Keypal

I started my keypal project with a friend from Spain living in Barcelona. I sent him a message that I want to be his email friend through facebook. I joined a group for the people who love Barcelona. I chose this group to find friends because I also like Barcelona very much. I thought sharing the same interests would be easier to be friends. We exchanged few emails but the term was very long with a slow reply.

Fortunately, I received an email from a friend from Malaysia who studies in Germany now. He also sent me an email through facebook. Facebook is efficient to make friends because you can see friends of your friends. Let me briefly introduce my keypal, Jack. Jack likes Korean TV programs, movies, and musics a lot. He is a graduate student majoring Marketing. He wants to work in Germany after he finishes his study. I am also majoring Business Administration. In addition, I had been in Germany as an exchange student for 4 months. We have some parts that we have in common. He also likes to travel so that he traveled many countries in Europe and cities in Germany. Since he is busy studying and working and I am busy searching jobs and attend classes, we exchanged emails roughly once a week.


An Email I wrote to my Keypal

Hello Jack!!!

How are you these days??? :)
From the previous email, I could imagine that you must be too busy to do all the things by yourself!!! You are a superman!
BTW, where are you going on this Christmas?? I really envy you!! Go somewhere far from a routine life!
I guess it is winter in Germany too~ Is it horriabely cold there?
We had a first snow of this winter few days ago.
I am doing well!! Of course it is difficult for the global economic crisis :'(
I am taking rests on this weekend by myself~ YEAH!!
It is almost the end of the job seeking seasons, and I am waiting for the results.
I will get the final result next Thursday, so I had some free time to take a rest yeah!
Wish me a good luck, plz!

Take care!

With Love,
JungAh





An Email from my Keypal

Hello Jung Ah Lieblings,

I am fine, but a little bit sick and too busy these days!
With tonnes of work including midterm test, assignments, term paper, job searching, interview and test, and final exam...
Going to die soon T__T''' crazily busy, hv to sleep for few hours a day and work even i m sick >_<'''''' Yes!!!! i m still getting a little exposure to business, i m now a part time worker in a small firm focusing on environmental protection things... I am trying to learn as much as possible by particpating in their projects and writing proposal for the company. How about you? What are you doing? I am very interested to know, and perhaps we have opportunity to cooperate! :) O snowing already? That should be beautiful, white Christmas in Korea must be very romantic! Please send me some pics! (with your faces *v*) I may go travelling for a short trip to Nuerenberg for 2 days during the Christmas...
Thanks I have already recovered, and I finished 2 essay papers this weekend!!!
I am so satisfied with my productivity!:)
I dare not to think too much about my holiday as my exam starts on 10th, ends on 20th Dec. After handing in 3 more assignments next week, then I guess could fully concentrate on my revision! just less than 1 month to go then i could relieve all my pressure and throw away all the work!

Wish you successfully enter the company you like!
Looking foward to having a reply from you!!!


Jack

SIG ( Special Interest Groups )

I had joined two yahoogroups at first; 'Cake Baking Club' and 'Postimpressionism Club.' The former one didn't have frequent or regular updates, so I decided not joinint the club anymore. The latter one is a club about post-impressionism as you can expect from the name of the club. Artists such as Vincent Van gogh, Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin are talked about and their work are be shown here in this club. I am a layperson in art works, but I am interested in impressionism just because the style is easy to understand and share the feelings that the painters want to express.

There are not enough or indepth information about post impressionism in this club. However, I found some interesting files about Vincent Van Gogh and his paintings. I have never seen the picture 'Fishing in Spring' before. A bright spring colors and a view of seine of Paris seemed a bit similar to painting of Claude Monet. However, the interpreter in the club said that the composition shows how Gogh was attracted to Neo-Impressionist style of Georges Seurat painting fishermen in the same location for several years. The other painting was 'Two Sunflowers' also paintned by Van Gogh. I could imagine how he liked the flower and symbolized his favorite flower by depicting it several times.

There were other paintings like Smarandache's paintings that I have never seen before. Sadly, the club just introduced the composition without any explanation, so I tried to find some information about the painter and the paintings but failed. Anyway, this group gave me to refresh my mind by appreciating beautiful paitings.

Podcast

I had subscribed ‘Learning German for free with German’ and ‘ABC World News.’ I decided continuing ‘ABC World News’ rather than ‘Learning German for free with German.’ The program learning German seemed proper to people who are fluent in German because the host usually speaks German about our daily lives, and I am just in a basic level. On the contrary, ABC World News is good way to practice English and to get information of the world with a few minutes of intensive news. What I like the most about the podcasting is that a famous and talented host named Charles Gibson and his friend David Moore. I was big fan of them when I was learning Englsih through news. Luckily, I have an apportunity to receive news reports from them again!

Additionally, I found another podcast that would be useful to me; 'Harvard Business(HB) Idea Cast.' HB Idea Cast provides not only audio but also video too. This podcast was very useful for me for its various topics about Management and Marketing. This podcasts offers brief introduction of several articles published in Harvard Business Review. One of the stories impressive to me is 'Who is a Future Leader?' The article says that responsiblility of the future leader is person who changes and are reactive to a new day. Mostly, HB Idea Cast serves one podcasting services per week with a 10 minute long recording. They also preview what they will cover on the next week, so it is efficient and easy to have more attention on the topics.

I definately want to say that podcasting was the best source that I learned at AIE. Podcasting especially at i-Tunes is very good way to improve certain topics that people are interested in within a short time with less effort in everyday life with mp3 player or computer. I have already recommended this service to many friends who wants to improve English.

Profile of JungAh

ABOUT JUNGAH WOO

I am a senior at Sogang University majoring Business Administration.

Sadly, this is my last semester at Sogang at which I have lots of good memories making friends and conducting some projects.

I will have a job training right after my final exam finishes and it sounds too much, but I am relieved anyway as I got a job.

I always want to improve my English but I was very lazy learning English these days. I will catch up with my podcasting 'ABC World News.' People might think listening news everyday from podcast! she must be crazy! But I am not! Girls would like the program very much, since there is a handsome guy named David Moore(?) introducing world news. He speaks faster than a host of ABC Worldnews named Charles Gibson so that you can improve your listening skills without any difficulty.

I really love watching movies. Since I was young, I loved to watch movies especially classic movies like 'Sound of Music', 'Rome in Holiday', 'Gone with the Wind' and so on. This hobby runs in my family. My sister and I had watched 'Sound of Music' more than 200 times at least.

When it comes to sports, I like riding bicycles or inline skates. So, I really love to go to Olympic Park because I can do both at the park. I also like swimming. But, I am really bad at sports playing with balls.

I like traveling too. I think I am in love with Europe for its classic and historical baeuty I feel. I have never been to America but I had chance to go to Europe several times. Each nation and each city has its own characteristic with well protected culture and history.

When I travel, I prefer self tour to tour guiding. I was sick all the time when I had a tour guide. In Turkey, I had stomachache and in Japan, I had the first car sickness in my life. Then, I never had the guide tour again.

<- This is a picture of this summer in Paris.

The upper one is before I start appreciating artwoks in Orsey.

I didn't know it would take 4 hours.......

The bottom ons is after I went out of Orsey to have lunch at 3pm.

I normally can't bear hunger, but I managed to wait until I had

lunch.

But I look very exhausted..

A Trip to Switzerland_Day 4

Bern

www.berntourism.ch

6th Aug. 2009
Finally, this is the last day of our trip in Switzerland. We had lots of events that we didn't expect to happen among us. Even though we had some disagreements and mistakes during our trip, we made a peace fortunately. We shared unforgettable and valuable experiences and memories together.


We took a train at 8 a.m. from Interlaken, and we arrived at Bern around 9 a.m. Bern is a small city, so we planned to stay here only for a half of the day and go to Zurich-Airport on the same day.


Bern is a capital city of Switzerland. We didn't know that until we decided to travel Switzerland. Most of the people think that Zurich is the capital of Switzerland. It's because the cities of Switzerland have their own economic, political, diplomatic specialties. And Bern is an official and political capital city of Switzerland.

Every must-see places in Bern are close to each other, so we could see them by walking through. After we went out of the Bern Bahnhof, Spital Gasse was in front of the station. It was a good start of the day easily finding the place and read the map in Bern.

Spital Gasse has well protected beautiful and classic buildings. I could understand why UNESCO appointed the Old City of Bern as cultural heritage. There were fountains in a row on the street from the main station. I heard each fountain has its own history, but I couldn't find any travel books wrote about it.

Unlike Interlaken, Bern is somewhat busy city combined with old and new. Brown roofs with a bit of yellow made Bern attractive.

We saw Kafigturm, as we walked along the Spital Gasse.

Then, we saw Zeitlockenturm, which is a tower with a big and luxurious clock on the outside of the wall. I heard that the clock provides clock show with dolls every 57 minutes, but we missed the show. Actually, I didn’t expect much about the show. I had seen similar show in Muenchen before, but it was very boring with slow and simple movements of the dolls.

Bern is also the city known for its fountains.
There are probably 100 or more of them in the city and what few I found have very powerful images. The most interesting fountain was Chindifresserbrunnen, Child-Eating-Ogre-Fountain in English. The ugly looking Ogre was decorated with gold(of course not a real gold), it seemed ridiculous but impressive.

There were many shops along the Spital Gasse.

The street was interesting for me

because the buildings on the street are not in a straight line,

but they were all next to each other.

We visited Einstein Museum, which used to be Einstein's house. The museum is located in the middle of the busy street, so we were confused and strayed for 30 minutes to find the museum. Einstein had lived here for 7 years, and he wrote a first draft of theory of relativity here. We saw some stuff that Einstein had used at the museum.

Then, we headed to St. Vincenz Church(Munster Church). It took more than 400 years to complete the church

and it is the highest church in Switzerland.

But the view near the church with Are River

was worth to see rather than looking inside the church.

We went back to Bern Hauptbahnhof around noon. We had lunch at a traditional restaurant of Bern before the train at 2 p.m. The waiter recommended us Roesti and we all tried the same. It was similar to Buchimgae with chopped potatoes. Actually, it didn't seem special and it looked easy to cook, but it was delicious anyway!





It took 1 hour from Bern to Zurich. We arrived at Zurich at 3 p.m. We had enough time to go to the international airport named Kloten Airport from the Zurich main station. It took only 10 minutes to go to the airport and there were trains every 10 minutes. Our flight was at 17:45( From Zurich to Paris, from Prais to Incheon) . It was sad that we couldn't stay in Bern until night, but it means there was some room to go there again.


Lastly, we were ready to finish our short but memorable trip in Switzerland.


Thanks for my tripmates Eunjee, Yongmin, and Suming for sharing a happy memory with me in Switzerland.

Reference:

http://weichi.com/kate/Schweiz.htmhttp://travelguide.all-about-switzerland.info/cityguide-bern-sightseeing-landmarks-museums.htmlhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ragsraghu/BernSpiezAndThun#5144880922803856258http://www.bloombiz.ro/turism/berna-cel-mai-frumos-oras-medieval-din-elvetiahttp://haydeeetc.blogspot.com/2008/02/visiting-bern.htmlhttp://pictzz.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.htmlhttp://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/einsteinsociety.htmlhttp://www.tourcouple.com/travelinfo/spot_default.aspx?spot_id=8398&ParentFolderID=-1&SpotType=4http://flickr.com/photos/33311000@N00/1393110425

A Trip to Switzerland_Day 3

Interlaken


5 Aug. 2009
On the third morning in Switzerland, we started a trip early. I had a hangover a bit, but I could manage it. Yongmin told me that he suffered alot last night at the bar because of me. Sorry for Yongmin, I didn't remember something bad yesterday. From a hotel it took 20 minutes to Interlaken Ost station. we took a mountain climing train togo to the top of the Alps mountain, "Kleine Scheidegg" for 2 hours.

In Kleine Scheidegg, we had short time to change a train named JB. It was a short time, but it was enough for us to realize that we are in the middle of the famous Alps.

It took 2 hours to go to River Jungfrau. From there we went to complex facilities called Top of the Europe. The place had an observation platform to see the view of Alps. Luckily, weather was clear enough to see the beautiful houses, permanent snow and glacier. They were just like a picture in a postcard or Christmas card.

Around 3 p.m., we went back to Kleine Scheidegg. Then, Yongmin and Eunjee went skiing, and Suming and I went sledding for an hour and a half. It was wonderful to see the snow in the middle of summer and to see the picturesque scenery.

We took a final train going back to Interlaken Ost staion. I was too tired to go outside in the evening. Unfortunately, when we came down, I didn't feel good since I didn't have warm enough outwear and I drank a lot last night. I also wanted go to 'Wilhelm Tell Festival', but I decided to take a rest for tomorrow rather going the festival.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kleine_Scheidegg.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/doowopper/image/8979870

http://outdoorinterlaken.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/our-services-during-winter-season/

A Trip to Switzerland_Day 2

Luzern

4 Aug. 2009

We were supposed to go to Luzern early in the morning, so we hurried not to miss a train at 7 a.m. To save some time, we just bought some to eat on the train. High price of Switzerlandand refreshed me alot again,

Suming’s voice told us the train was in Luzern. Luzern is famoums for its beautiful nature, lake and mountains. Mountains surrounding Luzern worked as a natural fortress. That's why nature in Luzern has been well protected from invaders. After we put our luggage into locker in the station, we headed to Mt. Rigi.

To go to Mt. Rigi, took an excursion ship at a dock near the train station. Our Luzern specialist Yongmin said, the height of Mt. Rigi was 1800m. We took the funicular, a train for climbing the mountain. Everything in Switzerland seems very romantic. Even the train is red and it made me to expect a lot about Mt. Rigi tour. We went to the top of Mt. Rigi and view at Rigikulm was indescribable. The large scale made me feel how great the world is. I was very emotional at time I guess. There was a little problem between Eunjee and Yongmin that broke my romantic feeling. I didn't know exactly what was wrong between them, but I knew that hunger made us sensitive. Therefore, we went down to have lunch.

On the way to one of the most popular restaurants, Fondue house, we saw Kapellbrucke, the oldest wood-carving bridge in Europe. It has a roof and there are 112 prints on the ceiling of the roof. The prints show us the history of Luzern.

Yongmin and I ordered Fondue Chinoise and Eunjee and Summing ordered Cheese fondue. I was very satisfied with mine, and I even liked Eunjee and Suming's. I am born to eat something fatty!! I was little bit worried about Eunjee because she seemed not satisfied with her dish.

We went shopping again for shopaholic Yongmin. He knew a lot about watched so that it was good to have window-shopping with him. We went to a small park to watch Lowendenmal. Lion was carved on it and it was made to pay attribute to the memory of the 786 soldiers fought against angry citizens at Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in the French Revolution.

Before we went back to the station, we took several pictures to remember our trip in Luzern. During 90 minutes on a train to Interlaken, we all fell a sleep. It was short but refreshing sleep. We arrived at Interlaken almost at 9p.m. At a hotel, I asked Summing and Eunjee to go to a bar, but they didn’t want to, so I went to a bar with Yongmin as we had planned on the train. I drank 3 glasses of draft beer and other drinks. Anyway, I really loved the vibrant and friendly atmosphere of the bar. It was the most wonderful night in Switzerland, I remembered how I had regretted just staying at hotel, not going to a bar.

References:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_cx8yfYxO-u4/RtYIIFhGGAI/AAAAAAAABKY/ulUK4qk_QAg/s800/DSC00522.JPG

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v330/AmyAnderson/fondue.jpg

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_4vXJ09StbAE/R-XGvSCeDWI/AAAAAAAAD5A/_lTeXSLIoRM/112+-+Luzern+Lowendenkmal.jpg