Too Tired for a Good Title Tuesday

Emily and I left for breakfast this morning, but stopped by our classroom to drop off our books. Our teacher was already in there and she had brought toast! She had homemade strawberry jam and cream cheese-yum. Class itself was just okay. We spent the whole time talking about the different particles to use in sentences (used to show subject and objects in a sentence). 

Then, it was on to Taekwondo! When our instructor walked in, he was wearing a suit! He started talking in Korean and we finally found out that we were having our 'midterm exam'! We were giving a lot of time to stretch and practice our three kicks. We did our test in groups of three; we know "ahp chagi" (front kick), "yeop chagi" (side kick) and "dollyo chagi" (turning kick-like a roundhouse). I passed my Taekwondo midterm!


After language class, Emily and I went for a run off campus. Tim, Emily and I went to HomePlus and then to A Twosome Place to study after dinner. Colin (another IIIHR program member) was there studying so he joined us; he's been in Korea teaching English for 6 months, so he know's a lot about Korean and helped us. Ben and Kim stopped by to study a little bit later. Ben was meeting some of our Inje (Korean) friends for chicken, so Emily and I decided to join them for a little bit. 

Yang Yang, Emily, and me with our "ahp chagi" maybe?

Monday...nothing new

It was kind of overcast and cool in the morning, but by afternoon it had warmed up a bit and the sun came out. Emily and I went outside to study and 정관 helped us with our Korean. Then off to cooking class. Today we made 칠절판 "chil (seven) cheon pal". It is a traditional dish for important celebrations; usually there are nine 'sides' that are made; today we made seven. The seven sides included mushroom, carrot, cucumber, egg yolk, egg white, pork and 'cheon' (rice powder and water made into a dough and fried). Everything tasted pretty good, but it was hard to make the eggs and the dough into circles. At dinner we had Magnus and Joakim taste our dishes. At first, Joakim said he couldn't vote because they tasted too similar, but we said he had to vote. Ji was gone again, so we had almost everyone else at the table vote...Emily's dish won again this week! 

After dinner, Emily and I had planned on running, but it was too cold! Instead, we went to A Twosome Place (coffee shop chain) to study. Tim and Jenny joined us. The "Happy Money" we earn for being good students can be used at A Twosome Place, so I bought a coffee drink and a dessert; if I hadn't had the coupons I wouldn't buy anything there because it is so expensive! My total came to 10,300 won!! (Around $10 for just a drink and dessert!!) We studied for a few hours there. Now it is definitely time for bed!

My completed plated "칠절판"!

Emily and me with our dishes!

Studying hard with my 'coffee drink' and blueberry dessert!

No Soccer!

I went to church this morning. I forgot it was Palm Sunday! Instead of having palm leaves, we got pine branches. After church, I met up with Jenny, Tim and Emily for lunch at Buffalo Chicken. We decided to cancel soccer because of midterms coming up; all of the Inje students are busy, busy, busy studying. I think a lot of people were also recovering from playing yesterday as well. So, Emily and I went for a run around campus twice. I went outside to study, but it had cooled off a lot. It is getting quite chilly again and is dipping back into the mid 50's later this week. Emily, Tim and I went for a walk after dinner.

Full Moon Walk! 

April is half over?!?

 Friday:
The weather was pretty nice! It was partly sunny, but it was warm and actually a little humid. 

Music class was nice...Director Kim wasn't there, so Jihye retaught us the song from last week. We had class for about 30 minutes! :) After class, we ordered our hanboks. This is the one I chose; it is a very contemporary style!
http://www.assimall.co.kr/home/assimall/mall.php?cat=0202&q=view&uid=1541

Emily and I went for another run. I am back to my non-running mood. We followed our route from Thursday except we did not go into the cafes. The writing class went alright, but I felt sooo sleepy! Maren, Emily and I went to Tous Les Jours and Coffee House after class. (Of course I bought more 'cloud bread'!!) Maren wanted to go for a mountain hike, so we explored the mountain behind BioTech Dorm. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the top (we did stop to take a lot of pictures along the way). It was almost more difficult coming down the mountain than going up-it was steep and a little slick. We went to a Makgoli restaurant and also ordered kimchi cheon. Then we went to Lotteria for ice cream. Emily returned from her evening in Pusan with MiHye, her host 'family'. She had kimbap for me-it was delicious!! 

Mountain Hiking with Maren

Tim pouring Makgoli

Yummy Kimchi Cheon

 Today:
SOCCER!! We had a group of 12 (still the only girl-even though we had some girls sign up on the whiteboard in the foyer of ET-none of them showed up!) and played on part of half of the regular field. Around 12:20, another group of guys walked onto the field and told us they had signed up for the next time slot. We decided to ask them if they wanted to play against us; they agreed so we were able to use the "whole" half of the field. We ended up playing for about an hour and finally they scored a goal. We called it quits then. Tim and I were going to go into town to find something for lunch, but walked past the 'teacher's lounge' cafeteria. It was still open so we were able to use our meal tickets. At first we just had some ramen soup and thought it was kind of strange that was all they were serving. Then we noticed the other person in the cafeteria had a little box on his tray and also noticed a stack of boxes where we picked up our soup. I grabbed boxes for us-inside was rice, seaweed, kimchi, radish, egg and ham! It was pretty good. 

We had a small group decide to go to the Gaya Culture Festival going on in Gimhae not too far from campus. We watched some dancing and then walked around to look at all the different booths set up. Then some of the group returned to ET and the rest of us went to the Super Home Plus for dinner. Emily and I split 'ddeok mandu guk". (Mandu soup with rice cakes) Emily, Tim and I were going to see a Korean movie with Jenny so we left and walked around Yeonji Park (right next to Home Plus and the movie theater). We went to see a Korean movie called "Strange Meeting for Marriage" or "위험한상견레". There were no English subtitles, so it was a little bit different watching a movie and not being able to absolutely follow the dialogue. It was really funny though. 

Performers at Gaya Festival

Area around Gaya Festival

Emily and Tim on exercise machines in Yeonji Park

At the movies! Cheese Popcorn and Iced Tea Combo!!

Long Thursday!

This morning I went to an ATM and was able to finally withdraw money! Our conversation class went well. We had a quiz on verbs today. The culture class was alright. We covered the traditional marriage customs. Again, it was a little difficult to get through; our professor stopped the video every 30-40 seconds and would write the Korean and then find the Chinese characters as well. After class, Emily and I went for a long run! We wanted to find two different cafe/restaurants we had each noticed a month ago when we went to the Membership Training. My guess was we ran about 1.5 miles up hill. We went into the one I saw first; it was called "Choco" something...they had cakes, chocolate, gelato, coffee, and other pastries. Emily and I felt a little awkward because the cafe was kind of upscale and we were all sweaty and kind of grungy from our run. Then we went to see the place she noticed "Cafe Dahlia". That cafe was also upscale and really cute. We ran back to campus and then I ran a little more on campus; I felt in the mood for running and I didn't want to stop. It was so strange because normally I don't really enjoy running...

In the evening, Emily, Jenny, Tim and I went to a classical concert with Magnus, Joakim and one of their professors. It was at the same performing arts center I went to for the piano concert on Saturday. It was broken up into a few different types of performances-piano, violin, cello, flute and even a male and a female 'opera'. Afterward, we noticed one of our professors and stopped to say hello. He offered to take 3 of our group of 6 back to campus, so Emily, Jenny and I went back with him and his daughter. On the way, we stopped at Lotteria for ice cream. :)

Saw this banner at the performing arts center and thought of my Mom!

Hello, Thursday Morning, where did you go Wednesday?

Well, it's already 12:30am and I'm not quite sure how that happened!

This morning Emily and I went to Tous Les Jours for some breakfast. We had gift certificates to use. We had to buy 5,000W worth of bakery because of the certificates, but everything I got was so good! The best was a blueberry 'bread' with cream on the inside...heavenly! We also stopped at the 'dollar store' to buy some notebooks. We took the Kindergarteners outside to play tag. We tried teaching them, but they didn't really understand the rules. Next on to conversation class. We had another quiz today. 

For our movie class, we watched the movie called "Sunny". It was about a young Korean woman looking for her husband in Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. It was kind of interesting... Before dinner, we met up to discuss and plan our trip to Seoul (less than 2 weeks away!!). After dinner, I tried to withdraw money from an ATM; I had one of my Korean friends come with me, but I think he got confused and was telling me I had a domestic card instead of an international card so I couldn't take out any money. The machines kept reading error. I waited with Tim and Ben for Jenny's ET group to finish and then we went to Home Plus to get groceries and try the ATM there. Then I studied in the computer lab with some friends. The next thing I heard was our curfew announcement signaling it was 11! I still have some studying to do, so that's all for today!

Terrible Tuesdays

Emily and I headed over to breakfast this morning, but on the way, we ran into our professor. She stopped us and told us she had made waffles so we didn't need to go eat at BioTech! The waffles were really good! She made one with whole wheat and walnuts and the other with bleached flour. She also brought Hershey's chocolate syrup to put on the waffles as well...best breakfast in Korea! :) The class was a little difficult; again she moved through the material really quickly and didn't really stop to make sure we actually learned what we covered. Later a few of us were discussing this and are coming to the conclusion that maybe this is just a teaching style of Koreans; the teacher covers/introduces as much material as possible in a class period and it is the students' responsibility to actually learn and understand it.

After conversation class, it was off to Taekwondo. It wasn't so bad today. We jumped and kicked a lot-we learned a new 'kick. It's called "na rae" I think, in Korean and it is translated into something about flying. Lunch was actually good today too! There were new dishes-BioTech was starting to get a little repetitious in their meals. We had curry, mini egg rolls, and cucumber kimchi. The language class was okay. When I got back from class, I did a little bit of studying with Rosetta Stone. 

My ET group got a new member. We introduced ourselves to him and didn't really do much else in class. I had some snacks with some of the ET members after class was finished. Then I went for a walk around campus with Emily and Jenny.