Class trip in South Korea

I have never been on an overnight trip with classmates that didn't involve some type of competition while there. Until now!

The class trip …… was an interesting trip.

It was a 2 day/ 1-night trip with all the students participating in the Korean Language Program at Hannam. So, there were around 200 of us traveling to Suncheon in the southern part of Korea. It was an adventure traveling with so many people speaking different languages and having different levels of Korean. There was quite a bit of confusion at times with everyone involved, but everyone still had a great time.

Both days it was cloudy and at some points rainy, but it was still beautiful. Suncheon is known for its national gardens and wetlands. Our first stop however was this large traditional style Korean restaurant. I eat a lot of different types of Korean food, but sadly I was not a huge fan of this particular lunch. I ate some cucumbers and some fish…. That’s it.

The first main stop was this small folk village, that is still standing inside the walls of an old fortress. We were all climbing up on the walls and running around playing with all these little kids that were there. They were so cute, they all got really excited when they saw our group and kept saying hello in all of the languages they could think of. They had this exhibit style thing that you could see how they punished people. They even had an interactive portion. Which lead to some of us being a little more reserved and aware of what we were seeing while others thought it would be a fun joke to mess with it. I was surprised at the fact that people still live in some parts of the folk village. There are of course shops lining the streets selling traditional items, so my guess is that the store owners are the ones that live there but I am not a 100% sure about that. At one point our group found a small corner of a field behind this house and sat around singing. If anyone would have walked by, they would have been very confused!

Day one continued with a stop at this old school Drama set from the 80’s, it’s like a whole little town that is supposed to represent the outskirts of Seoul in the 1980’s. So, everything is now a little run down and they only have like 3 open stores, which are just like giftshops and snack bars. But they do have a place where you can rent old school uniforms from the time period and walk around the Drama set. The set did involve a little bit of hiking around, but the views from the top were gorgeous! But be careful of the old buildings because there are pieces coming apart and at some place’s nails were poking out. One of my friends almost backed into a large nail sticking out from a window frame.

It could have ended very badly.

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For lodging we stayed at a traditional Hanok style resort. Thankfully I was rooming with some of my classmates that I am pretty close with, so I didn’t have to share with someone I didn’t know. They feed us both dinner and breakfast, which meant free meals!!! The food was actually really good too, it was all traditional Korean foods. Traditional Korean breakfast is pretty hard to come by because most places are not open for breakfast per say, so it was cool to finally get the chance to have some! Besides the food, at the resort we had this weird talent show which one person from each class had to perform at……and guess who was voted in to perform?!?! Yep…ME! I am not the best singer at ALL but I was voted in, so I sang Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson. I also have like extreme stage fright so the fact that I was able to get up there and stand on my own was pretty freaking great! Once everyone had performed we separated into our classes and had this individual parties. It was this very cool opportunity for us to really get to know one another, which has been a little difficult to do because of the language barrier, but we all got a lot closer and had a lot of laughs. The alcohol probably was the biggest help in that category.

DAY 2! First stop was the Suncheon Bay National Garden, this massive expansive of gardens. They have gardens themed after every country basically, and some gorgeous architectural pieces. We were only given 2 hours here and there is NO POSSIBLE way to get through the entire system of gardens in that time. So, sadly the people I was exploring with only got to see a portion of it. The national gardens are also known for their spiral hills. They are literally what they sound like……hills that have walkways going in a spiral up to the top. The view from the top was amazing because you could see how far the gardens went. It sadly did start to rain while walking around, which made for a dreary kind of day.

The not so great weather continued at our next stop which was the marshlands. There was a bridge that wound through the marshlands, so you could really see them. This area was in the middle of a valley of mountains. I don’t have a memory of going to anything like a marshland before, so it was special to get to experience this ecosystem I had not had the opportunity to before. There were these crazy fish that hopped rather than swim…which makes sense because of the mud. But I didn’t even know those kinds of fishes existed, so I was so freaking amazed by them!! There was also an observatory attached to the marshland museum building. Sadly, since we were there during the day, we couldn’t see the stars, but you go a great view of the whole marshland.

So much happened in the span of two days. It was such a great trip though, I got to see a part of Korea that I probably would not have travelled to on my own while also getting to make some pretty epic memories with my friends.