Amy's Adventure to Inje: Weekend Update

Thursday:
Classes went alright. Culture class was interesting, but difficult to understand everything. We have around 10 Chinese exchange students in this class and they sit through class and talk to each other, play games on their cell phones, have their cell phones ringing, and anything else except pay attention and learn. It is really frustrating because it makes it more difficult for me to hear the professor and understand him with all the extra background noise.

After dinner, I went down to the computer lab to meet with one of my ET members. I took some of my study materials and other people joined later, so we had a big study session.

Emily and me in the rain with a cherry blossom tree

Umbrellas in the hallway

Friday:
Music class went alright. We sang our two songs about a half a dozen times...but we also learned a new song. It's funny because it is originally a Chinese song I guess and our teacher asked YangYang (our Chinese student) if she knew the song and she responded "yes, but it is kind of old". We had another fumigation today, so we had to leave the dorms from 12-3. Emily, Tim and I went to Tous Les Jours and bought some pastries with our "Happy Money".

At 4:00, we went to some spring "cheon" festival. They had some burners set up and we made the rice cake 'pancakes' and decorated them with edible flowers. They were okay. The festival people also had a tea ceremony and they made and served green tea to us.

Frying pans and materials

Flower Cheon!

Almost the whole group! (Minus Emily, Colin, and Seung Bae)

Saturday:
Emily and I went for a nice run off campus in the morning. It was such a nice day! The sun was shining, there was only s slight breeze and it was pretty warm. I was so sad because Emily and a bunch of friends were going to a park and maybe doing a little bit of shopping. I wanted to go with them but I also had plans with my host family too. At 2:00, my host dad picked me up and I went to their house. We made kimchi/pork mandu!! :) My host mom steamed them and we ate them as a snack after making them. It was a lot of work; we made sooo many!! They were really yummy though-well worth the effort. My little host brother asked me to read to him. At first, he picked English books. Then he pulled out a Korean book. I 'read' it-tried to read it. I could tell he was just sitting there not really listening to me though, ha, ha. THEN he pulled out a Japanese book (his dad is a Japanese professor here) and his dad laughed and told him I couldn't read Japanese. Around 4:30, my host dad, mom and I left to go to a concert. The daughter babysat the son. Before the concert, we stopped at a really beautiful park. While we were walking around, I was wondering if it was the park my friends had gone to earlier. Then all of a sudden I saw someone that looked like Inseok (a friend) and then another familiar looking face and another...and then they waved and yelled my name! It was so funny running into all of them at the park!! After we went our own ways, my host dad called my mom and said the concert we were going to started at 5:00 instead of 5:30, so we had to run back to the performing arts center. I was still unsure of what kind of concert I was attending-when we got into the auditorium, I saw a piano. It was a Japanese pianist performing. He was really good!

Kimchi, pork and tofu filling

Rolling out the dough

Mandu!!

Finished product! (This is not even all of them!)

The park was so pretty!

Running into Emily and my friends at the park!

Piano

Sunday:
I went to church; while I was there, I saw someone that looked like Ji Won...I finally decided it was him. After communion, I caught his eye and he waved. When church was over, he talked a little bit about church; he was with other Inje students and they are part of a Catholic student group. I met up with Tim, Emily, Maren, Magnus and Joakim for lunch at Buffalo Chicken. We went to this restaurant for our first meal with IIIHR. Emily and I split a chicken salad and the "chicken plate" which had chicken, rice, egg drop soup, and a salad with cucumber, carrots and cabbage...so delicious! I had been waiting for 2:31 Sunday afternoon since Tuesday when I received my cleats in the mail!!! Finally it was time to lace up and go to the fields! We were even able to get into the little futsal field!! We had a group of 15 Inje students, so we broke up into teams of 5 and played til the first 3 goals. I didn't make any goals today, but I played pretty well-especially since all of the guys are all really good. We played for two hours. I forgot to mention that the weather today was absolutely gorgeous! The sun was shining and I think it hit around 64 degrees. This evening, I did some studying on my own...memorizing those verbs! I am always trying to expand my vocabulary.