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