So far behind!

Thursday: Today was our big speech day! We wore our hanboks and went over to the main building to meet the President, Founder, and all of the Deans. We had to wait awhile before we could go in; I think they were waiting for the Founder to arrive from Seoul. We gave our speeches and then sang "Haebyun euro Gayo"-Lets go to the beach, but replaced "beach" with "Inje". Then we took a few pictures with the President and Founder and shook hands with them and left. We had our Intermediate class with Jihye for about an hour. In culture class, we learned "Yut" (the game I played with my host family the first time I went to their house) and played 3 rounds. In our culture class, we have about 9 Chinese students, so Professor Cho REALLY wanted it to be the Korean adoptees vs. the Chinese students...we ended up winning only one round, BUT the Chinese students had Professor Cho on their team and when we said losers buy ice cream for the winners, he really stepped up his game. After the 3 rounds, we went to the Lotteria to get ice cream. We sat and talked for a little and then class was dismissed. 

I had my class in the evening. I already can see them starting to be more comfortable and confident in speaking. :) I'm really enjoying teaching and working with them. After class, I met up with almost all (Emily and Maren were meeting with their host families together) of our group for dinner with Professor Jongman. We found a restaurant Colin had spotted earlier; they had very cheap samgypsal (pork), but it was pretty good too. We sat outside under a tent which was kind of cool. After eating we went to "Kenny Rogers", which is kind of like a bar and grill sort of restaurant. It was fun getting to spend time with Professor Jongman.

Our group with the President (L) Founder (C) and Director Kim (R) after our speeches

Dinner with Prof. Jongman

Friday: Today when we woke up and it was rainy! :( Bad news because it was also our mountain hiking event! We still went, even with the rain. We took taxi's to 검정산 Keum Jeong San (san = mountain) and actually drove up a fair amount! When we arrived at our meeting point, we introduced ourselves to Mr. Ha, also know as "Watermelon". He was the main organizer/ big push for hiking. Then we had 'breakfast'...kimbap! We were given rain ponchos and stopped to look at a Buddhist temple before beginning the shortest hiking route (1 hr long). Halfway up we stopped and passed around Mr. Ha's bag with the question why did it weigh so much? We found out it was because he carried a watermelon halfway up the mountain! So we ate watermelon on the mountain, in the rain and wind! It was reeeally delicious!! We ended up taking a cable car down to the bottom (thank goodness because it would have been so slick trying to climb down the wet rock!). We walked to the restaurant we were having lunch at. It was a buffet restaurant called "The Party". The food was reallly good, but the desserts were the best! We all ate so much! 

When we returned to campus, I had my class again. There were about 10 students in the beginning, but most of them needed to leave to attend a business meeting. Then there were 3 girls left, so we did have some structure, but it was really informal and mostly just us talking together. I had to leave a few minutes early because ET had a game night that we were required to attend. Most of my ET group however, did not attend. My leader, Seung Chul, and one other guy, TaeHoon were there, so we joined Ji's group. We played a lot of trivia games and games different kinds of speaking games; it was fun. After the game night, Jenny, Emily and I went to dinner. I was still full from lunch, but we stopped at "Coffee House" and I got a cookies and cream smoothie.

Cool carvings at the temple

Watermelon!!

So cute!

On the cable car

View of Pusan from the cable car

Carbonara Pasta!!!

Director Kim

 Today: Finally! Soccer! The only bad thing was that it was so, SO HOT! Just standing outside not moving was enough to cause you to break out into a sweat! We had a group of 9; at first my team only had 4 and we still managed to beat the other team. We took a break and switched up the teams. One of the guys stopped and was ball boy, so for the next 2 rounds we had 4 vs. 4. After soccer, I met Jenny, Maren, Emily and Ki for lunch at the teacher's lounge. Maren left early because she and Ben were meeting Ben's birthparents! After lunch, Emily, Jenny and I hung out and went into town-got groceries and sat outside. In the evening, the three of us went into town again and bought some bread. We are also throwing a "Western style" picnic for Jihye and Jongman on Monday; Emily, Tim and I are in charge of the decorations, so we grabbed a few items for that.The rest of the evening we just hung out. :)