The rest of my time in South Korea was more fun than I was expecting. Both Jenni and I presented on Thursday and it went really well. Many professors from the ICU Education Department attended our session and gave lots of valuable feedback. The conference provided lunch and then a fancy dinner which was preceded by some entertainment consisting of some traditional Korean music.


The next day I got up early to accompany Dr. Jung and Dr. Sasao to another city in Korea for a campus visit. A committee in the department is working on a research project to study the current situation of liberal arts colleges in East Asia and comparing them with those in the West. They've already published one book on this topic and are working on a second. I was lucky to be asked by Dr. Jung to co-write a chapter with her and even more excited when she asked if I wanted to accompany the research group to Handong Global University in Pohang, South Korea.

Lunch at the conference

Presenting on global issues in the language classroom

For me, this project has been a great fit since I attended a small liberal arts college (Hope College) which also happens to be one of the college that ICU has taken an interest in. ICU is interested in modeling Hope's First and Senior Year Seminar classes as well as its comprehensive and high quality faculty orientation and professional development program. Not only do I get to learn how to do social science research but I actually get paid to be a research assistant thanks to the grant writing skills of Prof. Jung. During the trip to Handong, this involved me writing copious notes, making interview voice recordings and sending follow-up thank you emails.

Seoul Station

KTEX bullet train - so nice!

I felt right at home at Handong and was able to ask a lot of relevant questions because their main partner college in the U.S. is Calvin College - what a small world! The dean and I hit it off right away since she had spent years at Calvin studying how the college operated before she became one of the founding members of Handong. After a day full of meetings, interviews and tours of the college, we were treated to a fantastic Korean dinner in something called a "House" restaurant which is exactly what it sounds - someone opens up a few tables right out of their home and cooks a variety of homemade foods.  There is no menu - you just show up and get served.

Inspiring banners at Handong University

The next morning we took Korea's version of the bullet train back to Seoul (about 2.5 hours) and I spent the rest of the day with a few other graduate students doing some shopping in the city's incredible alleys filled with stores, restaurants, street food, performers and, of course, giant fuzzy animals.

View from my hotel room in Pohang

That night we took a cheap red eye flight back to Tokyo (never doing that again - totally not worth it) and then slept in the airport until the first bus left for the city at 6:05 am. I got home right as Sean got back from a morning's work of voice recording for a company making a translation app for the Olympics. We saw each other for an hour as Sean quickly did laundry, packed and left for one more week in the mountains working for an outdoor adventure English immersion camp.

Stopping for ice cream treats while souvenir shopping

Jenni posing with a panda in Seoul

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