WEEK 5: Tea and Rail

It's my week 5? OMG, That was too fast >.< Somebody stop the time for me, please!

I attended one of the SNU Buddy cultural event today called Teaism. I learned something about how important a greeting is in Korea. It would be different on how you greet your friends, parents and grandparents. To greet grandparents, i.e. friends' grandparents, you have to put your left palm above your right palm and put it against your stomach. Then, while descending by kneeling your left foot in which in the end, you will have your left knee on the floor while you are still standing on your right foot. Then, you'll have to kneel completely and make a very graceful bow towards the person in front of you. To ascend, you'll have to follow everything exactly the same. XD

Interesting? Yes, it is! Koreans value their respect and etiquette more than anything else. That's the value inherited by Confucius. =)

After the crash course in Korean formal greeting, we had a crash course in serving tea! I LOVE THE KOREAN GREEN TEA! ZOMG. I am so in love with it!

Another agenda this week would be the free travel offered by Korail to Gurye! =) It was on Sunday and it was a decent trip, but well, you could not complain for a free trip. XD

We need to wake up at the ungodly hour of 5 AM in the morning! Why? Because the train will leave Seoul Station at 7.10 AM and it would take around 4.5 hours to reach Gurye from Seoul. HAHA! I mostly spend my time on train sleeping (or if not taking pictures). Well, upon our arrival at Gurye, we were greeted by flight of buses ready to transport us to the festival place.
Well, the festival appeared not to be so grand as what I thought it would be. It was Korean outskirt though, can't complain much. But, the environment was peaceful and village-like. That's the best thing that I love being in Korea. They valued their environment so much! =)


There was this old-guy walking along the rope and sometimes he would jumped down and maintained perfect balance to get up to the standing position on the rope again. It was amazing! XD
After having lunch at the festival, we went to another place to have a railbike session! Well, this was the most exciting part out of all the itinerary, I think. HAHA! What's a railbike? It was actually a bike mounted on a railway, that's it. It was really unfortunate that the bike in front of us were really slow and we had to cycle it slowly. Oh, come on, give me some speed =.="

Followed by that was our locomotive ride! Can't find one in Singapore =P I still could spot one in Medan, though. So, I was not THAT obsessed with it!

The trip ended when the locomotive ride ended. We hopped on the same train which ripped our 4.5 hours away from us. XD But, out of it, I think the trip was not bad at all and I think I would consider to visit Gurye in the near future =) THANKS KORAIL!
I have four mid-terms. I better start mugging now! XD

peace
vixklen