Hello world! I’m Lexi.
After several days in Korea, jet lag has been a blessing and a curse. Today at 6am we woke up with fresh faces and hours to go before any legitimate obligations. Taking advantage of our proximity to nature, we layered up and headed out to Namsan mountain, a short 5 minute walk from our Airbnb. Many stairs and several sore quads later, we made it to the top of the mountain!
The views were beautiful, foggy skylines that seemed to go on forever. We could see everything from Myeongdong to the Blue House in the mountains on the other side of the city. The station on the top peak was studded with locks and handwritten notes, documenting travelers dreams and messages. It set a good theme for the meaningful weeks of teaching we had coming ahead.
Upon descending from Namsan, we stopped back at the Airbnb for a bit. As we were about to leave, we heard a knock on the door. Our Airbnb host had heard our pleas about Gerald! The kind man had come to our rescue, equipped with a large water bottle to make up for our incompetent plunging abilities (apparently faster is better??). After a serious water display, Gerald was reborn again, good as new. Grateful, we headed out and grabbed some Delimanjoo (a small custard filled cake bites) after Sheila made friends with the baker at the stand, and then took the metro into Hongdae. After meeting up with a friend from MIT, we took a walk through Hongik University, which we learned is famous for its art and architecture programs! You could tell it was an arts school by the snazzy graphic art all over the walls.
After exploring Hongdae a bit more, we headed to a Matjib restaurant for lunch (a #famous restaurant known for its good food) and during our walk, learned that Sarah is still stuck in the 2010s! At the restaurant, I was met with the fluffiest egg souffle experience of my life and my first encounter with a hole-in-the-ground toilet. Definitely not in the States anymore!
We grabbed some Baskin Robin’s ice cream (and were introduced to fizzy candies that pop in your mouth) and then embarked from Hongdae towards our next stop, a chemical supply store in Dongdaemun. Inside the store, we chose a 3 kilo bag of NaOH out of the wide variety of sketchy white powders, needed for our Crime Day in the second week of the workshop. Stowing away the suspicious package, we continued around the corner to towering Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), an iconic urban landmark of Korean design. We found out about a nighttime DDP lightshow and decided to head back to the Airbnb to get some work done, before returning to the Dongdaemun area for dinner.
Once we got back to the airbnb, it was grind time! Making slides, prepping experiments, and testing technology, our tiny little apartment has been transformed into a full out laboratory.
We got a full view of Lulu’s brain with the help of Google Cardboard. Having left my more legit supplies at the school, I used straws as paintbrushes to begin prepping bacteria paint pallets for my Day 4 module. Sarah experimented with her Scratch game, making the Jessica character eat some apples, while Sheila troubleshooted her infrared camera. Our productive session was suddenly interrupted by a loud knock on the door and some muffled voices. Not expecting visitors, we all froze. The knocking continued. We opened the door to the Tourist police, dressed in full uniforms and badges. When they told us that they were searching for an illegal residence, a pang of panic surged through the room, but luckily all was resolved when we showed them our paperwork and confirmed that our airbnb was, in fact, legal.
As a reward for our grind session, we headed out for a dinner of kbbq pork belly fit for royalty near the Dongdaemun Design Palace. After eating, we ran to catch the light show at the DDP. The whole building was lit up with crazy designs and changing images of Seoul buildings. To cap off our night, we returned to the Airbnb and ran through our slides for the first few days of the workshop. After several hours of prep, we all collapsed in bed, hopefully finally resetting our bodies from jet lag.
GTL Korea 2020 