Korea trip!

Trying to squeeze some time out to reply some messages, emails, and update the blog. To summarise my 5 weeks of school, it has been really hectic and i was really stressed out trying to catch up with my work and arranging measures to ensure I keep up with tutorials and lectures i'd miss during that 1.5weeks to Korea. Oh yea, not to mention, dealing with assignments which were due after the Korea trip as well. Anyway, I didn't regret going at all =D

Well, this programme is named Global Leadership Programme. It's held at Daegu in South Korea (Duhhh....) which is the 3rd largest city in South Korea. It is organized by Daegu health college which obviously specializes in health sciences. They paid for all our expenses - accommodation, transport and food that are related to the itinerary of the programme. I think pictures speak a thousand words, so i shall let the pictures tell their story.

This picture fairly sums out the members of the programme. 20 Koreas, 3 Australians, 1 Singapore (me!), 3 Americans, 5 Japanese, 5 Filipinos, 2 Chinese and 1 Canadian

Anyway, i shall start from Day 1...
Day 1 - Set off from Melbourne for Sg and Korea. I stayed in sg for about 1hour plus and in Korea-Seoul for about 12 hours. Too many pictures to post. too troublesome >.< align="center"> My room! Very different from the Chisholm room

Day 3 - Met some other foreigners (not internationals =P) and also met our Korean counterparts. We went to Donghwasa Temple @ Mt Palgong. I had a really Korean/Japanese feel when i went there.

The buddha statues there

The temple. This is just a small part of course.

I got a bit lazy recalling what I did on different days. So i guess i shall give a summary and bombard the post with pictures. The programme didn't really involve leadership elements unlike leadership programmes in Singapore. It is more like a cultural exchange programme. Anyway, we got to do some sightseeing at temples, gardens, museums and at downtown. The college wasn't exactly situated at the city area in Daegu. It was at the sides.

Other than the sightseeing, we had various academic programmes. Lecturers - entertaining ones - were invited to give us talks on cultural differences. It was fairly enlightening as we learnt about the differences between korean cultures and other cultures. Then we had discussions on the importance of global leadership, globalisation and cultural issues. We were supposed to give presentations after discussion. It wasn't a big problem cos they don't require comprehensive presentations, just a small speech to present our points.

We had... a Korean fan dance lesson and a cooking competition as well. I like these kind of activities!

However, i felt that we wasted a fair amount of time on random stuff rather than the activities itself. We had plenty of time constraints but I also felt that we have insufficient time on more fun activities. We should have less time allocated to lectures (cos we have plenty of rest times) and more time for other activities.

Anyway, at night, we don't have an organized activities in the itinerary. One of the Korean guys would organise night activities for us. We went out for extra meals, karaoke, pubbing and did plenty of random stuff like playing with fireworks within the school compound. haha! We played plenty of cards in different people's rooms as well. So, night-time was the main socialising time i guess.

Overall, i made lots of friends and I really missed all of them. They are really nice people, including the foreigners and koreans of course. Kept in contact with them mainly through facebook. As for those who don't use facebook, we either influenced them to use or kept in contact via emails.

Gyeongju City - old buildings (on a sightseeing day! - it's a lovely place since i like old buildings and stuff) I'll post my pictures later.

Downtown at Daegu (we went there during one of the night trips). Plenty of shopping to do there but we didn't have time. During that night, we went to a park to watch a Korean movie (obviously the foreigners couldn't understand). So we just sat around, interrupt people, play games and ate lots of good food (spicy rice cakes, fried chicken - yum!!)


Daegu Health College - looks so nice!! So much nicer than my university. They even have artefacts in the central area.

The eye chart used at the clinic where we took our temperatures (swine flu precaution). Look at the last column! they actually have pictures! Anyway the funny thing about this clinic is, they didn't change the thermometer cap when they took everyone's temperature. Talk about infection control!! luckily i was the first few to have my temperature taken >.<

Due to the instability of blogger, i shall post all these first =D