Busy Day

Kindergarten was a lot of fun! The teacher's assistant asked me to go through the alphabet and the sounds the letters make with the class. After we went through the letters, we decorated cut outs of the letters. Then on to Conversation class. We had a quiz in there-I got 56/60 right! :) 

Our movie class had another intense movie. I just have to get used to the fact that they all will be. I'm not usually a fan of war movies, so it's a bit of an adjustment. This movie was called "Silmido" and was loosely based off of true events during the 70's. The North Koreans attempted to assassinate the South Korean president. Afterward, the South Koreans wanted to retaliate and trained 30 criminals on death row to go on a suicide mission to assassinate Kim Il-Sung. At the last minute, their mission was called off and the higher authorities wanted all of that special tasks team "eliminated"; the higher authorities gave the operations leaders an ultimatum: eliminate the team or be killed along with them. After 3 years of training and working together, it was hard for the leaders and soldiers to kill their trainees, but worried about their own lives, decided it was the best option. They had a big battle with the trained criminals winning. They escaped the island they were living on and went to Seoul on a bus. Finally, they were tracked down and fired upon and they ended up blowing up the bus with them on it. It is said that an investigation was carried out, but the report was filed away unread. It was also kind of a sad and bloody movie, but interesting all the same. Oh! How could I forget? Milan and Megan went to Home Plus before class and Milan insisted on them buying 2 cakes (it's his birthday). So they came to class with cakes and beverages (remember we are having a surprise party tomorrow too). AND our professor ALSO bought 2 cakes! However, he saved his and we will actually be using them for tomorrow's party as well. :) As it happened, Magnus and Joakim walked by the lounge, so since it was Magnus' birthday today also, they had a little celebration with us too.


We went out to dinner to the Kimbap place I went to on Sunday. I ordered the ddeok mandu guk, but it never came! Emily and I were also splitting a kimbap, so I ate most of that. We were joined by a reporter for the Korean Quarterly, a newspaper based in MN and the reporter's friend who is also a Korean adoptee. The reporter has 3 children; 2 are adopted from Korea, but the one who is biological to them will be coming to Inje in the fall. When we returned from dinner, we ran into Magnus and Joakim. They were going out to eat so Tim, Ji and I joined them. (Tim's dinner order was also messed up and he didn't get much dinner either.) We went to a BBQ place and had samgypsal. 

Extra: this evening Emily stopped by my room to help me organize the weekend a little bit. After she left she suddenly called me and said her roommate was having a birthday party for her in the lounge! Jenny and I went downstairs and we had a Baskin Robbin's ice cream cake with a bunch of other people! This is the second night in a row we've had midnight cake eating parties. Thank goodness no one has a birthday on the 1st! Ha, ha.  

Birthday cakes from Milan and Megan during Movie Class

Birthday Friends Emily and Milan!

Emily's surprise ice cream cake from her roommate

Friends enjoying birthday cake at midnight

Long Day

I am busy, busy, busy! A lot of big events are happening this week and I am organizing them!! 

We had our 'challenging' conversation class this morning. After class, Taekwondo. It went a little bit long today. We had the original instructor. He did a good job breaking down moves and everything for us today. It must have been just because the TV guy was filming the first class that he wanted to show off and make us do challenging/exciting moves. Our language class was also a little difficult today. We had a sort of dictation quiz, except our professor said the words all in English and we had to come up with the Korean. We were quizzed on 55 random words-there were only two I couldn't remember and two that I misspelled! I studied with Emily a little and then I met up with Maren,NaRae (her roommate) and Jenny so we could plan for the birthday parties. We ordered three cakes and also bought Emily a birthday gift. 

I had my ET group tonight. I taught the whole lesson-it was a little scary teaching to a group of students my age!! We talked about parts of speech and everyone gave examples. We also did a few madlibs. I think they kind of liked that, but some of them don't really know enough English to understand the stories when they are all jumbled up. The request last week was to work on past/present/future verbs, but we didn't get to that this week. I think parts of speech was enough for most of them! After class, I hung out with a few of them in the lounge so they could practice speaking. I also did some more studying with Emily and Maren. What a long day! I guess it doesn't sound so bad on paper...but it was draining. Tomorrow is another busy, busy day!

Courtesy of a very attentive student during my parts of speech lesson.

Not a Case of the Mondays

I went off campus this morning to look around 'town'. The sun was shining and it was feeling warmish. When I passed the Kindergarten building there were a bunch of young children outside with two teachers. I thought maybe it was our classroom, but the kids looked too young. After watching them for awhile, I recognized my little host brother!! I tried waving to him, but he didn't see me at first; however ALL the other kids around him were waving back at me. Finally he looked up, and saw me waving, but it seemed like maybe he didn't recognize me. :(

I went to lift weights with Maren and Emily for a little. Then it was off to cooking class. Today we made the best dish so far. It's called "콩나물밥" (kong na mul bap). It was made up of rice, bean sprouts, garlic and green onion. We cut/diced everything up (except the bean sprouts) and boiled/steamed that for about 30 minutes. Then we made a sauce out of soy sauce, garlic, and chili pepper flakes. It was pretty yummy! I think mine had a little bit too much garlic though.

After class, Emily and I went for a run around campus a few times. I studied in the lounge a bit with Emily and Ben. I also met up with my ET leader to discuss our plans for tomorrow's group. He was so impressed with the activities I came up with and was so thankful for all my help. :)

Emily and me with our finished product! Yum!

 

No Surprises! Sunday = Soccer

I went to church this morning. After church, I met up with Emily, Tim and Jenny for lunch. I ordered kimbap (rice, meat and vegetables rolled in seaweed) and ddeok mandu guk (mandu-dumplings- soup with rice cake and egg). The soup was sooo good; it really hit the spot since it is still a little chilly here. I did some studying and homework until 2:31 when we met up for soccer. From Inje, we had Tim, Ben, Magnus, Joakim, and "Charles" (Chul Woo). We saw our friends from previous weekends and asked them to play. There were also a group of 5 guys that we invited as well. We split up into two teams and tried playing. It was very crowded and I actually never touched the ball (the new people didn't pass too me-but it was also because there were too many people). After a while, we decided we had to change it, so we made three teams of five and played five minutes or three goals. It was so much better! I even made a goal today! :)

I came back and did some more homework before dinner. I didn't eat much, so I was glad I didn't finish my kimbap from lunch and ate that. More homework done after dinner and now I'm just going to relax and go to bed early! 

Weekend Update

Friday: I went into Pusan with 4 other participants to apply for our F4 Visa. As Korean adoptees we are given a special visa. We waited a long time, but Jihye said it was nothing compared to the last time; she was there all day. After we completed everything there, we went to lunch. I ordered bibimbap, which is just rice and vegetables with a spicy sauce. The ride back took about 45 minutes and we were running late, so I went to our writing class a few minutes late. In the evening, we decided to go out to the "개집" (Dog House) which is a bar near campus. After a while there, some of the group wanted to go meet up with a few others who had already left for Pusan. However, it takes such a long time to get there, most of the group shot the idea down. We ended up going to another place and playing some games there.

Yay Immigration Office!

Bibimbap

 Today: I met with my host family. Mr. Im picked me up and took me to his house. We had some noodles for lunch. I played and read with his son while we waited for his daughter to return from volunteer work with her school (she just entered middle school). Then we went to a mountain. The main 'attraction' of this place is the birthplace and home of the previous president. The president committed suicide a few years ago, but there is a big memorial set up in memory of him. We hiked for maybe an hour to an hour and a half. After our hike we looked at a museum of belongings of the president. Then we went to dinner near Inje University. We had galbi (meat) and samgypsal (pork). 

View looking down (only part way up the mountain)

Pretty yellow flower buds

Rhododendron

Napdong River-important in Korean War history

Beautiful mountains

Host sister and brother

Galbi

Samgypsal

So COLD!

I had my more advanced conversation class this morning. I think it wasn't too bad today. We also got a gift for being good students! We were given 30,000W in gift certificate/coupons-money to different restaurants and stores in Korea. Jihye, our director also wrote a cute little personal message to all of us. She also included a few pictures of us with our friends. It was so sweet.

After class, we found out we were requested to be at a 'fundraiser' publicity event. The event was to raise money for the people in Japan. We were given envelopes with a few thousand won in them to donate. Next we had our culture class. Today we learned about the flag and the national anthem. We learned the lyrics and then listened/sang a whole bunch of times. Our teacher told us that all of the Korean TV stations play the national anthem at the beginning and ending of broadcasting times. Each station has their own 'video' depicting images from around Korea to go with the music. We watched three of them. I needed to go to the bank to pay for my Visa for tomorrow, so Jenny was meeting up with me after we had our classes. I exchanged all the rest of my American money. We had an extra music class today; that went okay. 

Emily and I went for a run around campus. We went to go see Ji play soccer around 7. At the half time, everyone left except Joakim, Magnus and me. Ji's team ended up losing by 2. It was SO COLD! It felt like fall/winter, not spring!

"Hwaiting!" (fighting) L to R: Maren, Sunghee, Emily and me

Ji!

Good action shot

 

Movie Class

Wow...I just got out of the movie class and I can't even really think about what happened earlier in the day. The movie we watched was called "Taeguki" and it was about two brothers forced to fight in the Korean War and just their development and change throughout the war. It was very bloody and gory, but it was also very sad. The movie touched on some very deep and difficult concepts/ideologies-mostly based around what is acceptable behavior in war. You could feel the struggle, the emotions and the anger between 'brothers' (not just the main characters, but in the more figurative sense that it was Koreans fighting against Koreans) during the fighting/battle scenes. It was a difficult movie to watch in more than one way, but at the same time, it was good...Maybe it is a little hard for me to explain...


Kindergarten was a lot of fun this morning. We were going to teach them the Happy Birthday song, but they already knew that too. We sang the song a few times, and then worked in small groups to write birthday cards to one of the boys in class (it was his birthday today). Before Kindergarten, I was able to call my Grandpa and we had a nice talk. :) 

Tonight I just had a relaxed evening. I was able to do a little studying too.
PS: around 9:45 there was a knock on my door and one of my ET members asked if I was busy. She said "we're eating chicken at 10, so please join us"  So I went down and we ate chicken around 10:30... Why do Koreans like chicken so much?!?!

Killer Tuesday

This morning we had our challenging conversation class. The thing that makes it the most difficult is that our teacher is new to teaching (Korean). She jumps from topic to topic, asks us to try to do stuff like repeat her (opposed to telling us "repeat after me"), and moves very quickly through the material. It reminds me what a good teacher needs to do in order to help his or her students. It also makes me appreciate the wonderful teachers I have met through my schooling years!

Next, we went on to Taekwondo. We had a different instructor today. He also only spoke in Korean, so if he told the class where the other instructor was...I can't tell you. Ha, ha. It was nice-today we almost spent the first 30 minutes stretching! We only attend class for an hour-the class continues, but we have to go to lunch and class shortly afterward. Our language course wasn't too bad. It's still a lot to take in sometimes and classes can seem a bit overwhelming. At this point it seems like I just need to memorize, memorize, and memorize vocabulary words. 

After class, some of us had to get our pictures taken for our F4 Visa. My ET group originally planned on bowling this evening; however since we were meeting at a different time there were many scheduling conflicts. Only 5 of us were able to go, so we decided to go and have some coffee and just spend some time practicing talking/conversation instead. 

White Hot Chocolate (not as good as SBCC) but look closely for the cute heart design!

Part of my ET group out for coffee

Catch Up Day part 2

I forgot to write about today!

Emily and I ran over to Home Plus for some groceries in the morning. I did a little bit of studying outside with Tim and Ben. Then I went to do some lifting with Emily and Maren. We had our cooking class this afternoon. This week we made ddeok bokki (떡볶이) which is a spicy dish with rice cake, fish cake and vegetables. (I gave mine to Jenny ;) hehe) After cooking class, some of us needed to go to the City Hall with Jihye to finish up paperwork for our F4 Visa. After dinner, I went running with Maren and Emily. Then we studied in the lounge. 

Catch Up Day!

Friday: Our music teacher had a meeting so Jihye was our teacher for the day. We had a shortened class which was nice, but we will be making it up on Thursday. Between 12 and 3 we could not be in ET because they were disinfecting all the rooms in the building. During that time, Emily and I went for a run and then lifted a little in the gym with Maren. We had our writing class and then dinner. At 5:30 we met up by the school buses to leave for Gyeongju for Membership Training (MT). There were a total of 6 people in my group; I knew one from my ET group and the other from soccer and other friends. We had to come up with a 'team' name and a cheer or slogan. We decided to go with "namja set, yeoja set" which means "3 men and 3 women". It was based off of a Korean TV show copying "Friends". And our cheer was "i jo washong" which just means here's group one. I got a little motion sick on the ride over and slept most of the hour and 15 bus ride. We stayed at kind of a campground in Gyeongju, except we had buildings to sleep in, not tents. The building our group rented was one big building, but it was split in half-one side for the guys separated by a wall with the girls on the other side. We also luckily had bathrooms-with running water! :) We started the evening by introducing ourselves and our groups. Then we just played a bunch of games and team building kind of activities. After the games, we all went over to the guy's side and had fried chicken, snacks and beverages. We played more games and enjoyed getting to know everyone.

Team Pyun Ohk, Magnus and Jenny!

Games

Saturday: We had breakfast at a cafeteria on the grounds where we were staying. Then we played MORE games outside. The best was a relay race where our teams had to wear a few items like a wig or a hat plus a cape or a bag. In addition we had to have a balloon in between our legs!! It was funny to watch everyone stumbling around the 'race track' they made. We took a group picture and then pictures with our small groups. Lunch was the cafeteria food again and then we had free time for a few hours. Our 'campsite' was right next to Gyeongju World, which is a small amusement park. We mostly just walked around looking at everything. Most of the group went on a roller coaster ride but Jenny, Emily and I sat out and held everyone's belongings. We left around 2:45 and arrived on campus around 4. My host family was having me over for dinner and I was getting picked up at 5:30. I laid down for a little because I got motion sick again. I also went to dinner for a little snack in case my family served me seafood! ;)

My host dad (Mr. Im) came to pick me up with his 3 year old son. He is so cute! He reminds me a LOT of my little friend Jaebin, especially when Jaebin was that age. My host family lives about 10 minutes away from campus. We had chapchae (my favorite!), bulgogi, cheon (kind of like pancake with vegetables and either mushrooms or maybe oysters...I couldn't figure out which), and a couple different kinds of kimchi. After dinner, Mr. Im and his daughter taught me how to play "ung nori". We played a few rounds while his wife prepared dessert-strawberries, oranges, oreo type cookies, and Japanese rice cake type of cookies. Then we played ung nori on teams. After playing a few rounds, we then had Jujube tea and a cake-bread that was really good. I showed them some pictures of family and friends back home on my camera. Mr. Im wanted to show me pictures of his family too, so we watched a slide show on their TV. Around 9:30 Mr. Im and his daughter drove me back to ET. 

Team Namja Set, Yeoja Set

Maren, Jenny, Emily and me!

So cute! Love these girls!

L to R: Jenny, Emily, Magnus, me, Joakim, and "Josh"

Joakim and Magnus with their new pets at Gyeongju World

Random bunny at Gyeongju World!

Dinner at the Im's

Mr. Im and his daughter making the ung nori board

Dessert 1: Strawberries and cookies

Mr. Im, his wife and son playing

Sunday and soccer!

What a busy day! I went to lunch at Isaac again. This time I was able to introduce Megan to the "delicousness" of Isaac. She was very happy. After lunch, I studied a little and then went to play soccer. We only played about 45 minutes. Then some of the guys had to leave and do stuff, so we just did a juggling game. Dinner was pretty good-everything was red! (red = spicy usually) My favorite part was the mandu in a red sauce with mixed vegetables. After dinner, I went to Gimhae City with Ji, Joakim and Magnus. Joakim wanted to buy some soccer shoes. I thought I'd check out prices and see if some were cheap enough. It was a little pricey so I didn't buy any. Emily and I went to do some studying in the lounge and got some help from one of my ET students, Bum Shik. After he left another student came and Emily and I helped him with a presentation. I'm not sure where all the time went...I will have to tell about the weekend tomorrow!

Cold Snap!

Brrrr! It has gotten cold again! We're back in the 40's which doesn't sound too bad, but it is quite windy. I can hardly wait for spring (well, I probably actually mean summer...) weather!!

We had another conversation class this morning. It is the 'intermediate' class and it is fairly challenging. The textbook/workbook we are using does not have any English in it. I can read the dialogs, but do not necessarily know what I am ready. It is interesting flip flopping between this class and the more basic conversation class-the books are so drastically different. However, I'm enjoying the opportunity to learn and practice as much Korean as I can. In Culture class we learned about the different holidays in Korea. There are a bunch of unofficial holidays young adults celebrate that are very funny. They all occur on the 14th of every month. The first one in January is called "Diary Day" and couples buy each other planners and write important events down in them and exchange them. Valentine's Day is a little different; the girls buy chocolates for the guys and that's about it. March 14 (just a few days ago) was "White Day"; boys buy the girls candy. I won't go into all of them, but April 14 is called "Black Day". This 'holiday' is for all the singles to eat black foods, particularly a Chinese black noodle dish. It goes on and on; they are kind of funny.

After class, Emily and I studied a little. Then I went with Jihye to meet my host father. He isn't able to attend the orientation/party this evening. He is a professor of Japanese Language and Literature. He doesn't speak much English, but his daughter knows a fair amount. She is 12-14 years old. He has a son who is 5ish. They live in Kimhae. I am going to meet his family on Saturday.  

We went to dinner and then the orientation thing. Tim and I left early because we didn't have any family there and felt a little awkward. When I returned, Maren called me and told me everyone was going out with their 'families' (it was really just one person for everyone) and I was welcome to join. So we went out to a restaurant called Kong Bul. They serve SPICY pork and bean sprouts dish. I ate sooo much! Buuuut...Maren had to say "even though I'm really full, ice cream sounds really good!" So Maren, Emily, Milan and I went to Lotteria for 500W ice cream cones. 


Tomorrow we are going to Gyeongju for Membership Training with English Town. We're spending the night there so updates to follow in a few days!

Before being cooked

Finished product

Ice cream to cool off our stomachs! Maren, Milan, Emily and me!

Wednesday

This morning I didn't have anything until 10:30, so it was nice to sleep in a little. I was able to talk to my mom on skype. My group had Kindergarten class today. We were supposed to teach them some animal names, but they knew all of them already! We played a few games with them to repeat the names. 

Our conversation class went well. We have a textbook that will be very helpful in the future. We also had a dictation quiz. It was really good to see how much I can hear, even if the list was words we had just practiced writing.

We went to the teacher's cafeteria for lunch, thinking it was going to be better-like last week...but it wasn't that good. After lunch we had our first movie class. We watched a movie called "Swiri", which is the name of a fish native to the river that separates North and South Korea. The movie was kind of violent and bloody, but the main theme of this movie (and I think all the movies for this class) was about the tensions between North and South Korea. 

I went and got an ice cream sandwich bar from the Family Mart (convenience store) after dinner. It was very good! :) It was kind of like a waffle/wafer on the outside; the inside had vanilla ice cream and then chocolate between the ice cream and the wafer. Yum!  

Emily and I are going to do a little bit of studying with our new textbooks and I am hoping to make it to bed a little bit earlier tonight. 

Tiring Tuesdays

We had a conversation class this morning. It went okay-the phrases are still a little difficult to get down. After conversation, we had taekwondo class. The cameraman taped the last little bit for the program KBS is making. It was funny because when the instructor told the class it was being taped for KBS I saw all the girls take their hair down and kind of fluff it out.

We had our language class after lunch. It definitely makes me think of a linguistics class, but it is interesting. Later, I went running with Emily, Megan and Kim. After dinner, I had my ET class. I ran into my group leader earlier today and I told him I wouldn't be late this week; I would be early! I was so early I was afraid I was in the wrong place. The lesson Seung Chul, our leader, planned was for the class to write a story from a picture. Then I had to correct their grammar. It went alright, I just wish there were more resources available/more technology accessible in our discussion room. I went to talk with Emily and Maren afterward. I've been looking up different activities to help with grammar and I can't believe it's almost 11 already!

Just Another Monday

Monday's are pretty great. It is such an easy day! This morning I just relaxed and caught up on things here and there. After lunch, I hung out with Tim in the computer lab; we were looking up ideas for our Kindergarten class Wednesday. I had another break before cooking class. This week we made another type of 'cheon', hwa cheon. It is a traditional dish made with rice flour. The cheon are decorated with a date and daisy leaves to make the design of a flower. Then they are fried; we made a sugar syrup to cover them. These turned out/tasted better than last week's cheon. Maren, Emily and I went to HomePlus to get some groceries and came back for dinner. We met our new classmate, Milan. He was finishing up another program and it ended last week. Dinner was not very good. I had bought "cheese bokki" which is basically ramen noodles with cheese-kind of like easy mac. That also was not very good. Ben called me and I went downstairs to the lounge to study with Tim and him. Emily joined us after a bit. Then I went upstairs to study in Emily's room a little more and Maren joined us. I need to rest up because tomorrow is going to be a loooong day. Our first official Taekwondo class is tomorrow too!

Emily and me with our finished product!

Beautiful Spring Day!

The weather was soo nice today! I can feel spring in the air-I can hardly wait for it to stick around. The evenings get chilly, especially when the sun starts to set. 

I went to church this morning. It's still difficult to follow/know what's going on. I met up with Emily, Jenny, Ben and Tim at Isaac Toast...aka best sandwich place in town OR my new love. We ordered and took our sandwiches back to campus and ate at the 'outdoor auditorium' in front of English Town (from now on referred to as ET). After lunch Emily and I decided to go study some; the soccer guys and I planned to play soccer later in the day so we went to study over by the fields. While we were studying, all of a sudden Ben came running over from the opposite direction of the dorms and said he needed my help and to grab my stuff and follow him. He wanted to play tennis and there was a big group of older men and women (like a tennis club); he wanted me to translate for him, except I didn't know how to say any of the things he wanted me to tell them!! With a few words here and there I was able to kind of get the point across and Ben was able to play with them. Our 'soccer crew' arrived and then we saw the guys we played with last week and we went to ask them to play with us again. While we were in the middle of playing, the team that was in the futsal (fenced in) field left, so we went to play in there-rather than on the hard basketball court. It was a lot of fun. :)

Emily and Maren came to study our new vocabulary words for a little. Jenny was a huge help! We needed to hear the pronunciation of the words and she was so nice to read through 5-6 pages of vocab for us. When we were done studying, we just talked for a long time. I can't believe it's already 10:30. It is definitely time for bed! Luckily I only have the cooking class tomorrow, so it shouldn't be too difficult! :)

All of our sandwiches! :)

Sitting outside with our Isaac!

Yay for Isaac! Haha, Tim's face.

Relaxed Day

It's getting harder and harder to stay on top of this blog! 

Friday:
The girls had their 'health test'. We had a little blood drawn for a Hepatitis check and an x-ray to check for TB. The first Music and Culture class was this morning. The chairman/director of the IIIHR program is our teacher. He's pretty...excited about music. We have two native Korean students playing guitar in our class and Chairman 'plays' the 'drums' by hitting his hands on the desk. Like I said, very enthusiastic about this class. We had a shortened class today because we were going to Pusan. Let me backtrack a bit...KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) is doing a bit on our IIIHR program/us so we have a camera man following us around. He has been doing mini-interviews and stuff since Wednesday including filming the Welcoming Ceremony (Wed). He wanted to have us go to a Korean home and have food cooked by a Korean mother, so we went to Jihye's (our program director) home. Back to class...our class was shortened; it was only 1 hr and 15 minutes instead of 2 1/2 hours. Frankly, I'm not sure I could have sat through another hour and 15 minutes!!!

We left for Pusan around  11:30 or so. We first went to Gwangalli Beach (I think) and did some filming there. It was a beautiful day! The sun was shining and it was fairly warm. I took my shoes off and walked into the water a bit. The water wasn't too cold either. I found some really cool beach glass. After being filmed at the beach, we went to Jihye's home. We parked and then walked through the Seomyeon Traditional Market. It was really neat to see the open market with so many shops and stalls selling spices, vegetables, ddeok (rice cake), fruits, fresh seafood, and meat. Once we arrived at Jihye's home, we were greeted by her mom and two of her mom's friends who helped create our feast. What a feast it was! There was bulgogi, chap chae, cheon (which are like egg-vegetable pancakes), rice, soup, kimchi and other sides. It was very delicious! Dessert was strawberries (they were sooooo good!), tomatoes and yogurt. We were driven back to campus which was nice-the alternative was a 1 1/2 hour subway and bus ride back. Emily and I went for a run around campus. 


In the evening, Jenny, Emily and I watched a Korean movie on my computer. It was really slow, long and kind of boring. But, you know how movies go-you just have to watch the whole thing...it never got much better. Then it was time for bed!

Gangwan Bridge and Gangwalli Beach

Beach!!

Em, me, and Maren jumping!

Fruit stand

Spices

Kimchi and side dishes

Rice 'popcorn' making machine.

Jihye's Mom's cooking: food for 12 young adults

The aftermath of 12 young adults

Colin and Jihye's Mom

Today:
I am so tired! It is already almost midnight! We'll see how much of today I can remember. The days seem so long-it is so hard to even recall what happened earlier in a day! I slept in a little. Our small group (Maren, Emily, Jenny, Tim, Ben, Maren's roommate, and I) went to eat lunch. We all wanted something sweet to finish the meal. Half of us got ice cream cones from Lotteria (basically the Korean McDonalds) and the other half got smoothies from a coffee shop closer to campus. Maren and Emily wanted to check out a store in the Student Union to look for postcards, so Jenny and I went too. That store was closed, but we also passed the bookstore and I remembered I wanted to find a Korean/English Dictionary. I was hoping for one that had half the dictionary K/E and then E/K, but the one I got should work well too. It has the word in Korean (written in Hangul) and the definition in English. I am pretty excited about it. Emily, Ben, Tim and I studied on some picnic tables out in the sun for a little. I even got to use my dictionary! After studying, we ran into Ji, our soccer guy. We (minus Emily) decided to play and enlisted the Sweds as well. The soccer field is usually always being used. Today, only half the field was being used, by a baseball team. We were able to play a little. Then we saw a group of about six 10 year old boys and asked if they wanted to play with us. They did so we split them in half and us in half; they were really good! We played for about an hour. Afterwards, Ji treated everyone to ice cream (I passed since I had already had my cone!) After dinner, we decided to rent a movie. We went to the movie store we visited last week, but their selection was not so great. We thought "Dinner for Schmucks" would be a good funny movie, but they did not have it. Finally we figured out someone could download it. Movie night was fun. For some reason, we started the movie really early and finished around 9:30, no one was really tired yet, so I went to get my cards (soo glad I brought them!) and played "pencils" (since we don't have Spoons) and "Ki's Game".  As usual, I am exhausted! Good luck to everyone with the upcoming Daylight's Saving Time. Korea does not participate in that, so I will continue to stay at my regular time while all of you will have to "spring ahead"! :)

Ji, Ben and a few of our new friends!

Ji buying ice cream for the six 10 year old boys who beat him at soccer