May 27th, 2011
I left very early to make sure I'd get to the Bupyeong Pungmul Symposium on time. I ended up having enough time to have a little breakfast and find a small coffee shop for coffee before going to the 7th floor of city hall, where we were having our symposium. Originally they'd reserved a small seminar room but the festival needed it for something else so we were moved. The 7th floor room was huge, with a stage and all that. I met the others, on my panel there was the organizer 한덕택 a very energetic researcher and two women, one from China and one from Japan. The Chinese student, also working on her Ph.D. but at 한국외대 Korean University of Foreign Studies, had amazing Korean. The Japanese woman spoke better than me, but not hugely. Anyway, we did our presentations, and while my Korean was a little awkward my subject was engaging and I stood up and paced the stage, talking without a mic, and I think it made me into a bit of a hit.
We all went to lunch, and I sat next to the mayor of Bupyeong. I liked her because she flat out said that some foreigners know more about Korean culture than many Koreans. The other two women, by the way, talked about a Chinese and a Japanese phenomenon, not about Korean stuff. I just wish the lunch had been larger, I was totally hungry afterwards.
In the evening Karjam and I went for a long walk on Namsan and had dinner out.
No comments:
Post a Comment