Another first for us today, as Ellen and I became visiting lecturers! Our curent host in Chuncheon is a professor and arranged for us to give some talks to his students at the faculty of social sciences at Kangwon National University. Needless to say I was quite nervous, especially on finding out that the first lecture would be 50 minutes and the second 90: having never done this before it was certainly a challenge but luckily for me there was no time to plan so I could rely on just my mouth to do the hard work!
The lectures went very well, time just flew by and the students seemed interested in what we had to say (although on the whole they are more reserved than in England so it was a little hard to tell). The professor was on hand to translate when necessary but I think the students all had a pretty good grasp of English, which is good as I still can't speak a word of Korean - its a tricky language as all Ural-Altaic ones are (but with a most elegant, logical and well designed written script - hangul). A big screen and internet connection were to hand so we were able to pepper our talk with piccies from the web site and these had a big impact. I was most pleased to find that the questions coming to us from the audience on both occasions suggested a keener interest in politics than I had experienced in Japan, and I felt able to bang on about the evils of capitalism, American Imperialism and globalisation in my usual unbiased way!
All in all it was a great experience for us and one that we would not have had if it wasn't for Hospitality Club in particular, and independent travel in general. Hurrah for no package tour!