The GIP peace dove

A little while ago all the GIP students participated in the annually Homecoming Day at school for both current and graduated GIP students. This year the event was held in the main campus in Seoul, where we had an evening of speeches, entertainment and good food.

Ace, the GIP sing-star performing a ballade:)

All of the students (except for the forth semester batch) had to take part in planning for an making the entertainment. However, eventually the speeches of the professors took longer time than planned for, and we had to cut down on the entertainment section with a couple of numbers.

Our youngest batch performing quite a show using cups!

In my batch we ended up with just 2 individual performances. Tanya played the traditional Korean flute, and I participated with a short dance. When I was in high school I was enrolled in a school where we had dance as a part of the curriculum, and back then I was dancing almost every day. It has been many years since I danced regularly though!! This one is just a mix that I created by using some of my old dances^^


The rest of the evening was spent enjoying the delicious buffet, and not to mention 1 1/2 hours of metro and bus to get back to the GIP campus. The trip back to the GIP is always so long and tiring.. Oh well, 어쩔 수 없어..

Anyway, as always, thank you for taking your time to read my blog:) I hope you enjoy the pictures and the short video! (^_^)／

All my posts about Kyung Hee

Last year I did some modeling for a company called Kyoto Weddings, which offers its wedding planning services to foreigners who want to get married Japanese style in Kyoto. The photographer, Yuuki Kuwabara, contacted me again about a month ago and asked me if I had any plans to go to Japan in the near future.

• All blogposts about wedding
• How to make a Japanese Wedding Profile Video (プロフィールビデオ)
• Happy Wedding: Reusing my Mom's Old Wedding Dress
• White Pigeon Wedding Modeling in Kyoto! 
• Modeling for Kyoto Weddings: My Japanese Wedding, or the day I (Almost) Married a Stranger

Although most of the Korean citizens have a Christian background they still celebrate Buddha's birthday (부처님 오신 날) as a national holiday. This day is actually a big event in Korea, and temples all over the country has been decorated for the occasion. This year the celebration was held on the 17th May, which also happens to be Norway's Constitutional Day.

Celebrating Buddha's birthday at Bongsunsa Temple

The closest neighbor to our GIP-campus is the Buddhist temple Bongsunsa, and today it seems like a lot of visitors are taking the trip here to celebrate Buddha's birthday. As the temple is the head temple of the Jogye order it does attract quite a number of visitors regularly, and today they even had to utilize our campus to get enough parking space. Living in the middle of the forest it is kind of interesting having so many people taking the trip out here to visit our dear neighbor.. ^^

Anyway, it was quite nice to have this small celebration today as my family members and friends are celebrating Norway's constitutional day back home. Last year I celebrated the constitutional day at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Tokyo, but since I left my bunad (Norwegian folk costume) in Japan I don't really had the chance to dress up for the national day this year.

Buddha-paintings for sale outside the Bongsunsa temple

Candles

A family enjoying the show at the temple

One of the main temple buildings

Bongsunsa's monks parading

The temple and the forest

One of the statues in the temple

Lanterns

Pretty Buddha statues in the background

Soo many colorful lanterns..

Lanterns and the main temple building

Buddha

The main temple and lanterns

In Korea May 15th represent the day of the teacher (스승의 날), and here at school we have also been introduced to this tradition through our Korean classmates who have been preparing for the event. But since we don't have classes with all our teachers on the 15th we are celebrating the event on different days this week. So today we surprised our professor with a cake and a song. Quite cute! I think it is the first time ever that I have participated in surprising my teacher like that. We often tend to take our teachers for granted in Western countries... Considering all the time and effort teachers put into the development of their students I think that teachers deserve more respect than they often get. This tradition would have been nice to have in my own country as well(^_^)..! Happy teacher's day!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how the cherry blossom season has finally come to KyungHee's main campus in Seoul.

This is the main statue on campus, a symbol of the GIP

Here in the GIP it took another week until the sakura started blooming, but nonetheless we were blessed with beautiful flowers all over our campus. My friend Tanya and I went up to the roof of the main building, and got some nice pictures I thought I could share with those of you who are interested in seeing how our campus looks like in spring. Please enjoy ;)

Some fellow students coming out of the GIP dorm

The GIP library to the left

Tanya and the GIP statue

You know you've been too long in Korea when you start making this pose ;P

A couple of GIPan friends

View from one of our classrooms

The peace dove of GIP

The peace dove again..!

All my posts about Kyung Hee