Korea's got Seoul! Part I

One of the things that I have not done enough yet, is travel around S. Korea.  I've been exploring Ulsan and getting very involved with the culture, but I have friends who are visiting Busan, Daegu, Andong, Seoul, etc.  It has been difficult because of how busy I am, but I managed to make it to Seoul twice this past week!  (Well I was in Daegu and now Busan on a field trip, but going with friends to explore is very different!)

The first trip was Monday a week and a half ago when I was invited by the MOE ("Ministry of Education") for a national holiday ceremony.  October 3rd is "Korea's birthday" so we had no school and I accepted this invitation.  All expences were covered by the MOE, so the bus tickets, the SPIRIT FESTIVAL tickets, lunch and dinner were all included.  It was nice because my neighbor Tamara (an American native English teacher like me) went as well, so we split a cab to the meeting place both in the morning and evening.  I'll be honest the Spirit Festival was fairly dry for me, but the trip was fun and they had side activities that we participated in (like drumming and cup stacking competitions).

The MOE had many Korean student volunteers come with us that ranged from middle school students to university students.  These are two of the volunteers, the one in the yellow's English name is Toni, not sure the other's.

This is Ji, the main MOE lady that I email about events and extra teaching opportunities.

The Spirit Festival was held in the old olympic stadium from the 1988 olympics.

Bad lighting here but I am in the stands on the middle level, then you can see the spectators seated on the field of the stadium.  You can see the stage on the opposite end.  The reason it was a little dry was because there were a lot of speakers, speaking only in Korean.  (even the Koreans that we were with were bored)  There was some chanting and dancing that we learned on the bus though, and there was a band.  However we missed the band when we went walking around. [bummer]

Here is Toni, Kristy, an awesome yellow mascot and Virginia.

Love this!

I was gettin' down on the galgo!

Me with the big blimp that was floating around the stadium :D

Notice the guy with white gloves!

He was helarious!

The different groups had signs to stay together, and it looked like a huge protest for a bit.  By the time I got this picture taken it had thinned out.. now I'll just pretend I'm a 99%er!

Some other native English teachers.