Chipping Away at My Korean Bucket List

This past weekend I had a three-day weekend so I decided to try to accomplish some things on my bucket list. There are quite a number of things I want to do or see before I leave Korea and it's about time I get going on these goals because I have less than two months left. One of the things I really wanted to do while in South Korea was to go to a baseball game. On Friday I traveled to Daejeon and went to a baseball game with two of my Fulbright friends and some of their Korean friends. It was a lot of fun to go to the game with all of them especially since I met their Korean friends last time I was in Daejeon. The weather was absolutely beautiful during the game and I really enjoyed myself. There are several interesting differences between baseball games in Korea and America. In my eyes the biggest difference is that Korean teams are named after the companies that own them rather than the city where they are located. Therefore we saw the Hanwha Eagles play, not the Daejeon Eagles. I think this is pretty funny since Koreans are so proud of their companies and believe that Korean companies are a source of personal pride and a part of their Korean identity. Anything made by a Korean company is automatically the best, no matter what. One great part of Korean baseball games though is that you can bring food and drinks into the baseball game even though they also have vendors inside the stadium. Almost every Korean brought their beloved fried chicken to the game and there were SO MANY chicken stands right outside the stadium.

I spent the rest of Friday and Saturday in Daejeon. On Saturday I went out to lunch with my friend and her host mom. The three of us then attended a taste test for a Korean restaurant that is revamping their menu. My friend's host mom is a school nutritionist and is working towards her PhD. Her professor is helping a really fancy Korean restaurant improve their menu and we were asked to comment on the food to help the process. The tasting allowed us to sample food from the two seven course set menus. All of the food was traditional Korean food and was really delicious. We had to rate the food on presentation, smell, taste and texture. It was a really neat experience especially since I hadn't eat some of the really traditional foods before.

My friends host mom and I

Lastly, I finally got around to visiting the Leeum, also known as the Samsung Museum of Art because the founder of Samsung created the museum to house the art he collected. I'd been meaning to visit the art museum for a while and just never found the time. The museum houses traditional Korean ceramics, scrolls, tablets and then Korean and Western modern art. I was mainly interested in seeing the modern Korean art because I really enjoy modern art and despite all my time studying art history and working at the Nasher Museum of Art I never really came across any Korean modern artists. I really enjoyed seeing how some of the Korean modern art united Korean culture and more Western modern art styles. For example, the artist Lee Dongi created the following:
                                             
 The building itself was also really visually appealing. Like other museums, the building itself is a work of art. Below you can see the staircase in one area of the museum. If you are ever in Seoul the museum is definitely worth a visit.

These stairs reminded me of the Guggenheim in New York