Time Flies...and now it's the end

Again, I find myself apologizing to my readers...we had such an incredibly busy week!

Tuesday!! (Wow, really sorry!)
It was a terrible Tuesday, but in a different sense. I wore my new shoes to class and kind of ruined the heel. We made ho dduk (a fried pancake filled with sugar-you may recall from the beginning of my time at Inje...) in class. I burned my hand with the hot sugar while I was eating. We went to Taekwondo and we had to participate in groups with native Koreans doing their 'dance routine' final. It was terrible because we didn't learn the dances so we all looked like fools. After class, our Taekwondo instructor took us to lunch. We had a kind of chicken stew. It was pretty good. We had a shortened language class (because of the lunch). After class, some of our group went to go hike Sina Mountain (the mountain I hiked with my host family most recently). I wanted to go, but I had to teach. After teaching, Jenny and I ran into Tim's brother, Ben. He arrived to Gimhae on Monday and Korea on Saturday. He was still jet lagging so he didn't go hiking. We took him to BioTech for dinner, but later we went to eat at a BBQ place with the hikers. It was really delicious. Emily burned her fingers on a glass; the cup was sitting close to the cooking apparatus and when she picked up the glass it was super hot! Milan also burned his lips from cooking with his chopsticks and then eating with them. It was such a disaster!

Chicken stew lunch

Last language class!

Wednesday: We had our final Kindergarten class! We played games with them outside and said goodbye. In our conversation class we had yet another guest! He's an adoptee from Maryland. We had lunch in the teachers cafeteria. Then we went to movie class. We watched a movie called "The Classic". Jenny, Emily and I had just watched it last week, but I missed a lot because I was lesson planning and the subtitles were difficult to read. Unfortunately the disc was scratched and skipped a lot. After I taught, I met up with Tim, Ben, Ki, Em, Maren, and Jenny for dinner. We went to HomePlus to hang out and then headed over to The Dog House. We had some nice conversation, reflecting on our experiences and talking about first impressions. After the Dog House, we went to the Spicy Kimbap place.

Dinner!

Tim and Ki left a note a few days ago saying this was the best place to get kimbap and the note was still hanging up!

Thursday: Happy Graduation Day!! We didn't have any classes!  Emily and I went for a run around campus, but it was very hot. Our ceremony started at 5 and we had quite a few of our friends from ET come. We had to give a short speech and also received our certificates. Jihye had a video of pictures with a special note on each picture for us. She also played the video I made. After the ceremony, we went to a BBQ place for dinner. After dinner, the group went to the Makgoli place. Emily, Jenny, Maren and I came back to ET for a short break. Jenny had bought us each a small little cake from Paris Baguette with fruit on it so we wanted to enjoy our cakes. We went back out to meet the group and shortly after we moved to The Dog House.

Roomies and Maren

Most of our group at graduation plus Host Families

Mihye, Em, and Songhee at dinner

Jung Yoon and me at dinner!

Maren, Em and me with the cute cakes from Jenny!

Friends at The Dog House

Chul Woo, Em, me and Ji

Friday: We had lunch with Professor Cho (language and culture teacher). He treated us to a soup that was made from dried vegetables and then a special beef patty. Most of us walked back down to campus (it was just up the hill). We had a funny walk back; Ben was imitating people's walks and it was entertaining. Back on campus I just kind of hung out here. We had a group of about 11 go out to dinner for Tim's last meal here. We had a kind of meat-on-bone plus noodles and vegetable stew. It was spicy, but tasty. Again Maren, Emily and I returned to campus for a little before joining the others. We met them at the Makgoli bar for Tim's last time. Megan, Maren, and I got hungry so we went to get some smoothies from Issac Toast. When we returned to the Makgoli place Em and returned from getting ice cream, but we decided to go back out and get a pizza toast from Issac's...it was so good!! We left the Makgoli place and went to The Dog House for the last time as well.

Lunch with Prof Cho

Beef Stew for dinner

Pizza Toast from Issacs!

Tim's goodbye speech to Em, Kim and me

 Saturday: I had a nice early wake up call at 8AM from Ji telling me we had 8 people playing soccer at 9. Thanks Ji. We all met up and managed to wrangle a few other guys as well. Ji had some friends from his major that met us at the fields as well. It was so sad, our last soccer day! The guys grabbed the keys from the Student Union to unlock the small field. One of the guys tossed the keys to someone standing next to the lock...but he missed and the keys...well, they went flying into the LOCKED field. Luckily, there fencing wasn't tight to the gate so someone slipped through and grabbed the keys. It was kind of funny. We played for a little over 2 1/2 hours and it was so hot! We had a pretty big group; we ended up breaking into 3 teams of 6. When we finished, Jenny and I went to the teachers cafeteria for lunch (my last Saturday lunch there!). Later I went into town with Emily. In the evening, we met up to go to dinner-it was so sad we only had a group of 5!! As we were leaving, we ran into Professor Jongman. He wanted to go to dinner with us, so we went to get his daughter Sally and went to Buffalo, a chicken restaurant; it was quite full-circle because it was the restaurant we had our first meal as a group at Inje AND we sat at the same tables. Prof Cho treated us to dinner which was so sweet. Ki said he would treat us to ice cream, so we went to Baskin Robbins and got a huge tub of 5 different flavors to share. Maren, Jenny and I went to get coffee and Prof Cho again treated us. When we returned, Emily was back from her evening in Pusan with MiHye, her host sister. Jenny had to study but Maren and I helped her pack a little.

What are the odds the keys would land there?!

Love this pic!

I will miss these days!

Buffalo Chicken

Buffalo Chicken

Ki with our giant tub of ice cream!

 TODAY!: Maren, Jenny, and I went to the kimbap place for lunch. After lunch Jenny and Emily wanted to get some coffee, so we went to a Twosome Place. While we were waiting for their drink order, I hear "Amy! Amy!". It was one of my students; a lot of them were there having coffee with a professor of theirs. He wanted me to go meet his professor, so we went to say hello. We finished waiting for Em and Jenny's drink when another student came back and said their professor wanted to buy me a cake to thank me for teaching and working with my group. I felt kind of bad; I've never met this professor before! But she insisted and said it was the Korean culture. Instead, Jenny, Em and I picked 3 slices to try. We went to go say thank you and were invited to sit and chat with them for awhile. In the afternoon, I caught up on random tasks like journaling and packing. In the evening, we went to our most frequented BBQ place for "the last supper". After dinner, Prof Cho took us to a Twosome Place for cheesecake and coffee. 

The cakes Emily, Jenny and I got from my students' professor

Hazelnut Caramel Mocha!

Jung Yoon and me!