May 2013 - Vikingess Voyages

Sunday, May 26, 2013

GIP Homecoming Day

10:49:00 PM
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

Thursday, May 23, 2013

White Pigeon Wedding Modeling in Kyoto!

5:57:00 PM
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.
Getting dressed up.. Nice ikebana hair! ^^
Yuuki was going to do a photo shooting for a company called White Pigeon which also specializes in wedding dresses, and they wanted to use me for a photo shooting. Luckily I had already planned on a weekend trip to Japan in the beginning of May, and the date turned out to work well with the rest of the team too.
So I met up at Kyoto Kokusai Hotel where I was greeted by the lady behind White Pigeon, Shoko Kono, and the rest of the staff. Shoko had prepared 3 dresses for the photo shooting, and the stylist arranged my hair for the first dress using real flowers making my hair look like an ikebana-creation.. It was really cool!
From there we went to an old building called the 京都府庁旧本館, a renaissance style building from 1904 which used to be used as a government office building. Shoko and her team had rented the building for 3 hours, and the rest of the afternoon was spent taking photos which you can see here:
The first wedding dress; white with purple flowers for the hair

A close-up of the dress from behind
The second wedding dress was also white, with some additional yellow details 
Nice architecture ^^

A close-up

The third wedding dress was black, and quite fancy
Flying feathers..
Cool Black Wedding Dress

This includes some of my favorite shots of the day. I hope you liked the photos! :)
Apparently they'll be featured in some magazine later.. We'll see ^^


Related blogposts

Friday, May 17, 2013

Celebrating Buddha's Birthday and Norway's Constitutional Day in Korea!

9:34:00 PM
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
We went back to the temple in the evening, just in time for a long parade led by the temple's monks. Lucky! It might be quite different from the 17. May-parades from my home country, but it was still quite a nice experience. I like how the monks are chanting while they are walking around, it makes the atmosphere extra nice. Anyway, please enjoy my pictures! v(^_^)

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

Monday, May 13, 2013

Korean Teacher's Day

5:15:00 PM
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!

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Cherry Blossom at KyungHee's GIP Campus!

11:55:00 AM
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 



Other blogposts related to KyungHee's GIP campus and/or the DMDP:
The peace dove of GIP

The peace dove again..!
All my posts about Kyung Hee

About Me

Adventures ofAnette


A modern day shield-maiden who loves to explore the unbeaten paths of the world. From her base in Tokyo, Anette takes on both rural and urban challenges, and goes by the motto "No challenge too big, no adventure too small"!
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