Bernheim's CONNECT 2012 highlights

 Not even one minute before I finished setting up, a line formed with lots of kids wanting their faces painted.

I set out two tip jars with "__ vs. __" on them, as suggested by a website on how to encourage more tips. For adults, I put "Romney vs. Obama" on one side. A little girl threw a dollar into the 'Romney' jar, and her dad immediately says, "No honey, put it in the Obama jar. My daughter ain't a Republican."

After mentioning that story to another customer, she said, "When my brother finally came out, my mom exhaled and yelled, 'Thank god, I thought you were going to say you were a Republican!'"

This cute, curly-redheaded-n-freckled boy, probably around 11 or so, sat down and began to ask me about sci-fi movies he had seen. He asked if I had seen Terminator, and asked me questions about it. Then he told me, "Did you know that Neil Armstrong died today? That makes me really sad." His mom mentioned something about winking at the moon to remember Armstrong, and the boy replied he'd do that as soon as I finished his cheek.

Funny teenagers and their funny words.

Lotus flower

The last customers were so nice: a happy little family with a little girl and older boy. They were a cool bunch. The parents talked about their fun adventures, doing a Zombie Walk in the future where their little girl will be a three-eyed princess, and the older boy asking if I could just do a mustache and a soul patch. LOL! They were even kind enough to walk me to my car and help carry my stuff to it, since it was so dark.

Hearing the music from afar was neat, too. I wish I could've seen the other exhibits going on, but maybe next year I'll just be a spectator instead. I also made some decent tips. :)

Night time!

I'm going to South Korea!

For Art Education majors, we're required to take up to 4 Art History classes: Art History I, Art History II, and two upper division courses (History of Craft I/II, 20th Century Art, Mesopotamian, etc.). Luckily, one upper division "class" is called Art Tour, which is basically a trip to another country to study its artistic culture.

This year, a resident artist for our Metals course, who originally comes from South Korea, offered an Art Tour class to his native country. It's an 11-day trip to South Korea during May, after school is done. It used to be during spring break, but both students and professor were too exhausted coming from the tour straight back into classes. The Art History professor is going to Italy, but I've been to Europe before; I lived there! I've never been to Asia, though!

We had our first meeting last night, and I am so pumped! We'll be traveling through Seoul, GyeongJu, DaeGu, and even staying overnight in a temple! How exciting is that? He showed us pictures of what you do there, what you wear, and eating etiquette. The country is so beautiful, and their art is even more beautiful. My university will reimburse the airfare through a travel scholarship (which pretty much every full-time student in good standing gets), so the trip itself is cheap! And I get 3 credit hours for it. Instead of a big paper, we simply write a little paper on a cultural aspect of South Korea, and keep a notebook/journal of our trip.

I'll definitely enjoy this immensely. Despite the trauma of France, I'm ready to travel again. This time it won't be all business, and we'll have guides. And money. This will be a great opportunity for blog posts, too. ;)

Has anyone here been to South Korea? If so, what did you love most? What delicacies are worth trying? Please, let me know!