ceremony!!! This is Dara =) My favourite member.

Here is all of them from left to right: Dara, Park Bom, CL, Minzy. I was so excited since they are a group I really enjoy and I got to see them for free! What was also really cool was that the other international students were also really into them. Not that other Korean groups are not great, but normally if you are coming from America listening to musicians in other languages could be strange. Especially if they have genres which are slightly different or more authentic to the Korean culture that may not exist in America. However, 2NE1 is one of the groups that has more American RnB and Hip hop influences in their music so I think it was an easy adjustment for everyone. We all had fun during their short 4 song performance!!!

After the ceremony we headed straight back to SCH. Since it ended at around 5:15pm we were stuck in traffic and did not make it back to Asan till around 8pm. I was so hungry so a big group of us went out for samgyupsal (삼겹살) which is pork belly. You sit down at a table and barbeque your own meat. Then you wrap it in lettuce and put whatever you want in the wrap. I normally enjoy it with garlic, onion, rice and mixed soy bean paste. I love this stuff so much and I am so happy I am in Korea so I can enjoy this very often!

Here is Anna Lee (from the Philippines) cooking the food and Olliver & Perpetua is right beside her.

After dinner we went over to a Japanese restaurant to continue to hang out and enjoy the Korean culture. Karen, Perpetua and I

Olliver (Canadian Buddy! Woot), Me, Karen, Perpetua, Freggy & AnnaLee

I got a video of 2NE1 - I Don't Care LIVE. This is one of my favourite songs from them!!! I love how you can hear my other international friends clapping along to the beat =)