Sparkling Daejeon : Hanbat Arboretum

November 21, 2010 on cold Sunday, some of Indonesian friends and I did not have things to do this day. And, I came up with idea to experience our Daejeoon, we went to other cities but we have not taken a trip in the city where we lived in. Then without planning anything, we had breakfast took our jackets also cameras and the map we had, then we left for Hanbat Arboretum, 111 Dusandaero, Seo-gu.

That day was late of autumn and the scenery was awesome, the trees re brown no every plant almost all in brown. Then, with this condition we played around Daejeon city, we took subway, then walked, no actually I preferred to walk because the weather was chilly and the air was refreshing. I wished I had bicycle that time hahaha. Soon we arrived, we walked more than 500 meters from the the National Government Complex Station ‘the station where we stopped from Daedong Station’.  Generally, every season is different, so Hanbat Arboretum has 4 different looks along the year, because it was autumn so the scenery was like this picture below :

 

Visiting Busan ! (part 2)

Hello again Busan !

After eating at Jagalchi Fish Market, we moved to Seomyeon area, we entered Seomyeon First Street then Seomyeon Daehyeon Underground Shopping Center and I met my friend .

Meeting friend at the underground shopping market !

With map I brought, we found a way to Busan Tower from here, It was perfect because we arrived at night so we can see the whole Busan city with colorful light from the top of the tower. We paid 7000 won (around Rp 56.000) each person and went up using elevator. Right, and guess what I found? I found Monas picture hanged on the wall inside the tower, there were lots of tower pictures from other countries also.

Busan Tower at night, awesome right?

Busan City from top of the tower

Monas in Busan Tower

 

Visiting Busan ! (part 1)

Hello Autumn !,

So, next schedule is going to Busan in two days and one night. We found a guest house named ‘Indy House’ – you can search on Mr.Google. Well, we booked the room via internet, the guest house was surprisingly friendly and comfortable, it actually a small apartment with some rooms and they offer 3 kinds of room which are single, double and dorm-room. They provide computer and internet, serve meals by ourselves in the kitchen, the most important was we could meet another group of foreign people who were currently traveling in Busan also staying in this house for few days. Ah ya, Indy House was located near Kyungsung University & Pukyong university in Busan, and fortunately I could meet my friends who is studying in this university. NICE !

Inside the Indy House

November 13, 2010 with KTX – 07.20 am tickets on our hands, we tried to wake up early in the morning and soon went to Daejeon Yeok. We arrived in Busan Yeok after two hours trip, we went to Indy House put our things and started our journey in Busan by having breakfast in McDonalds near that house.

First, we went to Taejongdae area, took Taejongdae Excursion Ship Marina through Pebble Beach which has big rocks around then through Taejongdae Observatory and finally stopped by at Sinseon Rocks then we walked up till Yeongdo Marine Cultural Space, by seeing the blue sea with strong wave I missed Indonesia at that time and started thinking that Indonesia has more than this . Anyway, as long as we walked we took pictures as well.

this was on our way through Pebble Beach, on the ship !

birds flying over the big rocks !!

 

Going to Lotte World : Largest Theme Park

One of our weekend in Autumn Season was filled by playing in Lotte World. I remember it was a year ago, November 6, 2010. Although it’s school trip, we needed to pay 20.000 won (Rp 160.000), it was quite cheap because it’s included transportation from Daejeon to Seoul and the fee to enter Lotte World and play all the games.

Lotte World is the world’s largest indoor theme park, and one of Seoul’s main theme park and its attracts about 8 million visitors annually. The park is divided into an indoor and outdoor linked by a monorail. The indoor includes the ‘Adventure Land’ with acres of streets representing different countries and are filled with hundreds of activities, entertainments, shops, restaurants and ongoing parades. There is also an ice-rink and a fascinating Folk Museum complete with miniature villages.

Lotte World is like a small city with an amusement park, folk museum, sports center, skating rink, water slide park, shopping center and the hotel. Lotte Department Store is one of Korea’s leading department store. The shopping center with dozens of small specialty shops surrounds a large, open central area that has a large food court. Lotte World is one of favourite Theme park Tourist destination besides Everland and Waterpia.

An indoor theme park connected with Lotte Hotel and Lotte Department Store, Lotte World is the Korean recreation center most frequently visited by foreigners. Lotte World consists of the indoor amusement park “Adventure” and an outdoor one as well, dubbed “Magic Island.” The outdoor Magic Island has numerous, thrill-packed attractions. Even the castle itself is an awesome background for photographs. At the indoor facility, “Adventure,” actually there are World Carnival Parade and Cosmos Circus Laser which are particularly eye-catching said my Korean friends, But I did not have a chance to see both of the Parades.

 

Autumn Comes

Wow, has been long time almost 2 months I didn’t write about Korea-Experience. So, this is the next story when the season changed from summer to autumn… EXCITING !!!

You know, as almost everybody says the best season in Korea is Autumn, I started to think that I was lucky going exchange in that season. Imagine, the leaves changes color, but some remain green. This is the beauty, today maybe we can see the leaves are green, next few days it changes to red or orange, and few days later it changes to yellow, and the next week after when the heavy-cold wind comes, the leaves finally fall down and become brown. Then people are busy cleaning the road from the dead leaves which scattered around.

Well, although it’s not winter you will feel the coldness entering your bones. It’s true since this season has really heavy wind and low degree. Sometimes it’s 10 degree, or even until 0 degrees. Fortunately in the room we have heater, so we will not feel cold in the room. You know, we don’t need fridge for putting our milk, juice, yogurt, and vegetables because we have nature-fridge which is outside our window so they remain fresh . but of course there is an exception, we can’t put fast-food  and ready-food like soup, rice, cooked-meals because they will be frozen and not delicious to eat anymore.

The coat I have there should be thick enough to prevent wind touches my skin and coldness enters my body. It’s torturing when I walked alone on the way to dorm at night and suddenly the wind comes from no where, makes my step to stop then I tried to jump to make some heat for my body. Actually movement makes heat in our body, is it ?.

Now that I’m in Indonesia I really really miss this coldness and Korea <3.

 

Hiking at Gyerongsan National Park

What a wonderful day ! hope today will be enjoyable as we dream and imagine. Happy reading ^_^  !

At first I wanna tell ya, what was I thinking when I was hiking this mountain? well, yeah I realized Indonesia has more mountains and better mountains. But, they have more interesting mountain, the people are smart using it for hiking to see the invisible scenery inside the mountains or behind the mountains, even on the really top of mountains. Of course the mountains are high, but their government facilitate them place and road to walk and hike the mountains. And what can we see? the mountain stays as it should be with their real nature, but they design to make people enjoy the mountains without feeling any danger, well imagine what comes first when we talk about mountain : dangerous and animals .

Above all those, we can conclude it’s about culture. Their people love to hike the mountain as sport or just for family gathering, or for taking pictures, or maybe just for see the temples. It’s the problem, their government see their people’s habit, so they do facilitate this kind of mountains for hiking. Sometimes, I am being so jealous I don’t have this in my country while we have many mountains, but mountains are dangerous here.

Well, back to topic. As this was my first time hiking in Korea I was little bit nervous what could I see there, and how high the mountain would be. That was on Saturday September 25th, 2011, 15 days after my 19-birthday and Eid Mubarak. “Don’t forget to bring the camera with you because we will see really beautiful nature”, I remember this words that made me so curious about what would I see while hiking. We took public bus to get there because it’s so convenient and cheap. On the way there, there were also ahjumma (aunt in korean) and ahjoshi (uncle in Korean) in the same bus and ready to hike with hiking costumes and equipment, I was so surprise it’s something that I don’t usually see in Indonesia. Why many people were going for hiking today? well because this season, autumn, especially in the beginning of the season is the right time for hiking because it’s not too cold and not having heavy wind.

Of course what we could find in the middle of mountain, trees and waterfall. I enjoyed walking through the stones and found people were washing their feet and hands with the water falling from the top of mountains through the stones. But you gotta be careful to step, on our way down my friend fell down because the stones that we step on were so slippery. And his camera also fell down unfortunately the LCD was broken. So be Careful

 

First Time Going to Seoul ( 2 )

Hi again !

Satisfied looked around Gyeongbokgung Palace, we continued to walk to Seoul Tower, but our stomaches were singing, and shouting wanted to eat. hehehe, so we walked through Insadong and finally we found Korean Restaurant. Insadong is one of famous market where we can buy Korean souvenirs, Korean Ginseng, and still many interesting things. And also a lot of Tea and Wine stores there, you would not walk straight before you stop by at the restaurant, you would feel so unlucky if you don’t try the food.

After we ate our lunch, we directly took our way to Seoul Tower. We took taxi and Seoul Tower’s bus, finally we arrived here, instead of going up to the tower, I preferred going inside the Teddy Bear Museum. Seoul Tower more beautiful in the night than in the noon, when night you can see the light of this metropolitan city, like if you see Jakarta is beautiful from above, this is much more beautiful.

this is on our way to Tower

If you watch Korean drama, you must know “Princess Hour” or Goong series which was casted in 2004, were starring Joo Ji Hoon and Yoon Eun Hye. In this drama, one of the shooting location is in Teddy Bear Museum. But this location is not the museum that I visited, it’s in Jeju island. Yeah, there are 2 Teddy Bear museums in Korea, in Jeju-do is bigger. But, this teddy bear museum inside the Seoul Tower we also can see Teddy Bears wearing the princess hours costumes as big as human. You can imagine how cute it is. Haha, I also found Mr. Bean’s Teddy Bear.

remember in Princess Hour, Joo Ji Hoon and Yoon Eun Hye were in this costumes?

Hey not only big bears there, you also can find mini teddy bears, this museum is designed perfectly, mostly they make up story for these bears and put them into glasses. So, what can we see here is not only cute teddy bears but also, they present these bears to act as actor in stories about Korea (like Korean kingdom, Korean Traditional House, Korea Joseon Dynasty, etc) and you can imagine these bears are wearing hanbok with their size. haha so cute. That is the interesting one, they are selling Teddy Bear stuffs like bag, pencil case, key holder, postcard, etc. And I bought only the postcards .

This is not the end of our one day trip to Seoul, we still have namdengmun and myeongdong to go. Finished with the museum, we went down again to take bus. While waiting for bus we took some pics and enjoy the fresh air of Korea. (uh I miss it). Oh yeah forgot to tell ya, I found hand-drawing of Kim Tae hee (김 태 희) on the way down, You know her right? Kim Tae Hee is a Korean famous actress, starring in IRIS, Love Story in Harvard, My Princess, Stairway to Heaven and still more. she is my favorite actress so far

Namdemun is like Insadong, but bigger crowded and cheaper I think. Fortunately, Mr. Ony took us directly to the place where he usually buy souvenirs cheaper, yeah it’s really cheap compare to other stores. Then, we went to ginseng tea store. Enough for Namdengmun, we went to Myeongdong (shopping district), but we didn’t have much time because it was 5.30 pm when we arrived, and we needed to gather one hour later because our KTX schedule was at 7.20 pm. It’s Okay because I would go to Seoul again later on. Yeah we finished our trip at this point. Interesting, isn’t it ?

 

 

First Time Going to Seoul ( 1 )

Hi bloggers,

Yeah you know what I would like to write. After one month stayed in Daejeon, finally I got this chance going to Seoul. Imagine if you go to a place where not even single person know your language and you don’t know their language. You gotta find a way how to get a 70 km – away city, know where to go and what will you do while everything in Korean and you have never experienced public transportation in this country, well English is also provided actually. You will have to spend much energy and much much MONEY of course. ‘you might get lost somehow’

It didn’t happen to me though. Fortunately, there was a immersion week for Indonesian High School from Theresiana 1 High School Semarang. Actually going to Seoul was one of their schedule in the end of their immersion week after doing some stuff in classes. So, on Friday October 15th, 2010, we (Indonesian Students and Theresiana high schoolers) went to Seoul, departed at  6.30 am and arrived at 7.30.

First of all, we took our time visiting Gwanghamun Square, where the statue of King Sejong is located. In front of the statue there is a big round clock which shows how season in Korea (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter) changes. This area is a crowded place which is surrounded by many building especially embassy buildings, and interestingly there is wide square fountain, well when it is in winter the fountain doesn’t work because it’s freezing, but fortunately we went in the beginning of Autumn ( Hot – Windy – Cold were mixed). Until now, I really miss being in this place so much.

In Front of King Sejong Statue

Anyway, I haven’t told ya about King Sejong, have I ? So, King Sejong The Great is the one who created the Korean Alphabet (Hangul) and there is also history why he is called ‘The Great’ that you can find it on Google.

After taking pictures here, we headed to Gyeongbokgung Palace which is not really far from the statue (exactly behind).  This palace is one of the house of king a long time ago, usually in this palace there is changing guard ceremony, if you are lucky and come on the right time you can see this ceremony.

Hey it s in Autumn, and I love how the leaves transform to red, yellow or remains green then finally fall down.

And our journey continue to Seoul Tower… (see next post)

 

Come Come Festival !

I realize korea holds many festivals through each year. Still in summer, well actually it was late summer I came to the Nankye Korean Traditional Music & Grape festival. This festival is held every year around August-September and from the its name we can say this festival is about representing the Traditional music of Korea and also showing how to make Korean Wine from Grape. Many citizen come to experience Wine-Making, and experience the Korean wine from the most expensive one to the cheapest one, everything was there.

It was the hottest day ever among my days in Korea, well it was late summer though. Me and friends went to the festival by school bus Yeongdong, where the Nangye Traditional Korean Music Festival is held, is the hometown of Park Yeon, one of Korea’s three top traditional music experts. Park Yeon created the theory of Korean traditional music during the Joseon dynasty and also produced various instruments such as the string instrument, percussion instrument, and wind instrument. In addition to his creations, he is also very famous for his outstanding musical performances. In order to praise Park Yeon’s achievements his other name, Nangye, has become the main symbol representing the traditional music festival.

The Nangye traditional music festival features traditional music in the form of exhibitions and experience events to better educate visitors. In addition, there are exhibitions of newly created instruments and a collection of various folk instruments from all over the world where people can experience first-hand by sampling them. There are also the dance performed by the traditional dancers and they show us some attraction with their instruments while dancing.

Besides, Nangye traditional music group personally teaches how to play the instruments. The production process of traditional handicrafts from the past can be seen and the visitors are able to learn how to make pottery and Korean paper with the experts throughout the whole festival. There are also programs of photo shooting with Nangye outfit and the making of totem poles which symbolize the appreciation for good harvest by cutting wood.

“Yeongdong is the Mecca of Korean traditional music, where the history and culture of Korean traditional music can be learned by visiting the Nangye Museum of Traditional Music, Nangye Tradition Musical Instrument Manufacturing Village, and other related places.”

 

 

Hanbok Day !

Hello, meet you again !

So, the Hanbok day was actually part or Workshop Week. This workshop week was also for welcoming all students in order to motivate and challenge us analytically, socially, and culturally. As the purpose, it’s for helping students foster soft-skills, study habits and proper mind attitude. Well saying !

Simply, it was much more fun than orientation though, we had Platinum Lectures, Experience Korean Culture, Social Activities, Workshop, Career Seminar, Cultural Events and even Survival Games. It sounds interesting yeah? Yes, indeed.

After one week in class, the workshop started first day on Monday September 6th, 2010. Seminar by CEO of S-Oil Mr. Ahmed A. Subaey on “A successful Global Leader in Making” was quite serious, well the contents were so good and at the end ofthe seminar, S-Oil opened job application right on that time.

yeah here it came, “Understanding Korean Culture & Tradition” program. there was an ahjumma (aunt) was explaining about the history of some important people, also  we were wearing Hanbok, Traditional Cloth of Korea. I will talk about the history on the next article, here they brought many different color of Hanbok for women and men, and fortunately they permitted us to wear and take pictures.

 

See, the Beauty of Hanbok : Pride of Korean people.

Traditional clothing and adornments, on the other hand, are called “hanbok”-an abbreviation of the term Han-guk pokshik (Korean attire). As South Korea says Hanbok, North Korea says as Choson-ot. Generally, Hanbok has really bright colors with the architecture design and made from silk and has no pocket. Although people say Hanbok is Traditional Cloth of Korea, actually it refers to ‘Joseon Dynasty Clothes Style’ that usually worn  for formal and semi-formal events, also traditional festivals, for example like Sol Nal (Solar New Year) and Chuseok.

 

저는 한국이 버고싶어요! … ne zaman oraya bir daha gidebilirim? I hope that day will come