Since there was a Korean culture class starting at 2pm, we decided to have a quick lunch in the student canteen at basement two of Cheong-un Gwan (청운관-靑雲館). I ordered "Tangsuyuk Deopbap" (탕수육덮밥) or sweet and sour pork rice. Tangsuyuk, like Jjajangmyeon, is one of those Chinese dishes which has since become popular in Korea. The Tangsuyuk tasted quite similar to the Singapore's version of the dish. However, I found that the sweet and sour pork tasted slightly sweeter in Korea.
We had our first Korean culture class which was Korean songs. The teacher who took us for the class was Ms Kim Hyeon Jin (김현진). Secretly, I called her the "noraebang queen" because she was having so much fun in the singing lesson as if she was in a noraebang (kara-oke). Of course, we too were having a lot of fun. She was so full of actions and that had sort of influenced us to open up and sing aloud. She sang, danced and she simply "rocked". She taught us two songs. One was 마리아 (Maria) by Kim A-Jung (김아중) the other was 풍선 (Balloon) by TVQX (동방신기-東方神起)
"Maria" is the OST of the Korean movie "미녀는 괴로워" (200 pounds beauty). We were told that the song was currently one of the hottest noraebang songs among the Koreans. An ultimate stress-reliever. As we were singing along with the music, Ms Kim was going around telling students "가수처럼, 가수처럼" (sing like a singer) as she rocked and sang "Maria Ave Maria" in her loudest possible voice. I have never before seen anyone getting so high in a singing lesson. She really ROCKS!
풍선 (Balloon) was another "fun" song. Ms Kim was dancing along with TVQX in the music video as we were watching it. We were all then made to move to the front of class to sing and dance along with the song. We had so much fun singing and dancing that we kept asking to repeat the music video. 풍선 has a bright and cheerful tempo and that really lifted my mood. The lyrics though a bit lengthy were not too difficult to understand (with the help of e-dictionary of course).
It started snowing heavily in the late afternoon. Finally, we could see some snow accumulating on the roof and street. Within minutes of snowfall, the street quickly lost its gloom and took on a clean white smile. We must have been very fortunate to witness snowing in the month of March in Seoul. First of all, due to global warming, it rarely snows during winter in Seoul these days. Furthermore, March is already Spring and temperature during this month is usually too high for snow to fall. But we managed to catch one of those rarest opportunity and for that our trip would probably have been worthed it. According to weather forecast, there will be more snow coming.
In the evening, we went back to Kyung Hee to take picture of the snow. Most of the pictures turned out blurry. Probably it was because it was so cold that my exposed hand kept shivering while holding the camera. As a result I have hardly any good picture to post. Following that, we had our dinner at a Korean restaurant near the campus. I had Odeng (오뎅) for dinner. Odeng is "imported" from Japan and is something very much like our fishcake in Singapore. However, it tasted more like crabstick to me with a lot of flour and little fish meat in it.
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