Monday Fun

I got to sleep in today and it was WONDERFUL! I think maybe now I am finally all caught up on my sleep. I studied a little on my own and then went to lunch with a small group. After lunch, Emily and I studied outside for a short time. It was partly sunny, breezy and cool, but it was still nice to be outside. Our friends 인석 (Inseok) and 정관(Jeong Kwan) helped us study some. Then on to cooking class! Today we made a dish called 비빔국수 (bibimguksu). It is rice noodles with soy sauce, pork, mushroom, garlic and green onion. Anyone noticing a pattern in the ingredients? ;) It was pretty tasty. 

Emily and I went for a run around campus. At dinner, we were missing Ji, our 3rd judge. We had Jenny substitute for him. Jenny and Joakim voted for mine and Magnus voted for Emily's dish. However, after they voted, we saw Ji and he tasted the dishes. He voted for Emily's. We decided that because he was an official judge, Jenny's vote would not stand so Emily won this week's competition!

In the evening, I studied and helped one of my ET member's with an English assignment. 

Emily and me with our finished products!

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.

Emily and me!

One slice of Domino's Pizza from Pyeong Uk!

Soccer friends!

Most of my team

Yea, I definitely just made a move past that guy!

The lone girl playing

Wow Wednesday Movie Class!

Kindergarten was fun today. We worked in small groups teaching the kids "spring" animals. After repeating the names a few times, the students were able to color pictures. Conversation class went smoothly. Movie class was...NOT a war movie! It was called "My Sassy Girl" (not an acurate/perfect translation however). It was a romantic comedy no less! What a drastic change! Part way through the movie, my 'group' (our program has split us up into two groups for days/times of Kindergarten and ET) had to go and meet the Director's class. We had to introduce ourselves and sing our two Korean songs. After we sang, some of the students asked us questions and the Director had some of us read part of a poem aloud so they could hear different English speakers. (Yes, I was one of the chosen ones.) We returned for the rest of the movie. 

After dinner, some friend and I just hung out in a discussion room trying to decide what to do. Finally, Jenny, Tim and I went to HomePlus for some groceries. I ended up buying some dried fruit and almonds...soooo yummy! :) Later, I studied with some friends for a bit. 

Tough Tuesday

Today's classes were a little rough to get through! We had our 'difficult' conversation class this morning. It was even worse than normal. Instead of breaking down a new, difficult and long sentence by words, our teacher just says it really fast, asks us to repeat it, says "it's so easy" and then moves on to the next sentence. When you listen to us repeat her, it is actually kind of funny because you can tell that most of us are just mumbling and trying to make sounds, but not actually speaking the Korean words. Taekwondo class was alright. We actually didn't seem to do too much today. Class went a little long because our professor wanted to 1) talk about the rules of fighting in Taekwondo and 2) demonstrate defense tactics when being attacked. My favorite part of his demonstration was him "running away" after "hitting" the attacker. It was comical.

Our Language class was also a little rugged to get through. We only practiced two sentences, just focusing on "what is the date" and "which day is it", but expanded on speaking it present, past and future tense. It took an hour to go over that. The last part of class was spent working on counters (when you count different things you have to use different words to show what you are counting, based on what you are counting. For example when you count people it is "myeong", things are "gae", and hours are labled "shi".) and big numbers. 

Best part of my day...package from my mom arrived late this afternoon!! It got here really fast! She mailed it Thursday (Friday in Korea) and today is Tuesday! I finally have my cleats, vitamins, calcium, AND a surprise bag of pretzel M&M's! I was so happy to see them! I am almost finished with my current bag. My mom also sent a box of chocolates for Jenny. Jenny was so surprised and happy!

ET was cut short because a lot of students in our group had tests and projects to work on. So, I went to go see Ji play with his major soccer team; they were in the semifinals. His team won 2-0! It wasn't as cold as it was for the last game! After soccer, we had a small, short study session. 

So happy to have my cleats! THANKS MOM!!

M&M Pretzels!! DOUBLE THANKS MOM!!!

Jenny so surprised to get a gift too! THANKS AMY'S MOM!!!

Shirt Quadruplets! ET members L to R: Sung Min, Pyeong Uk, me and Han Su

Ji's soccer game! Ji is the blur in the middle of the picture!

Lazy Monday

It was sunny but a little chilly today. As long as I was in the sun, I was warm enough. I went outside and did a little bit of studying. I was joined by Jeong Kwan and then his friend Jinil. Emily also joined when she was done with Kindergarten and Inseok also stopped to study and hang out. They quizzed us on words and corrected our pronunciation. I tried to come up with sentences and they helped correct me. We made a deal to meet up for our "study group" every Monday afternoon now! :) 

Cooking class was pretty nice. I unfortunately forgot my 가방 (kabang=bag) in my room so I did not have my camera. We made 궁중 떡볶이, except with soy sauce. I've actually never seen or heard of it before, and we had one out of three of our Korean friends who had never eaten or heard of it before. Anyway, this dish consisted of rice cake, pork, green onion, garlic, soy sauce and oyster sauce. It was pretty tasty. When we got back to campus, Emily and I handed our dishes over to Magnus. (More on that later...)


Emily and I went for a run 2 1/2 times around campus. After our run we all went to dinner. Joakim, Magnus and Ji are now the judges for Emily and my cooking. The past few weeks we've been bringing our extra food back for them to try. The first week only I brought something back. Last week only Magnus had both dishes (but he voted for Emily's) Today I received two votes  and Emily received one. The score currently stands at 1 v 0.5. We gave Emily a half a point because even though only one person tried both, she still got that win. Stay tuned for next week's match up!

 I studied with a bunch of Emily and a few Korean friends in the lounge. I also worked with my ET leader to plan tomorrow's class.  I also corrected one of my ET member's speech for one of his speaking classes.

View outside from the 4th floor

Cherry Blossom tree

In front of ET

Emily and me outside

So pretty!

Emily, Maren and me in front of ET

What a weekend!

Saturday:
A group of 8 of us left for Pusan. We met up with my Korean American adoptee friend Oh Mee and her native Korean friend Ah Young. We went to the hostel to check in and drop our things off. Then a quick lunch at a kimbap restaurant. That kind of restaurant is nice because it has such a variety of food options. After lunch, it was on to 찜질방 (Jjimjilbang) which is a Korean spa/sauna/bathhouse. The one we went to was called Spa Land and was located in Shinsegae Department Store (which is the world's largest department store). They 'bathing' rooms are separated by gender; the girl's side was the best because we had an outdoor pool! After the pools, we went into all of the different saunas; the rooms were SO hot! They were around 50-60+ degrees...CELSIUS! When we were all done with jjimjilbang, we took some time to look around the department store. We had dak galbi for dinner (spicy chicken and vegetables) and then went to a bar/restaurant. After that, we went to Club Foxy. At the end of the night, Emily and I went back to the hostel. We ended up in a double room and Oh Mee and Ah Young had their own double.

Just arrived to Shinsegae Department Store! L to R: Maren, Emily, me, Ben, Joakim, Magnus, Tim, Oh Mee, and Ah Young Standing: Ki

Waiting to begin Jjimjilbang experience!

Picture of all the different sauna rooms (the pictures looked much cooler than what they actually were like)

Sunday: 
Emily and I went to church in Pusan. It was a church she had heard of from some friends. After church, we met up with Oh Mee and Ah Young for a quick bite to eat and then said our goodbyes. When we returned to campus, I just relaxed. I'll be doing a little bit of studying with my friends and calling it an early night tonight!

Saying goodbye at the subway!

Celebrations Continued

Thursday:
After our class, we planted trees for Korea Arbor Day. The actual holiday is celebrated on April 5th, but we celebrated it today because the founder of Inje University was visiting campus. For dinner, we met as a group to go out for chicken. We went to a restaurant that had a big TV so we could watch ourselves on the KBS program "Saeng Saeng Today". It was fun to see ourselves on Korean TV! :) After dinner, our group split up and it was hard keeping the party a surprise for Emily. Maren and I went to pick up the cakes and other supplies for the party and then set up. At 8:30 all the guests of honor were supposed to arrive together to be surprised in the lounge. It didn't quite work out, but it was still a lot of fun and everyone had a good time. After cake, we went out for some birthday beverages.

Emily, Ki, and me with our tree! It was HARD work planting it!

"Hi, I'm Emily" "Hi, I'm Amy" "We're from Michigan!" Emily and me on KBS!!

White chocolate, chocolate cream cheese, and green tea cakes for the surprise birthday party!

Magnus, Emily, and Milan: Birthday Friends!

L to R: Maren, me, Emily, Jenny (my roommate), and NaRae (Maren's roomate)

Today:
I skyped with my Mom so I could wish her a Happy Birthday! I had music class and then later half of the class was picked to go meet the music teacher's students in the afternoon. I was in that half. When we arrived in the classroom, they were had chicken and pizza for us. We talked a little with them and introduced ourselves. When the music professor arrived, he had us sing the two songs we've been practicing to the class. Our writing class went alright. This evening I just hung out with Emily and Jenny. I'm calling it an early night tonight for sure! We are heading into Pusan tomorrow and I will get to see my friend Oh-Mee. I met her in 2009 during the GOA'L program. I am excited to spend some time with her!