A Shanghailander in Seoul IV: A "Field Trip" to the Ehwa Museum
Ehwa Women's University is located right across the road from Yonsei. On Wednesday I walked with my Premodern World History students and my TA Calvin Kim (who has been an enormous help) over the hill to the Ehwa Campus where we visited the Ehwa University Museum. They have a nice collection of Korean historical artifacts and they were hosting a comparative exhibition on Korean, Chinese, and Japanese depictions of male and female beauty. A colleague recommended that I go see it, and since it was closer than the Korean National Museum, where I had originally planned to take the students, we went there instead. The walk alone was worth the trip, since it was a lovely sunny blue day (it's getting a bit hot here but no cause for complaint especially in comparison to the heat wave that is hitting much of the world now). Here are some photos that Calvin took of the group. I'm putting all of them up because a) it's the only way you can see all of their faces (almost all, some liked to hide) and b) you can see how cute my students are with their funny poses. They are a nice small group, though a bit TOO QUIET in class, but I do try to get them to talk now and then.
These photos were taken just behind the Ehwa Museum. Here's a shot of the museum (the sun was directly behind it):
and here is what the Ehwa campus looks like, quite lovely and with an interesting sunken stairway that leads to an underground complex built underneath the hill, looks very modern yet also like it was built for the palace or temple an ancient city, fitting for a premodern history class tour.