last Thursday

Last Thursday was a busy day as I tried to pack in as much work as possible before my presentation.
I first went to the Canadian embassy to ask some questions about Arlene's visa to Canada. Then I went to catch the subway in front of Teoksugung palace. It looked like they were filming some kind of commercial or drama there:

The star is the lady to the left of the guy with the white/gray cap.

The green cab on the right was part of the shoot. I think they were supposed to be filming the main actress getting into it.

After that I went to Namsan park to An Chunggun's Memorial Hall to give them a copy of an article I had published that referred to An. I had a nice chat with the head and one of the people who worked there and they then took me out to lunch. After that I went down town to run some errands. One of the highlights was visiting the central temple of a new religion established in the 19th century, Ch'ondogyo (which means "Religion of the Heavenly Way" though at one time it was called Tonghak, or "Eastern Learning" as opposed ot Western Learning, that is, Catholicism). The people were nice and I picked up a couple of books. However, it was clear that their religion, unlike some of the other religions that they inspired, is having some difficulties in maintaining itself. Unfortunately for Ch'ondogyo most of its membership was in the north and they chose mainly to stay in North Korea rather than flee.
I also went to the newspaper museum at the Donga Sinbun (a Korean newspaper) main building.

I picked up three books at the museum that were collections of advertisements, photos, and cartoons from Korean newspapers since the 1890's to the present. On the right is a press notebook I bought. It's curious because it featured a headline of Reverend Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. All the other notebooks had little cartoon characters on them. I wonder why they chose an American newspaper and one focusing on MLK in particular?

You could have your picture taken with Yi Soyeon, the first Korean astronaut is one the left. Alas, since no one was with me I couldn't have my picture taken with her.

On Friday I had to give a presentation on An Chunggun at the Fulbright Forum. I was really nervous about it. I was happy though as a large number of people showed up and they seemed satisfied with the presentation. One of my friends taped it so that I could see how to improve as a presenter.