Monday, May 27, 2019
How do you show someone you love them? How about waking up at 2:30am local time to watch your brother’s high school graduation? Yeah, I think that’s a good way too. Four years ago, I was on my baseball trip and missed my brother’s middle school graduation. This year, my required class conflicted with his high school graduation. Oops. Thankfully the high school live streams the ceremony for remote guests! Unfortunately, the stream wasn’t working. It looked like someone forgot to hit the start button. But, that’s okay, my sister was able to snap chat video me in! I made it with plenty of time to catch the Spiderman references in one of the faculty searches, agree with my former biology teachers plea for all of the graduates to “be bold” with their futures, and watch my brother cross the stage and accept his diploma! I caught a quick nap before face-timing back in a few hours later for presents. It was a very nice morning, and we will all get to celebrate in person when I get home.
Thankfully today was a late start for our program. I needed a nap after presents. I decided to give our local dining hall a try. Typically we are meeting up before they open around campus. Unless you want a cup of coffee, food is hard to come by before 10:30 around here. It was a gross, rainy, chilly, kind of morning, so I naturally got a chilled noodle soup. In retrospect I should have gotten a warm soup, but those broths were a dangerous red color and I was wearing a white shirt (also not the best decision with rain, but oh well). I didn’t think it was best to test my luck with the “stainable” option. The cold noodle soup with radish and cucumber was very yummy and I was able to order through a kiosk with an English language – simple victories.
Today was all about TV. First we stopped at the MBC studios adventure park/showroom to see what they are doing with virtual reality. Our tour included a holographic concert with some K-Pop bands I didn’t recognize. They had a ton of VR equipment. Some stations where you could drop yourself into a movie poster, have a star sign a postcard for you, go to a concert in a VR headset and so much more. It was a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.
After MBC we stopped by the JTBC newsroom to see their news team in action. We were able to look through their mini museum, which highlighted some of their top points in history. The station is interesting, it is trying to be the next CNN, and has many news programs to help achieve that. However, they have a wide range of drama, cooking, and comedy shows as well. To me it felt more like an ABC or NBC back home, but here’s hoping they make their goal at becoming their “CNN”. We got to walk past a news room in action, there were teams editing live broadcasts and writing up new scripts. The coolest part of this tour was being able to sit in their primary news studio. We weren’t on TV, but I can pretend I was a news anchor all the same.
After getting back from our time in front of the green screen, we went wandering a bit farther than usual for dinner. We found a Korean craft brewery on the west side of the city called Craft Hans. It looked good and smelt good, and we were hungry so it was a good match.
The beer selection was good so I grabbed a flight. Unlike in the states, I didn’t get to pick the beers in my flight, I got to pick a set. I chose the one with the fewest pale ales and IPAs.
From left to right: Han (Korea) Pale Ale, Mango Ale, Dark Ale, Pilsner. They weren’t the most creative with names but the beers were pretty good.
For dinner we ordered a couple salads, a basket of fried chicken – Korean style, and French fries. It’s been a while since I had fries, and I didn’t realize how much I missed deep fried potato in my life over here in the land of noodles and soup. Noodles and soup are delicious, but fries are so satisfying to munch.
I feel like my days are getting shorter and I am getting sleepier. We called it pretty early Monday night to try and keep our energy up for the rest of the week, I have a feeling I will be quite the zombie my first week back home.