Cheer on Touch Korea Tour with 2PM & miss A and get a chance to win prizes!

Hello every one, hurry up hurry up!! Buzz Korea is now opening another interesting event for us.

What we are going to do is to first to become member of Buzz Korea, then cheer 2PM and Miss A by SNS, and we will get chance to win prizes. 😉

Below is the entire text from Buzz Korea:

“Cheer on Touch Korea Tour with 2PM & miss A,

                                                          and get a chance to win prizes!”

 

Become new members of buzz KOREA and come and cheer on 2PM and miss A’s Touch Korea Tour Event. Through a lottery, Macbook Air, Silla Hotel accommodation voucher, and iTunes gift card will be given.

 

■ Period: 2012. 04. 12 ~ 2012. 05. 13

■ Presentation of winners: 2012. 05. 23

■ How to participate:

STEP 01: Become a new member of buzz KOREA. If you’re already a member, update your profile.

STEP 02: Cheer on the 2PM and miss A’s Touch Korea Tour event through SNS.

STEP 03: After step 1 & 2 , leave an i buzz nickname and email address!

*More specific instructions are given below. Do steps 1, 2,& 3!~

 

[STEP 01] To be a fresh and new buzz KOREA and i buzz

Become a new buzz KOREA member. If you are already a member, update your profile.

>> Go to sign up as a buzz KOREA member: http://www.ibuzzkorea.com/eng/

 

[STEP 02] Join the Korea tour with 2PM and get a chance to win prizes

Through buzz KOREA’s SNS, Korea’s experiences and news are given. Fully saturated with fun and interesting stories, become friends with buzz KOREA SNS channel and share this note to cheer on Touch Korea Tour!

*Winners will only be selected from i buzz members. (buzz KOREA subscription required)

 

[STEP 03] 2PM and miss A’s Touch Korea Tour Contest Cheering Event

After modification of one’s profile or registration as a member on buzz KOREA’s campaign website and leaving an cheer on Touch Korea Tour through an SNS channel, press the ‘Participate in the event’ button in event page(http://ibuzzkorea.com/eng/event/tkt/?sn=416) ‘Step 3:

Participate in the event’ on buzz KOREA campaign site.

 

The winners will be announced on 2012.5.23 at http://www.ibuzzkorea.com/eng/

 

We wish you the best of luck!

 

Source:

http://www.ibuzzkorea.com/eng/event/tkt/?sn=416

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=254962914598849%

 

Kindness and Friendship (Video contest: i love Korea because…)

Hello my friends, we have made a video about the reasons why we love Korea.

Please kindly vote for our video in our youtube channel.
All you need to do is just simply:
-follow a few step to create Gmail account.
-Sign in to youtube with you Gmail account.
-Then you will be able to rate our video by just view our video in youtube, and then click thumb up/like the video.
Thank you in advance. 😉

This is a video about my wonderful and unforgettable experiences and my very first reason why I love Korea. 소진/Sojin is my best Korean friend I know when I first come to this beautiful country. She is the one who has introduced me Korean cultures and traditions, taught me Korean language, and who has always assisted me to be well-integrated in this new society. I really appreciate what she has done to me. As a Korean, she shows me respect as an older brother and her kindness truly represents the warm heart of the Korean people, and it was really my first impression on Korean society and it really is.
I am really glad to have her as my best friend and, more than that, i also treat her as my sister. Finally, thank her very much for giving me all these priceless memories and experiences. It makes me love Korea more and more.

This is me ;D

Our stars…

 

Baseketball at Korea University

Under a little bit cold weather, and after a short warming up, my friends and i enjoyed playing baseketball at Korea University sport ground.

I was a bit tired….But it was time to shoot this video 😉

 

The reasons why i love Korea…

 

 

Samul nori / 사물놀이

Samul nori is a genre of traditional percussion music originating in Korea. The word samul means “four objects” and nori means “play”; samul nori is performed with four traditional Korean musical instruments:

• Kkwaenggwari (a small gong)
• Jing (a larger gong)
• Janggu (an hourglass-shaped drum)
• Buk (a barrel drum similar to the bass drum)

The traditional Korean instruments are called pungmul.

Samul nori has its roots in nong-ak (literally “farmers’ music”), a Korean folk genre comprising music, acrobatics, folk dance, and rituals, which was traditionally performed in rice farming villages in order to ensure and to celebrate good harvests. Specifically, samul nori music derives from utdari pungmul (the gut, or shaman ceremony rhythm of the Gyeonggi-do and Chungcheong provinces of South Korea), as well as the genres of Yeongnam folk music and Honam udo gut, combined with more contemporary improvisations, elaborations, and compositions. Such nong-ak is steeped in traditional animism and shamanism, but also shows influences from Korean Buddhism. While nong-ak often features the use of wind instruments, samul nori only features the aforementioned four percussion instruments.

Each of the four instruments represents a different weather condition: the janggu represents rain, the kkwaenggwari thunder, the jing the sounds of the wind, and the buk clouds. The idea of yin and yang is also reflected in these instruments: the buk and janggu (leather) represent the sounds of the earth, while the jing and kkwaenggwari (metal) represent sounds of the heavens. Although generally performed indoors, as a staged genre, samul nori depicts the traditional Korean culture, an agricultural society rooted in the natural environment. Samul nori is characterized by strong, accented rhythms, vibrant body movements, and an energetic spirit.

Samul nori has gained international popularity, with many samul nori bands and camps worldwide. Since the 1980s in South Korea, there has been a marked increase in the amount of fusion music, combining samul nori and Western instruments. Samul nori is also extensively used in the Korean musical Nanta.

The most famous samul nori ensemble is the internationally famous South Korean ensemble called SamulNori, which is credited for bringing the music from a rural folk genre to the contemporary stage. The group was established in February 1978 by janggu player and former Namsadang star performer Kim Duk Soo (김덕수), with the remaining original performers being Kim Young Bae (kkwaenggwari), Choi Tae Hyun (jing), and Lee Jong Dae (buk). Following Kim Young Bae’s death in 1985, he was replaced by Choi Jong Sil, and Lee Kwang Soo replaced Lee Jong Dae on the buk. The group has collaborated and recorded with a number of non-Korean ensembles, most notably in 1987 with the Red Sun jazz band, with one SamulNori/Red Sun CD selling 70,000 copies.They have also performed (in August 2000 at the Earth Celebration International Arts Festival on Sado Islandin Japan) with the Japanese taiko group Kodo.

About his choice to move from the more traditional outdoor performances to indoor venues, Kim Duk Soo states that at the time he established SamulNori, during the last years of the administration of former South Korean president Park Chung Hee, Korean traditional music was associated with the student movement, and anyone playing such instruments outdoors could be arrested. Thus, he developed the current version of the genre, which is generally presented indoors, on concert hall stages.

In 1993, SamulNori expanded to include twenty performers, and changed its name to SamulNori Hanullim, Inc. (“Hanullim” meaning “big bang”).

Article source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samul_nori

 

Korean rice cake / 떡

Tteok (떡) (also spelled ddeock, duk, dduk, ddeog, or thuck) is a class of Korean rice cakes made with glutinous rice flour (also known as sweet rice or chapssal), by steaming. Normal rice flour can be used for some kinds of tteok. There are hundreds of different kinds of tteok eaten year round. In Korea it is customary to eat tteok guk (tteok soup) on New Year’s Day and sweettteok at weddings and on birthdays. It is often considered a celebratory food and can range from rather elaborate versions with nuts and fruits down to the plain-flavored tteok used in home cooking. Some common ingredients for many kinds of tteok are mung bean, red bean, and sweet red bean paste, Korean mugwort, jujube and other dried fruits, sesame seeds and oil, sugar, and pine nuts.

Picture’s source

Picture’s source

Please visit this source for detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteok

 

Korean cultural activities…

It was a program prepared by my university. All foreign students who take Korean course went out to a football yard where all stuffs were prepared for us. It was a real experience on Korean culture i have eve gone though. We enjoyed a lot of things on that day…..

Phaeng ngi (팽이) is a Korean name for a spinning ball game. To play this game we need two people. The first person must throw the ball to play ground while trying to spin it. The other person who is partner will take a stick with short rope attached to it and try to hit the surrounding of ball to keep the ball rotate all the time. The team keep doing like this as long as they can. The team that could spin or keep rotating the ball in long time without letting it collapse, will be win the game. For more detail about the game please click hear [Korean version].

This is also an interesting game of Korea. It is a group work task to win. By holding the rope attached to the flat cloth and forming a circle, they keep lifting up a small ball several times, and they repeat doing it without letting it fall to the ground.

This game is called Dan chhae jul normgi (단체줄넘기). It is kind of funny game. Two people who hold the rope will spin or swing it around, and a of group people representing the opponent group must jump up together at the same time so that the rope will be unable to touch their legs. If the spinners is unable to swing the rope due to the opponent’s legs, they will take turn as jumper and the opponent will come and swing the rope instead. 😉

This is an example of Korean traditional wedding. Even though Korean is in its globalization, but traditional ceremony is still well preserved. As i know, during the wedding day, pribe and groom wear their traditional cloth called hanbuk (한복). The pribe and groom will be put in two different stretchers. They come and pays respect to each other, to their parents, and to their ancestors through their traditional ways.

This is called Tork or 떡 in Korean. It’s Korean rice cake mix with some kind of nut and it tastes really great.

…….It was time to experience how to make Korean rice cake. More about Tork/ 떡.

This is called Samul nuri or 사물놀이which mean ” Four instruments”. The performers use this four instruments to amuze us. Those instrument is called Kkwaenggwari (a small gong), Jing (a larger gong) Janggu (an ourglass-shaped drum) and Buk (a barrel drum similar to the bass drum).

Finally, we ate rice cake soup. It’s is another type of rice cake. In Korea, they eat this rice cake soup or 떡국 during the first day of Korean New Year (Lunar calendar).

 

My first time to experience Korean culture…

It was a brief visit at Korea University before another important ceremony. There in the ceremony, i found something really special about Korea, the traditional dances and art performances. Even though Korea is a high developing country and is influenced a lot from western culture, but it still conserve well its prestigious culture.

Two Korean student ambassadors came and introduced us to school’s facilities. They were really kind, cute 😀 and also funny.

After a visit led and prepared by our school, it was time for group photo. Tomorrow, we are going to another  ceremony prepared by our scholarship provider, National Institute of International Education (niied).

There, in Daejeon, the orientation for new coming student took place. There, it was where i became influenced by Korean Culture…. I really enjoyed Korean folk dance a lot.

I really love the way they danced, the way they moved and the way they expressed…

I was a great chance, i could meet my Cambodian followers.

What a beautiful sunset at Daejeon city!!

 

고기만두 My funny day…;)

After a few days in Korea, i made a few friends coming from different world, traditions and cultures, but….we still get along together very well…

…One day we walked around our dormitory to see how beautiful our new place is,..and then…some funny thing happened when we were trying to buy food for lunch…;D

We went to a Korean restaurant where an old woman (아주마) and an old man (아저씨) were owner of the place. We were looking for rice!! Non of us could speak Korean, but there is one among us pretended of knowing how to say “rice” in Korean. We looked at menu board on the top of order place. 😀 we could not understand anything. One of my friends told us that he came here yesterday and had order this one (he pointed on the menu) and it was a delicious rice served with meat. Since we did not know anything we decided to believe him and ordered the food he recommended….

….After waiting for a while, the old man came with a set of food….unfortunately it was not rice we had been expected. It was something else…:) It was 고기만두!!!! It’s Korean dumpling. It is a bun stuffed with seasoned meat and vegetables. In Korea, there are many different kinds of 만두, but i can say the one i ate with my friends at that time must be the most delicious dumpling among others dumplings.

At that day, we really enjoyed 만두 very much, but we still could not stop laughing. We kept laughing the whole day about the mis-ordering. 😉 hahaaaaaaaaaaa!!

Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! 고기만두!!!!!!

 

A beautiful Korea University (Anam Campus)

Just a few days after arriving, i made a tour around a top three University of Korea, where i am going to study from. It’s Korea University. Notably, Korean education quality has been considerably good comparing to other western universities. Established in 1905, Korea University became one of the oldest universities in Korea left from pre-Korean war period, but still maintains its reputation of high qualified education. Even though this university is old in its age, but if you come here and see it from your eyes you might think that this university was just established a couple years ago. ;D The university’s building look really new, and i really love the environment around this university. Among many Korean people, Korea university is considered as a touristic site where many people come and visit it a lot.

……It was summer time and there was a lot rains. So, whenever you go out, make sure you have umbrella with you…;)

I love this university!! it’s so beautiful. When you come to Korea, please do not forget to visit this university.