The second day started interestingly. I randomly woke up at 5 AM or so and struggled to fall asleep. Jet lag hit me hard, though I wasn’t affected in a terrible way. Despite this, I still managed to be late in responding to my group leader for being ready. I went for some breakfast, which was almost exactly the same as the previous day. Then, we embarked on our scavenger hunt.
We went into the scavenger hunt being extremely confident. We got last basically every time. The first time, we took line 1 and transferred to line 3 to get to the temple. We got there last, though one team did get disqualified for taking a taxi. The first subway we tried to take was the wrong choice, as it took a while. The second stop was the National Museum of Korea, where we took the bus with another group. With a 20+ minute wait for the transfer, this was obviously the wrong choice. Each time, we chose the exact wrong option, and we ended up last. Once in the museum, we had lunch after a bit of a wait, where I had a cheese pork cutlet with udon, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t get the udon. It was really good, and the cheese added a lot to the meal.
Then, we got to explore the museum, so I went with a group of people, including Chris, Victor, and Jacob. We watched some performances by the steps, went through the Porcelain, Greece, Japan, and Ancient Korea exhibits, and explored near the lake area before returning to the meeting place. I enjoyed the museum and definitely wish we could’ve stayed longer to visit some more exhibits, namely the Buddhist sculptures and other Asian exhibits.
Finally, the highlight of the trip just happened today. We learned some K-Pop dance choreography at the World K-Pop Center. We started with some stretches and basic dances as a warm-up before starting the actual choreo. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep in tempo at the beginning, but I think I was able to (mostly) keep up. I was glad that I wasn’t the only one who forgot the final section as most groups in the final 6-person group dances also forgot, including my entire group.
Once we were done, I went with some others, including Nick and Jacob, to the Myeongdong market. We visited some shops and restaurants, but ultimately ate at a Korean BBQ place called Gosire. We had a little mishap where we got laughed at for trying to set up the barbeque wrong. But, we managed to get our food and enjoyed. I had the pork ribs, which were really good.
The “Swim, Swim” from the song is still stuck in my head :/