Wonderful day in Korea

We have had a wonderful day in Korea. The day started with a nice breakfast, soup with clams and rice. Then we went to a private girls highschool with 1100 students. The principal gave us a tour of the school which included the chemistry, English, art and PE department. They had excellent volleyball facilities and a few year ago the won the championship.

Teachers teach 4 hours everyday + time for preparation. Each teacher has their own workstation with computers at the teachers lounge. They do not have smartboards in their classrooms but instead they have overhead projectors and blackboards where they use a new invention - dustfree chalk. Usually there is app. 36 students in a classroom. The students also do their homework and studying at the school so they normally stay there from 8.00-22.00.

After the schoolvisit we had a wonderful lunch followed by a visit to the local city newspaper which is more than a 100 years old. It was very interesting to see how they printed the newspaper. In the editing room the had a big article on the wall about Bjørn Lomborg - we told them that he is Danish. The editor of the newspaper visited Copenhagen 20 years ago when he was a member of the Korean parliament.

We also visited a modern hospital and a clinic with traditional Korean medicine and we tried acupuncture which is actually a Korean invention, not a Chinese!

We give a big thank you to our Korean hosts for some exciting and fun days.

Finally here

After a couple of month of planning we are finally in South Korea.

The flight here went smoothly - and as a matter of fact we arrived in Pusan about one hour earlier than planned. We were greeted by the local Rotary district with flowers and a big banner and then headed towards Jinju city (population 340,000) - about 1½ hours drive west of Pusan. Here we will be staying for the first couple of days.

One of the things we've already found out is, that we will have lots of fantastic food while we are here - perfect for a group of foodies. /Lotte

Less than 48 hours to go

Now the suitcases have been packed and filled with new uniforms, gifts for our Korean hosts and great expectations. Fortunately the earthquake in Japan hasn't had any impact on South Korea so we are all set to go and look forward to meeting new Korean friends and seeing a lot of interesting places/Mette

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to our online diary of our Group Study Exchange in South Korea! We intent to write posts as often as possible about our adventures, be it vocational or cultural. Our readers are most welcome to write comments to our posts.

With just over a month before take-off we are all busy preparing for the trip. Mette and Lotte are working on our presentation and Kim and I (Elisabeth) are preparing a leaflet to hand out. Lone is establishing contact with photograpers, embassys, sponsors etc. as well as researching air tickets, insurance etc. Lots to look into. So far we have held meetings at Skovshoved Hotel and at Mette's and Elisabeth's homes. It is good to see how we all live – and a way of getting to know each other. One of our first meetings was held in a fabulous Korean restaurant – Miga in Gl. Kongevej – where we sampled the mouthwatering goodies that awaits us once we reach our destination.