Joleen wrote Second Impressions earlier. The title was a play on words, based on posts we wrote last time we were here.
Since we’re not really restating/rehashing a lot of our impressions, you might want to read/review some of our posts from last time where we reflected on the culture (incidentally, our last trip counted as our “cross-cultural experience” for our doctoral programs at Asbury and the posts were part of our “journal”).
If you’d like to get more of a flavor of Korea from our perspective, see First Impressions, More First Impressions, and Familiar Places. Also, check out Korean Folk Village and Korean Food.
Contextualization and Thou Shalt Not Be Ethnocentric discuss some reflections on the importance and value of culture and how we were impacted while we were here the first time.
One major difference this time has been the weather. Yesterday, it was sunny and warm (60s), compared to brutally cold temperatures last time (February). We were hoping to experience Korea during a different season this time around!
One thing we’ll add about driving in Korea (which we’re not doing, by the way): Last time, I said you’d need to have ice in your veins to drive in Korea. I still believe that. In fact, I think I’ve driven in most states east of the Mississippi River (and a little in Canada) and I’ve never been afraid of driving anywhere. But it would take some real getting used to, to drive here!
This helps explain the need for extra mirrors, which I was fascinated by last time.
And I’m convinced the many delivery people who ride scooters (on the streets, between lanes, on the sidewalks and crosswalks) either have a death wish or at least a certain kind of wiring. Amazingly, though, during all of our time in Korea, we’ve seen hardly any accidents (I think we’ve seen only one auto accident).
We’re planning to get out for another new experience of Korea this morning (and possibly our first subway experience), so we may have some more impressions to add later. We’ll try to post a few photos, but the PC in our room is painfully underpowered, so we may wait to post the bulk of them till after we return home (I’m just glad — really glad — we were able to post the first photo of us with Sarah yesterday!).