Sunday, March 20, 2011
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!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
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!
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!
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| Before being cooked |
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| Finished product |
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| Ice cream to cool off our stomachs! Maren, Milan, Emily and me! |
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
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!
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!
Monday, March 14, 2011
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!
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| Emily and me with our finished product! |
Sunday, March 13, 2011
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! :)
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! :)
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| All of our sandwiches! :) |
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| Sitting outside with our Isaac! |
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| 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!
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"! :)
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!
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| Gangwan Bridge and Gangwalli Beach |
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| Beach!! |
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| Em, me, and Maren jumping! |
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| Fruit stand |
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| Spices |
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| Kimchi and side dishes |
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| Rice 'popcorn' making machine. |
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| Jihye's Mom's cooking: food for 12 young adults |
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| The aftermath of 12 young adults |
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| 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"! :)
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| Ji, Ben and a few of our new friends! |
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| Ji buying ice cream for the six 10 year old boys who beat him at soccer |
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