1st Lecture

• Today was our first day of orientation lectures...this sounds really boring, but they really weren't! It was good.
• History of Korea: This lecture was given by a woman who was a TaLK scholar just last year. She focused on Korea's growth from a 3rd world country in the 1950s to the big economic power it is today. It was really interesting to learn about this country and understand how much change and growth has happened in the last 60 years - really amazing, in fact. She also spoke about the Korean Comfort Women, which were basically a group of 200,000 teen girls who were prostituted to the Japanese soldiers during WWII. It was very cool to hear her pride in her country as she relayed different anecdotes about the history. And she kept it interesting for the whole 2 hours.
• Taekwondo: We got to learn a little Taekwondo today! It was pretty demanding, and we weren't even pushed that hard. The masters were really funny and instructed us well. I would prefer to do something a little more dance-oriented, but if I can't find anything like that, I might do a Taekwondo class in my town.
• Korean Culture: This was a good lecture too, and the guy who did it both spoke well and created a great PowerPoint. He addressed good topics, utilized a lot of public speaking techniques and had a great voice.
• After classes and dinner, we had the option of doing another class. I signed up and went to a session dedicated to learning traditional Korean instruments (the ensemble of them is called Salmulnori). I learned the Kkwaenggwari (a small gong) and the Janggu (an hourglass shaped drum). The rhythm we learned was simple, but the technique was  different from anything I already know and the sound was cool. The most interesting thing about the instruments (there are 4 in the full ensemble) is that each represents a different weather condition: the janggu = rain, the kkwaenggwari = thunder, the jing (a larger gong) = wind, and the buk (a different drum) = clouds. The instructor only spoke Korean - so one of our TaLK scholars translated (so cool!) - but she told us that this was likely the only time we'd get to play these instruments (because of the rarity of instructional studios), so we should really enjoy it. The group we saw at the Opening Ceremony was a Salmulnori group: