The ~Ing Conference

I lied.

I'm sorry. I said that the next blog post would be a list of differences between the US and Korea. But then the ~Ing Conference happened. So I'm going to tell you about that instead.

Day 1: Sunday Night

We (all the exchange students in our district except two) arrived at Suwon Station at 4pm. There we met a couple Koreans and a Canadian and then we all got on the bus and headed towards Gyeonggi University, where much of the conference would take place. On our walk up the hill to the right building we met a guy from Cameroon who was also a part of the conference (there are a lot of people from Cameroon in Korea). When we arrived we went into the cafeteria (that had the very interesting name of "Kyonggi Dream Foodteria") and met a ton more people from all over the place. We sat at tables according to our teams. The three teams were Politics, Science, and Arts and Culture. I was in Politics. I didn't want to be, but that's just the way it worked out. In the end I was really happy with my team. So then we spent the rest of night hanging out, eating dinner and getting to know each other. It will take a bit to list everyone on my team, but I will be mentioning them a lot and would like to use their names, not their nationalities. My team had four other Americans, all Rotary students like me, but three of them were new faces to me because they are in different districts. There were two Germans, one of them being Benedikt (I already knew him well, he's in my district) and Arne (not Arnie) who was just in Korea for the conference. There was one girl from Poland, Julia. There was a guy, Fernando, and a girl, Laryssa, from Brazil. There was one guy, Kah Ming, from Singapore. There was one guy, Middle, from China (that's the English translation of his name). There was one guy from Canada, Matika. There was a guy and girl from Mexico, Edraz and Mari. They are both in my district as well. There were also three Korean guys and five Korean girls. There were also people on other teams from places like Turkey, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Philippines.

Hyojung Jiyoung Arne Matika
Middle and Mr. Wang

After we finished dinner and had exchanged pins and things like that we rode the bus to the hotel/resort we would be staying at the next five nights. I was in a room with Mari and two Korean girls, Eunjung and Doori. All three of them basically became my best friends by the end of the conference. They're all just wonderful adorable girls. The room we were in was a nice size with a really pretty view out the window. The only downside was that there weren't any beds. We slept on futons on the floor.

Day 2: Monday

The first morning we had breakfast at the hotel at seven. We then sat in the lobby and waited until maybe eight thirty for the buses to come to take us back to the university. When we got there we split up into our teams and went to separate rooms. Then a few different people gave presentations about various political and human rights subjects. They were all options for the topic we would choose for our final presentation . Then we had to go and sit through the opening ceremony for the conference. There was a performance by the universities band in the beginning. It was interesting. They were a rock band, and they were good, but the singer was very flat the whole time. Then we sat through a couple speeches that took a long time because they were given in Korean and then translated into English. 

After that we got back together with our groups and for a couple hours decided which topics we would present on (one for politics and one for human rights) and started organizing our powerpoint. We ended up choosing the topics of youth political participation and humanitarian intervention. After that we had dinner and went back to the hotel. Once we got there we had a little bit of time to rest, but then we got together with our teams again and started typing the powerpoint and practicing a couple of the more theatrical things we had planned. We went to bed really late.

Day 3: Tuesday

Tuesday we didn't do much with our groups and our presentation and we didn't go to the university. Instead we listened to three different lectures at the hotel. The first was about art. It was in Korean and translated into English by this really cool Korean lady who had a British accent. I found it to be pretty boring, considering it took a long time to say anything and I didn't agree with a lot of the things he was saying about various pieces of art. After a short break we then sat through a lecture about criminal...stuff. I don't really know how to explain it. It was basically whether the things most people think will stop crime really will. Then we ate lunch and then went back for the last lecture. This one way by a former Korean Congressman (I think) who was paralyzed from the neck down because of an accident. So he basically told us his story and talked about people not accepting people with handicaps as leaders. But every story he told he told with extreme detail and he spoke very slowly and it had to be translated so it was very long and boring. Try as hard as I could, my attention would just not stay focused.

Afterwards we all hopped on the buses and we were taken to a Buddhist temple. It was the first one I had been to so it was pretty cool, despite the fact that it was raining. The architecture and painting was beautiful. We were only there for a short time and were taking a ton of pictures, so I didn't get much of a chance to look at the inside of the temple.

When we got back to the hotel we just ate dinner and worked on our presentation more. And went to bed really late (in case you haven't caught on yet, that happened every night, so I'll stop mentioning it).

Day 4: Wednesday

In the morning we went to the university and practiced our presentation for about two hours and ironed the last details out (as much as we could anyway). Then after lunch we gave our presentation. The science team did theirs on recycling, and the culture team did theirs on eastern assumptions of western culture and vice versa. I thought that everyone did an amazing job, especially considering topics like humanitarian intervention are hard enough to talk about in your own language, let alone one that you don't speak very well (Most of the people there had very good English, but not all of them).

Then we headed into Seoul! It was my first time there, so I was very excited. First we hate Samgyupsal, which is basically pork belly that you grill at the table and then wrap in lettuce along with whatever sauce and vegetables you want. Or you can eat it like me and just dip the meat in salt XD. It was fun to teach Laryssa how to cook and eat in properly.

Then we went into the part of Seoul called Insa-dong. It's the area of Seoul that is very traditional. So there were a ton of shops filled with hanboks and fans and traditional tea sets ad silverware and stuff like that. Insa-dong and Jeju Island are the two biggest tourist areas in Korea so most of the people working at the shops could speak English, which was really helpful. I ended up spending most of the time alone, but that was on purpose. It was nice to just enjoy what I wanted to see all by myself and have a break from the people I had been seeing constantly for the past four days. I ended up buying myself a pretty green bracelet to go with the one I bought at the temple and a fan. I also have a fan from Spain and a fan from Japan, so I'm glad I have one from here now.

We were told to be back at the university by ten thirty and that the buses would be leaving at eleven so we left Insa-dong at around nine to get back in time. We went a different route back and ended up waiting about half an hour for our bus. I spent that whole time just chatting with Kah Ming about my childhood. We somehow got on the topic of horses and how my mum owns five, and then he asked me about my other pets in America and it turned into a very long conversation full of laughs. It was a nice end to a rather stressful outing. We got the university about fifteen minutes late, but it didn't really matter. The buses were about thirty minutes late anyway. But then it turned out that there wasn't quite room for everyone on the first round. I originally was going to go first, but I gave up my spot for Julia. So I ended up standing on my sore feet a bit longer. When we finally got on a bus I sat with Kah Ming and we talked the whole forty five minutes ride home. We got back to the hotel about ten minutes after midnight and on the bus I had told Kah Ming that it was my birthday. Right before we got off the bus I saw him talking to Matika and I was thinking "they're planning something aren't they?". I was totally exhausted and had had a tiring day so it was super sweet that when we got to the lobby of the hotel Matika got everyone's attention and they all sang me happy birthday. It was a really good way to end the day before I crashed in bed and fell asleep in about thirty seconds.

Day 5: Thursday

In the morning I went to breakfast alone and was almost the only one there. It was really fun as tired people trickled in they would say hi to me and then stare at me for a second as if they had forgotten something and they would say "Oh! Happy Birthday!" It was pretty funny. And throughout the day Coraline and Gi Oon told me Happy Birthday every time they saw me.

The first thing we did was take a two hour bus ride up to the border of North and South Korea. So I literally looked out over this big valley and could see North Korea on the other side. We also went in this tunnel underground, but it was low ceilinged and wet and in the end just hurt my legs. Then we ate lunch in a park nearby and then were on the bus another two hours back to the university. I slept on the way there and on the way back.

In the afternoon we had the closing ceremony. There was another couple boring speeches and then there was a few rewards given. Then we were all left in suspense as the lady waited to tell us which team had been the best and won the outstanding team award. Sadly, it was not my team that won, but the science team. But it was all so much fun that I really didn't care one bit whether we won or not.  

Then went back to the Dream Foodteria for our last dinner together. It was really sad because some of the people were leaving that night and not the morning after. It was really sad for me because it was almost over and I didn't really want to go back to school where I don't really have any friends. For almost a whole week I had lots of good friends, and I had to leave them all behind. But it was nice all the same. And Mari surprised me with a beautiful birthday cake. It was just a couple little cake snack things stacked with the words "H.B Emy" in jelly on them, but it was amazing anyway. She brought it out and everyone sang to me and it made me cry I was so happy. Everyone was like "don't cry!" and I just tried to tell them that it really was because of joy. They didn't really believe me. I could have cried about the things I was sad about but I stopped myself. “Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.” (Markus Zusak).

After dinner we had some teary goodbyes and lots of hugs and a slow ride back to the hotel. The night each team had their own little parties in separate rooms. My team just ordered chicken and played two truths and a lie to get to know each other a little bit better. I stayed up until maybe around two thirty in the morning and only slept for about four or five hours. A lot of other people were up a lot later than I was.

Day 6: Friday

This day pretty much just consisted of us sitting in the hotel lobby getting lots of pictures and saying goodbye to people and giving everyone hugs. The bus ride to Suwon station was really quiet and sad. A few of us ate lunch together, but after that it was really over and I just wanted to get home and sleep. So I did. I went to bed around midnight after putting all my pictures on facebook and friending all of my new friends. On Saturday I woke up at around noon and decided I was still tired and could sleep a bit more and then woke up again at five. That was the latest I have ever gotten up in my life. The day felt like such a waste, but I felt so good to make up all that sleep.

So, basically, the conference was one of the best experiences of my life and I will never forget the friends I made there. All the time in between I didn't mention here was just filled with talking to people and learning about each others cultures. My closest new friends ended up being my roommates, Matika, Kah Ming, and Nicole and Jenny from America. Shout out to you guys, you all rock! You'd better come visit me again!

I would also like to briefly mention that I am now going to a church with an English service and have friends there. But I'll talk more about that in a later post. This one is too long anyway. Until next time!