Christmas, Host Change and..... Monotony

Wow. 우와

It has been a super long time since my last blog post. 오래 많이야! 근데 이유를 있어. 이번달 난 너무 바빴고 피곤했고 많이 공부했고 대학교 숙제를 있있어 (아직 있어 ^^).

But I do have a reason for that. This past month has been very monotonous and not much has happened. Despite that I have been very busy with studying and applying for college and as a result very tired. Although that can also be attributed to the movies I watched late at night haha.

Christmas Dinner

Anywho.... Basically this month has consisted of going to school, reading, church and studying. Until this past week there really wasn't anything going on. Although the lack of anything is noteworthy, because obviously it's December, and December has Christmas. Buuut in Korea Christmas really isn't a big deal. There were a few small decorations in the city, but I didn't see any in people's houses and there was a general lack of the Christmas hype you get in America. I can't really say that I missed that part, but I did miss Christmas being important and wrapping gifts and giving them to people. I miss that it was a family day and not a couples day. But most of all I missed having a family gathering on Christmas day. I think that I had seen even my Korean family it would have made it a bit easier, but most of the day was pretty hard for me. I had dinner with three other exchange students and our parents which was nice. But then we went to a Noraebang (translated to singing room, so karaoke) and that was actually fun. It really lifted my bad mood to hear our mothers sing horribly off-key to really old korean songs and then have Juan and I rock english songs like American Idiot. I also went to a Rotary Christmas dinner a couple days later with Benedict and Coraline and got a haridryer and a thermos, so that was nice.

On Christmas Eve I performed a couple songs with my youth worship band at church (yes, in Korean). We had a lot of practice sessions in the weeks leading up to it and it was awesome to be able to spend so much more time with my only friends (outside of Rotary). They are just so much fun. But even though I really do feel like a part of the group and they're a lot better about telling me about when stuff is gonna happen, I still feel like there's a barrier there. And not just in my youth group, but with pretty much all Koreans. They're all very careful around me, and if they do something small like bump into me or knock my pencil case down, they apologize profusely and seem afraid that they might have offeneded me. This makes them much more reserved when they talk to me. Almost no one teases or makes fun of me or does things to get me annoyed because they think it's funny. I really miss that. So that's one more thing I've been working through. It's amazing how as soon as you get past one challenge God gives you another one right away to keep you growing and keep you strong.

My Korean class that I was taking on Fridays at a university with my exchange friends ended in the first week of December. We started a class with a Rotary person on Tuesdays, buuut we've only had that once because our teacher has been very sick. So, I haven't done too much korean studying in the past two weeks or so. I've been doing to much for my college applications! Yay!.... not really. But I got into the University of Iowa! Which is where i wanted to go, so that rocks. I will be majoring in Linguistics and minoring in a language I haven't decided on yet ^^. But I'm really excited for that. I was originally planning on going to Florida, but Iowa has a Linguistics major with a TESL focus which means I'm free to minor in something else.

And lastly, my host house change! Originally, I was going to stay at this house until the end of March and then go to my third house. But things got messed up, so I'm going to be here for the rest of the year. I now live very far away from my school (it takes me an hour to get there) and pretty much everything else. But it's ok. My family is super nice and comfortable. I have an older sister, which I really like. It's nice that she speaks english so we communicate important things. But she mostly uses korean with me, which I appreciate. It definitely helps me learn faster. And my mom is always giving me food and snacks and just today she took me out and bought me a sweater and pajama pants (and nutella mwahaha). And she works at Paris Baguette. Always a plus. The house itself is very nice and comfortable. My bed is really soft and squishy compared to my last one. And my room is the same size, but it feels bigger because the bed is against the wall, not in the middle.

Seriously this is all I have to tell you. Oh, and I only have two days of school left before winter vacation which lasts until the beginning of March. Yep that's it. I'm happy with a lot of things here, working to improve a lot of things, and praying for the things out of my control. "Find peace in where and what you are." - Christopher Paolini

Until next time!

Differences Between the USA and Korea: Part 1

Please keep in mind that everything I say here is my personal experience in Korea and I'm sure there are places here where things are different. But I will do my best to tell you what it's really like, the good and the bad. So, here are the differences between Korea and America that I have noticed. If there is a specific subject you would like me to expand on, please comment and let me know, I'll do my best to explain in my next post.

1. School

• Classroom: In Korea you stay in the same classroom with the same people all day. The teachers are the ones who move classrooms. You have to leave for classes like gym, but you're still with the same people. The schools run on a weekly schedule instead of a daily one. The classes are fifty minutes long and we have ten minute breaks in between. Many people go down the little mini mart thing we have a level below us to buy snacks and drinks during the breaks. One of the other odd little rules they have is that you can't wear your shoes inside the school. You have to wear these rubber slippers and change your shoes every time you go in or out of the school. Most of the classes have very little student interaction and participation and are basically just a lecture by the teacher. Some of the teachers are more interactive and actually ask questions, but it depends totally on how they prefer to teach. The students don't generally ask questions either. There's always at least a couple people sleeping in every class, if not over half the class. The only class no one sleeps in in my school in Industry, and that's because of the teacher who will not hesitate to punish them which leads me to my next point:
• Corporal Punishment: It's used pretty widely in my school, but I've heard from other exchange students that their school doesn't use it all, so I guess you never know whether you'll get a school like that or not. Even though quite a few of my teachers use it, I've noticed a lot of patterns. None of my female teachers do it all. The only thing they've ever done to punish students is make them stand at the back of the classroom so that they can't sleep. And the male teachers I have that hit students often times only punish the boys. I only have one teacher who uses physical punishment on the girls as much as the boys. Now don't get me wrong, none of the punishments are serious or really hurt that much. A lot of the students just laugh when the teacher calls them to the front of the room and it's all a big joke, so don't go thinking my school intills us with fear of authority figures, 'cause it doesn't. I've only had two experiences of serious punishment that actually seemed to matter. The first was when the whole class had to squat/walk up and down the hallway a couple times and then do various exercises. I was thankfully exempt from that as I was the foreigner and didn't do anything wrong... I guess. The second time we all had to sit with our legs tucked under us on top of the desk with our arms out, books on top of them, for over twenty minutes. It hurt my feet a ton, but I was glad I did it too. I don't want to be excluded, I want to feel like a part of my class, so despite the pain I was glad I did it.
• I would like to note that their are A TON more things I could talk about in my school life, this is a very general summary.

2. Bathrooms

• Public: Bathrooms here are very iffy. Firstly, you never know if there's going to toilet paper. Sometimes there's just a roll in between the rows of stalls and you have to get some before you go. Other places don't have any. And in some older bathrooms you have to throw the toilet paper away because the toilet can't flush it. Also, not all bathrooms have any way to dry your hands after you wash them. And not all of them have soap either. And sometimes if you're in an old building they might not have normal toilets, but squat toilets. But then some newer buildings even have electric toilets with different buttons on the side. You really never know what you're gonna get when you walk into a public bathroom.
• Private: I can only really tell you about my toilet, seeing as I've only been to like two other peoples houses here. My toilet has a button on the side, not a handle to flush it. It also has a little panel thing on the right side that has a few buttons on it. It a few different squirting options, which I find very strange. As for the rest of the bathroom, I can speak with a bit more certainty about what most of them are like outside of my own home. The whole floor is tiled and there often isn't a separation between the shower area and the rest of the bathroom or the separation isn't much, like in my bathroom I just have a panel of glass and a slight lip in the floor to direct the water flow. And most people don't have full size towels. They really are quite small here. I usually end up using two to actually get myself dry instead of just not dripping wet.

3. Restaurants

• In America there are different kinds of restaurants, such as Mexican, Seafood, Grills, etc. Even though there are different categories, there's still usually a pretty wide variety of foods you can choose from. But in Korea most restaurants only have one or two types of food, with maybe three to ten variations of it (but there are always a lot of side dishes to go with it). So when you go out with friends, you generally all have to agree on what you're eating. If you want to eat something else, you have to go to a different place. But note that this excludes the western restaurants you find here, like Outback or others. Fast food is a bit different. There only a couple different kinds of Korean fast food places. All the others are American, like McD's, Burger King, and KFC. Most of them are either chicken or pizza delivery places. The only other one I've seen is called Lotteria, which the Korean version of McDonald's. And most places have a delivery service, which is always done by motorcycle, never by car, as it's much easier to navigate the traffic on a bike (by the way, those delivery guys are absolutely crazy drivers. I've can honestly say I've almost been hit by them multiple times).
• The inside of restaurants are also different. About half of them are like America and are just tables and chairs set up. But the other half have very low tables without chairs, just little mats to sit on (you do a lot of sitting on the floor in general in Korea). Also, in almost every place I've been to that isn't fast food, you do at least a little bit of the cooking of your food, if not all of it. When you get things like Samgyupsal (grilled pork) you do all the cooking yourself on the little grill that's in the middle of the table. You can pick and choose which side dishes you want warm and which you don't and how well done you want the meat. Other dishes like Deokbokki (spicy rice cake things) are pretty done when you get it, you just have to heat it up. Oh, and most restaurants give you a wet thick napkin thing to clean your hands before you eat.
• The way people eat is probably the most notable difference. In America every one orders what they want and all eat separately. Here you all choose what you want together and get a big dish and all eat from the same place. Koreans are very not germaphobic. They share food all the time and couldn't care less who's taken a bite. So we all just stick our chopsticks in and go all out. Also, in America it can be considered rude to take big bites, but that is sooo not true here. I have seen people put incredible amounts of food in their mouth at one time. They also often make noise as they eat, but I've noticed that that mainly comes from older people. Teenagers like to be quieter (except when it comes to soup and noodles).

Seoul Tour and School Festival

The week after the ~Ing Conference passed very slowly and uneventfully. But, boy, let me tell ya, last week was crazy full of stuff. The weekend of the 19th my Rotary district had our Seoul tour. We went to loads of different places in just two days.

Saturday morning we met at a subway station exit and then all crammed into two vans with our bags and drove into Seoul. I honestly can't remember in what order we went to places I just remember where we went. So I'm just going to give a quick blurb about all of them.

Bea

We  first visited Gyeongbokgung Palace, which was so amazingly beautiful. The architecture and the painting on all the buildings was so incredible, as well as the huge mountains in the background. Mari and I wandered around for about an hour just taking pictures and taking it all in. I was having one of those "I can't believe I'm really living Korea" days. As a group we also walked through the area nearby and saw all the old and expensive houses (but still packed very closely). It was very nice and relaxing to just walk and chat with people and start to get to know some of the people in my district more. We also ate lunch in that area. We had bulgogi at a restaurant that had been making it for thirty years. In Korea, most restaurants only serve a few different dishes of the same type of food. If you want a different kind of food you have to go to a different place. So, these people had been making only bulgogi for forever and it was amazing.

We also saw The Blue House, which is the Korean version of the White House. The whole house isn't blue, just the roof. We didn't go in or get very close, but we went through a little museum that told a little of the history of Korea which was interesting.
In the afternoon we went to Insa-dong, the traditional area of Seoul (if you remember from my last post) which wasn't very interesting to me, as I had gone there during the conference and it isn't very big. But I did go down a sidestreet I hadn't seen before and bought a really cute sweater for only around nine dollars. Score! And I finally tried the Turkish ice cream that you can get various places in Seoul. It was delicious.

That night we made our own dinner of Samgyupsal (basically thick bacon) at our hotel. I ate so much meat, it was just ridiculous. But it was just so good I couldn't stop. We just spent the night hanging out and then around eleven Hohyun (our district coordinator) pulled out the birthday cake and everyone sang to me in all their different languages. That was really cool.
Sunday wasn't so much of a "let's see important parts of Korean culture" day as a "let's go shopping" day, which was totally okay with me. We walked around a few different areas of Seoul and I bought two more sweaters really cheap, while Anna was only concerned with Obama socks hahaha. Her enthusiasm for them was quite amusing. One of the places we went to was Itaewon, which is basically the foreigner area, so all the people working there could speak English and there were a ton of white people. It was really strange, to be honest. I've gotten really used to seeing Asians everywhere and it was a bit disconcerting to see so many westerners. We ate lunch at Taco Bell and everyone was super excited about eating western food but I just wanted some rice and seaweed man. Tacos are not my favorite food to say the least.

So, most of Sunday was pretty relaxing and just walking around. But Sunday night was much more exciting. We ate a buffet (yes!) that had more not-Korean food that was really good. Then we went on a cruise on the Han River. For those of you who don't know, there is a particular bridge that crosses that river that has really cool shoots of water that come out of it with colored lights behind them. It's really pretty at night. Also, it was one of the first Korean landmarks I ever learned about like three years ago and have wanted to see it since, so it was pretty emotional for me that I was actually looking at the lights I had seen in my first K-drama. Afterwards we were going to go to Namsan Tower, another popular tourist place, but we didn't feel like climbing all the stairs so we instead went to a different place that had a beautiful high-up view of Seoul. We got back really late and all crashed pretty much right away.
The next morning all we did was drive back to the station and say goodbye. We were all super exhausted and just wanted to go home and take a nap. It was also a bit of a sad goodbye because one of our French students, Justine, left the Wednesday after, so it was the last time most of us would see her. We'll miss you sweetie!

Even though the Seoul trip was fun, my most exciting news comes from elsewhere. I finally made friends! Woot woot! To explain how it all happened I need to start from the beginning of our school festival, Wednesday morning. Our school festival was basically an opening ceremony, mornings of wandering around looking at all the various tables set up, and afternoons of various forms of entertainment in the auditorium/gym. It was Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday afternoon was quite interesting. Right before lunch my English teacher (who has very good English) came up to me and asked me if I was ready for the performance that afternoon. I didn't know if he meant me or someone else so I asked and he told me I could be in the talent show if I wanted. With no prior preparation the only thing I could do was The Cup Song. It isn't that impressive in America anymore because everyone knows it and has heard it loads of times. But here it Korea they think it's the coolest thing ever. So I decided to go for it. Why not perform?
So after I ate lunch I went to the little room on the side where all the other performers were waiting. I just kind of stood there awkwardly for a little bit and listened to a couple people practicing and then a guy and a girl invited me to sit by them and attempted to talk to me in a strange mix of Korean and English. And that is where I made my very first friend at school: Sanghoon. Also, after the talent show I had a ton of people walk up to me and say "Sing...good very good" with a thumbs up and then kind of run away because they were really shy and couldn't say anything in English. It was so funny. After school ended that day I did not go home. I stayed at school until around seven because we had to practice our dancing. Friday was our Sports Day and each major had to prepare a dance and a flag routine for the competition. So we practiced for a long time. I woke up the next morning with very sore legs....
Thursday was pretty boring as I had already seen all the tables and eaten all the food the day before (which consisted of various art, computer, electronic and food projects made by the students) and spent most of the morning sitting at the face painting table with Sanghoon and his friends. The afternoon, on the other hand, was very interesting. It started out with a magician who did this really cool dance with a mask on and changed the mask instantly over and over (among other tricks). After that was the..... I don't know what to call it. A man pageant? But not really. It was about nine guys dressed up as girls who danced and answered questions and tried to win first prize. But I'm not quite sure what it was based on as I didn't understand what they were saying. That night we practiced our dance as well but not as long. Thank goodness, I don't think I could have stood hearing the girly song we were dancing to any longer than I did.

Friday was definitely the most fun day of the three. We spent the whole day outside participating in various competitions and cheering our major on. My major, design, did very well. We won most of the races, we won ssireum (Korean wrestling), and a few other things. Sadly though my class lost our tug of war match. Stupid strong guys in the mechanics major....At least the guys from the red major (each has it's own color) were cheering us on as we tried our best. Good job Yongin! You guys deserve your win! (I'll explain about Yongin in a little bit, just have patience). That was the only sports competition that our whole class participated in. I, on the other hand, was pressured into trying ssireum by my homeroom teacher. I'm glad I was though. It was super hard but I won and afterwards everyone who watched was totally amazed that a foreigner could do it. I also spent more time with Sanghoon that day and met a couple other people I briefly chatted with. It was just a really fun exciting day. But that was only the beginning of my new found joy of having friends.
Saturday was wonderful as well. Sanghoon invited me to hang out with him and a couple other friends for the afternoon and go out for dinner. So I met him and we hung out at the library while we waited for Soomin to finish studying. Then the three of us walked and met Yein. We then all went into a little restaurant and had Dukkbokki, spicy rice cakes, and kimbab (it looks like sushi but tastes nothing like it). After that I had been planning on going home, buuuttt, my new friends asked me if I wanted to go to their church's worship practice, to which I of course said yes. When we arrived there was only one other guy who was really surprised to see me but super sweet and welcoming. Other people slowly trickled in and were also surprised to see me and often shy until we had maybe ten or twelve people. They were all so nice and inquisitive and tried their best to make sure I always knew what was going on. I could tell they were a really close-knit group but they took me right in and made me feel like a part of it. After they practiced their songs they put the chairs in a circle and started talking about God stuff that I didn't understand and then they prayed. Wow. I have never seen prayer like that. I knew that Koreans all prayed out loud at the same time, but I have never heard so few people make so much noise. The passion they had was incredible. They prayed for over half an hour and most of the girls were crying at least a little by the end of it. I was crying as well, but that was just because I was so happy to finally be with a group of people who love God just as much as I do.
Sunday I went back to my new church for the actual service (it was only about fifty people, almost all high school and college aged), after which I talked with a very nice lady (in English) about myself and how long I would be in Korea and things like that. In a week or two I'm going to join one of the small study groups that meets after the service. So excited!
After I ate lunch there, I went to my second church. This church is much bigger and has a couple Korean services, a high school, a college, and an English service. I (obviously) go to the English one. I appear to be the only teenager and only white person (there are lots of people from Africa, especially Nigeria and Cameroon) but I've made a couple of really nice friends there. Before the service this week I had a tutoring session with a ten year who has amazing English skills. I helped her prepare a presentation for an English competition, which she is well capable of winning. Seriously, how can a ten year speak a foreign language that well, without having lived in a country where they speak it? She's so good. After that I talked with my friend Christine (don't know what her real name is...) and she said she knows some people at church who teach Korean, so hopefully I can start learning at my level soon.

That evening was also eventful. Thursday my host sister who is living in France right now messaged me on Kakao and said that a couple of her friends wanted to meet me. So we made a group chat and talked for a long time (half of my messages were question marks) and decided to meet Sunday night. That was where I met Yongin, Minha and Yoojin. They were all super nice and their English was pretty funny. None of them speak it well. But I am very proud to say that most of the time I didn't need it. I understood probably about eighty percent of what they said the whole night. All we did was eat dinner and then stop at a café on they way home and chatted but it was a lot of fun. I've really learned here that you don't have to actually do anything special for the time spent with people to be special. The fact that I was with friends at all and that they wanted to know me was all that mattered.  "It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living." (F Scott Fitzgerald). That pretty much sums up how I look at my friendships. If we're all smiling just because we're with each other it doesn't matter what we do. And I can happily say that I now have numerous friends my own age, thankfully most of which are Christians. I also met my new group of church friends last night and we went biking and ate fries at Lotteria (the Korean McDonalds). So, despite school being in general very boring, I'm incredibly happy at the moment. I truly love my life here and can't wait for the new adventures that are waiting for me in the coming weeks.
Until next time!

The ~Ing Conference

I lied.

I'm sorry. I said that the next blog post would be a list of differences between the US and Korea. But then the ~Ing Conference happened. So I'm going to tell you about that instead.

Day 1: Sunday Night

We (all the exchange students in our district except two) arrived at Suwon Station at 4pm. There we met a couple Koreans and a Canadian and then we all got on the bus and headed towards Gyeonggi University, where much of the conference would take place. On our walk up the hill to the right building we met a guy from Cameroon who was also a part of the conference (there are a lot of people from Cameroon in Korea). When we arrived we went into the cafeteria (that had the very interesting name of "Kyonggi Dream Foodteria") and met a ton more people from all over the place. We sat at tables according to our teams. The three teams were Politics, Science, and Arts and Culture. I was in Politics. I didn't want to be, but that's just the way it worked out. In the end I was really happy with my team. So then we spent the rest of night hanging out, eating dinner and getting to know each other. It will take a bit to list everyone on my team, but I will be mentioning them a lot and would like to use their names, not their nationalities. My team had four other Americans, all Rotary students like me, but three of them were new faces to me because they are in different districts. There were two Germans, one of them being Benedikt (I already knew him well, he's in my district) and Arne (not Arnie) who was just in Korea for the conference. There was one girl from Poland, Julia. There was a guy, Fernando, and a girl, Laryssa, from Brazil. There was one guy, Kah Ming, from Singapore. There was one guy, Middle, from China (that's the English translation of his name). There was one guy from Canada, Matika. There was a guy and girl from Mexico, Edraz and Mari. They are both in my district as well. There were also three Korean guys and five Korean girls. There were also people on other teams from places like Turkey, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Philippines.

Hyojung Jiyoung Arne Matika
Middle and Mr. Wang

After we finished dinner and had exchanged pins and things like that we rode the bus to the hotel/resort we would be staying at the next five nights. I was in a room with Mari and two Korean girls, Eunjung and Doori. All three of them basically became my best friends by the end of the conference. They're all just wonderful adorable girls. The room we were in was a nice size with a really pretty view out the window. The only downside was that there weren't any beds. We slept on futons on the floor.

Day 2: Monday

The first morning we had breakfast at the hotel at seven. We then sat in the lobby and waited until maybe eight thirty for the buses to come to take us back to the university. When we got there we split up into our teams and went to separate rooms. Then a few different people gave presentations about various political and human rights subjects. They were all options for the topic we would choose for our final presentation . Then we had to go and sit through the opening ceremony for the conference. There was a performance by the universities band in the beginning. It was interesting. They were a rock band, and they were good, but the singer was very flat the whole time. Then we sat through a couple speeches that took a long time because they were given in Korean and then translated into English. 

After that we got back together with our groups and for a couple hours decided which topics we would present on (one for politics and one for human rights) and started organizing our powerpoint. We ended up choosing the topics of youth political participation and humanitarian intervention. After that we had dinner and went back to the hotel. Once we got there we had a little bit of time to rest, but then we got together with our teams again and started typing the powerpoint and practicing a couple of the more theatrical things we had planned. We went to bed really late.

Day 3: Tuesday

Tuesday we didn't do much with our groups and our presentation and we didn't go to the university. Instead we listened to three different lectures at the hotel. The first was about art. It was in Korean and translated into English by this really cool Korean lady who had a British accent. I found it to be pretty boring, considering it took a long time to say anything and I didn't agree with a lot of the things he was saying about various pieces of art. After a short break we then sat through a lecture about criminal...stuff. I don't really know how to explain it. It was basically whether the things most people think will stop crime really will. Then we ate lunch and then went back for the last lecture. This one way by a former Korean Congressman (I think) who was paralyzed from the neck down because of an accident. So he basically told us his story and talked about people not accepting people with handicaps as leaders. But every story he told he told with extreme detail and he spoke very slowly and it had to be translated so it was very long and boring. Try as hard as I could, my attention would just not stay focused.

Afterwards we all hopped on the buses and we were taken to a Buddhist temple. It was the first one I had been to so it was pretty cool, despite the fact that it was raining. The architecture and painting was beautiful. We were only there for a short time and were taking a ton of pictures, so I didn't get much of a chance to look at the inside of the temple.

When we got back to the hotel we just ate dinner and worked on our presentation more. And went to bed really late (in case you haven't caught on yet, that happened every night, so I'll stop mentioning it).

Day 4: Wednesday

In the morning we went to the university and practiced our presentation for about two hours and ironed the last details out (as much as we could anyway). Then after lunch we gave our presentation. The science team did theirs on recycling, and the culture team did theirs on eastern assumptions of western culture and vice versa. I thought that everyone did an amazing job, especially considering topics like humanitarian intervention are hard enough to talk about in your own language, let alone one that you don't speak very well (Most of the people there had very good English, but not all of them).

Then we headed into Seoul! It was my first time there, so I was very excited. First we hate Samgyupsal, which is basically pork belly that you grill at the table and then wrap in lettuce along with whatever sauce and vegetables you want. Or you can eat it like me and just dip the meat in salt XD. It was fun to teach Laryssa how to cook and eat in properly.

Then we went into the part of Seoul called Insa-dong. It's the area of Seoul that is very traditional. So there were a ton of shops filled with hanboks and fans and traditional tea sets ad silverware and stuff like that. Insa-dong and Jeju Island are the two biggest tourist areas in Korea so most of the people working at the shops could speak English, which was really helpful. I ended up spending most of the time alone, but that was on purpose. It was nice to just enjoy what I wanted to see all by myself and have a break from the people I had been seeing constantly for the past four days. I ended up buying myself a pretty green bracelet to go with the one I bought at the temple and a fan. I also have a fan from Spain and a fan from Japan, so I'm glad I have one from here now.

We were told to be back at the university by ten thirty and that the buses would be leaving at eleven so we left Insa-dong at around nine to get back in time. We went a different route back and ended up waiting about half an hour for our bus. I spent that whole time just chatting with Kah Ming about my childhood. We somehow got on the topic of horses and how my mum owns five, and then he asked me about my other pets in America and it turned into a very long conversation full of laughs. It was a nice end to a rather stressful outing. We got the university about fifteen minutes late, but it didn't really matter. The buses were about thirty minutes late anyway. But then it turned out that there wasn't quite room for everyone on the first round. I originally was going to go first, but I gave up my spot for Julia. So I ended up standing on my sore feet a bit longer. When we finally got on a bus I sat with Kah Ming and we talked the whole forty five minutes ride home. We got back to the hotel about ten minutes after midnight and on the bus I had told Kah Ming that it was my birthday. Right before we got off the bus I saw him talking to Matika and I was thinking "they're planning something aren't they?". I was totally exhausted and had had a tiring day so it was super sweet that when we got to the lobby of the hotel Matika got everyone's attention and they all sang me happy birthday. It was a really good way to end the day before I crashed in bed and fell asleep in about thirty seconds.

Day 5: Thursday

In the morning I went to breakfast alone and was almost the only one there. It was really fun as tired people trickled in they would say hi to me and then stare at me for a second as if they had forgotten something and they would say "Oh! Happy Birthday!" It was pretty funny. And throughout the day Coraline and Gi Oon told me Happy Birthday every time they saw me.

The first thing we did was take a two hour bus ride up to the border of North and South Korea. So I literally looked out over this big valley and could see North Korea on the other side. We also went in this tunnel underground, but it was low ceilinged and wet and in the end just hurt my legs. Then we ate lunch in a park nearby and then were on the bus another two hours back to the university. I slept on the way there and on the way back.

In the afternoon we had the closing ceremony. There was another couple boring speeches and then there was a few rewards given. Then we were all left in suspense as the lady waited to tell us which team had been the best and won the outstanding team award. Sadly, it was not my team that won, but the science team. But it was all so much fun that I really didn't care one bit whether we won or not.  

Then went back to the Dream Foodteria for our last dinner together. It was really sad because some of the people were leaving that night and not the morning after. It was really sad for me because it was almost over and I didn't really want to go back to school where I don't really have any friends. For almost a whole week I had lots of good friends, and I had to leave them all behind. But it was nice all the same. And Mari surprised me with a beautiful birthday cake. It was just a couple little cake snack things stacked with the words "H.B Emy" in jelly on them, but it was amazing anyway. She brought it out and everyone sang to me and it made me cry I was so happy. Everyone was like "don't cry!" and I just tried to tell them that it really was because of joy. They didn't really believe me. I could have cried about the things I was sad about but I stopped myself. “Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.” (Markus Zusak).

After dinner we had some teary goodbyes and lots of hugs and a slow ride back to the hotel. The night each team had their own little parties in separate rooms. My team just ordered chicken and played two truths and a lie to get to know each other a little bit better. I stayed up until maybe around two thirty in the morning and only slept for about four or five hours. A lot of other people were up a lot later than I was.

Day 6: Friday

This day pretty much just consisted of us sitting in the hotel lobby getting lots of pictures and saying goodbye to people and giving everyone hugs. The bus ride to Suwon station was really quiet and sad. A few of us ate lunch together, but after that it was really over and I just wanted to get home and sleep. So I did. I went to bed around midnight after putting all my pictures on facebook and friending all of my new friends. On Saturday I woke up at around noon and decided I was still tired and could sleep a bit more and then woke up again at five. That was the latest I have ever gotten up in my life. The day felt like such a waste, but I felt so good to make up all that sleep.

So, basically, the conference was one of the best experiences of my life and I will never forget the friends I made there. All the time in between I didn't mention here was just filled with talking to people and learning about each others cultures. My closest new friends ended up being my roommates, Matika, Kah Ming, and Nicole and Jenny from America. Shout out to you guys, you all rock! You'd better come visit me again!

I would also like to briefly mention that I am now going to a church with an English service and have friends there. But I'll talk more about that in a later post. This one is too long anyway. Until next time!

A Concert, A Class, A Conference

To quote Olan Rogers, it's been awhile since I told you a story.

Juan

Not much has been happening lately that's out of the ordinary, except for last Saturday. That was the day I got to go to a Kpop concert! Although, the Kpop part of it was amazing, the rest of it was pretty boring. The concert was part of a sports festival so we also had to sit through a really long parade of all the different participating cities showing off their talents and weird costumes. There were also a couple singers that I didn't like because they sang old people music that was kind of annoying. But when the last three bands sang (2AM, Ze:a, MBlaq) I will shamelessly admit that I freaked the heck out. There was a lot of screaming, very loud singing and clapping. The two Taiwanese guys with me, Juan and Guan Yu, kept looking at me like I was a little crazy, but I didn't care. I had dreamed of this day for almost three years. MBlaq is my absolute favorite Kpop band, so this was an incredible experience for me. It was definitely worth the couple hours worth of waiting to see them. It was even worth the fact that I was freezing the whole time in a t-shirt and shorts sitting in the rain.

On other things not so exciting, I'll start with some school stuff. The past couple weeks have been really boring because this week and next Monday are the midterm exams. So the week before we didn't really have classes, the students just studied on their own. So Coraline and I just slept, read, or chatted with our teachers. We asked if we could be exempt from the tests, seeing as we wouldn't understand any of it, but the principle said that we had to take the tests, so we did. Each test took me about thirty seconds, except math, which I actually tried to do well. Apparently I actually did better than some of my classmates on that one, which surprised me. I still don't really have any friends to speak of in my class, but I am a lot more comfortable with talking to them and asking them questions at this point. I'm also now a lot more familiar with the building and the way things work. And there was one class when all the other students were studying and my Korean teacher started folding some school newspapers. She had a huge stack so Coraline and I decided to help her. We spent about and hour and a half doing it and afterwards our teacher kept saying "Thank you, thank you, I love you!" It felt really good to actually do something in class for a change and show our teacher that we aren't opposed to work we just can't understand what she teaches.

But this Thursday we didn't have school on account of a holiday. I wish I could tell you what holiday it was, but I can't. And yes, I asked what it was, but no one could tell me in English. But we got a day off school so it was nice. I spent the day with all the exchange students here in Ansan, Jack, Kaytleen, Coraline, Juan and Benedikt. First we went out to lunch at Lotteria, which is the Korean version of McD's (even though they have that too). Seriously, they're exactly the same, except McDonald's fries are better. This time I decided I would try one of the Korean items on the menu and got a Bulgogi burger. It was really sweet and pretty strange, but it was really good. After that we went upstairs to the movie theater. We wanted to see a movie in English, as none of us speak Korean that well, and there were only two choices: Prisoners and Monsters University. Prisoners was playing to late, so we chose the latter. And when the movie started we were all disappointed because it was dubbed in Korean. We had expected it to just have subtitles because all the other English movies we had seen had done it that way. But I guess they actually take the time to dub animations. Thankfully it was easy enough to follow and I understood maybe about a fifth of what they said so it was good anyway. Afterwards we went out for ice cream at Baskin Robins and then went home. It was a nice relaxing day with friends.





Sunggyeol University

Hannah, Juan, Me, EunMi

To tell you what happened today I need to backtrack a week. Last Friday we had our first Korean class with the Rotary club. It was at Sunggyeol University in Anyang, about an hour away by subway from where I live. Last week wasn't really a class, we just introduced ourselves and met our teachers and figured out which class we would be in. This week we actually started learning Korean. I was put in the higher level class because there are still some people here who can't even read Korean so we were separated. At the beginning of the class we were pretty organized and our teachers (who are college students) figured out what level we're at.

But as it went on we didn't really follow the book anymore and most of us were trying to figure things out on our own and it was kinda crazy. I also felt like there should have been more classes of different levels. Me and two other people were listening to our teacher and thinking "we already know of this" while others in our class were thinking "this is way too much to take in". I did learn a couple new things, but that was only because I was talking to Hannah one on one while the teachers helped other people. After the class we all got together and were told that we were going to learn a dance for the district conference in November. I, of course, was not too happy with this, but not all the songs we chose were bad. We're going to dance to sections of about four songs for a total of ten minutes. The only song I was unhappy with was Gangnam Style. So, of course, that's the one we started with. It was the most horrible dance lesson ever. All we did was watch a mirrored version of the dance. We didn't have anyone break it down for us and show us how. We were also in a very cramped space and couldn't move properly. It was just terrible.

On a happier note, the coming couple of weeks are going to be wonderful. This Sunday I am going to go to a different church, one with an English service! Benedict and Kaytleen go there and told me that there are a lot of black people and a lot of Russians, so it should be fun. After that I'm going to go to Gyeonggi University in Suwon for the beginning of the ~Ing Conference. I'm not really sure what the conference is about, but I have a schedule and it's going to be a fun five days (yes five days). The things were are doing include going to the DMZ, seeing some traditional drum performances and seeing some parts of Seoul. And my birthday will be right in the middle of it, which will be cool. I also really look forward to meeting the Rotary students from other districts that are going. The weekend after the conference our district is going on our Seoul tour which will be awesome (except for the fact that we have to walk everywhere).

So, I'm sure a lot of you reading this know what my Wall of Stuff was, but for those of you who don't, when I was in America on one of the walls in my room I hung up anything that I possibly could, from movie tickets to postcards to clothing tags, to chronicle the my life, manifested in the things I received throughout the years. By the time I left it covered over half of my room walls. I would love to do the same thing here in Korea, but I'm going to be living in three different houses and I don't think my parents would appreciate it, so instead I have a sturdy Notebook of Stuff. The front cover is already almost full, so then I'll move to the back and then the inside. If it gets too crowded I'll probably just start layering things. It's going to be one heavy notebook by the end of the year, but it will be a great way to show everything that happened to be over the year piece by piece.

Even though things have been going well and I'm excited for the next month there are also quite a few things that have been hard. It's difficult for me not to have any close friends, or any Korean friends really at all. It's also incredibly frustrating when I have something important I need to tell my parents, but I don't know how. It's kind of like this: "The sun was trembling on the brink of the world, the shadows at their longest...". The sun is still out and the light is shining, but there are long shadows that pierce that happiness.

I have pointed out a few of the differences between America and Korea at various points throughout my blogs, but it's been very scattered and I'm sure I've left out a lot, so my next post is going to be a clear lists of differences. Hopefully I'll finish that in the next couple days. Until then!

Life Update

Ok, guys. This time is more like a life update than a relation of events. Not too many big things have happened, but things are definitely different.

Firstly, my family. In the first few days I was here I felt a lot more comfortable with my brother, just because we spent more time together and his English is better than Unni's. But after he left to go back to wherever it is he goes to college, I can now say with certainty that I am a lot closer to my sister. It's not that I like one more than the other, I just know her much better. She is so much fun and quite a bit like me. She hums and softly sings fairly frequently, she makes a lot of faces, she does silly things just for the heck of it. She's great. My mom is also wonderful. I knew that from the second I met her, but seriously guys. I love her so much. She is so sweet and nice and funny and cute. I honestly want to stay with this family the whole year. I also know my dad a bit more now. I still don't see him that often because he works, but now that I stay up later with the rest of the family I see him at night and all of us usually just sit in the living room and talk for a long time. It's really nice. We have a lot of fun without really doing anything.



Sunggook, Inbum, Kangik, Kihoon, Coraline and Jinsung (and me)

Secondly school. School is really strange. It's a big mix of fantastic, boring, and annoying. Let's start with fantastic. I really like the people in my class. I'd say my closest friend right now is Hanbyul. He's very funny and outgoing and has better English than most people in the class. Even though I say he's my closest friend, we're not close. Really at all. I guess, I wouldn't say he's my closest friend, he's more like the person I know the best. I don't think I can honestly say I have any friends yet. It'll take time. But even though I don't think of them as my real friends yet, I have a lot fun with them and like being there. Now for the boring. I think that even if I did speak Korean I would find this school boring. Most of the classes are just lectures with little participation by the students. The only classes we do anything in are math and gym. Both of which are wonderful for me because they don't require me to speak Korean. And I never thought I would say that I'm the best gym student at any point in my school career. But here I am. Seriously. These people are fifteen and sixteen and they were holding the volleyballs as if they had never seen one in their life. Finally, the annoying. There are a couple things here that really bother me. Ok, so the whole corporal punishment thing wasn't a surprise for me when I got here and I don't mind it. It's not like the students ever get serious beatings or anything. So the occasional hit on the head or student that has to stand with their arms up doesn't bother me, as it's quick. But it does really bother me when teachers will take up to half the class calling different students to the front of the room and stand there talking to them before making them do whatever punishment they have in store. One class period the teacher took up the entire time making the class squat/walk down the hallway. But it bothers me much more that Coraline and I are generally exempt from the punishments. Only our homeroom teacher has punished us with the rest of the class, which I appreciate. I want to feel like a part of the class and the system. Just because I'm from America doesn't mean that I can't do exercises. Watch our gym class sometime. So, overall, I like the school and love my class, but wish that they didn't waste as much time and included us more.

In the past week or so, I'm happy to say that my free time has been much more productive than the beginning of my stay. The first couple weeks I usually just laid on my bed or sat at my desk and thought. Now I spend a lot more of the time in between classes and things praying and reading. It's amazing how praying can calm you down when you're really frustrated. My free time at home is also well spent. I've gotten a lot of cross-stitching done recently and my current project is moving along nicely. Just yesterday I also remembered that I like origami (yes, I forgot) and started doing a little bit of that again. I finally wrote a response to a letter I received the first day I was here (sorry Janet). And running down to the market on the corner has become one of my favorite things to do. My mom sends me to get stuff often and the lady that owns the place is so cute and sweet and always gets things for me because I don't actually know what they are, I just know the name that my mom told me.

I still haven't been able to go to the youth service at the church I've gone to a couple times. The first time I had the chance my mom had planned out my whole day. The Saturday after that we had a big rotary day (I'll talk about that in a bit). And of course this Saturday we're going to be out of town. Hopefully I get there sometime soon; I really want to decide whether I'm going to stay there or try to find a different church.

So, last Saturday there was a big huge event for all the Interact (high school) and Rotaract (college) clubs in our district. There were maybe three hundred people there. It really was a very boring day. Because only a very small percentage of the people was us, the foreigners, everything was done in Korean and I didn't understand pretty much any of it. The entire morning we just sat in our seats and I just talked to Anna, another American, the whole time because we had nothing else to do. She's pretty cool so that made the morning better. I ended up spending pretty much the whole day with her. After lunch we all did this weird domino game that I honestly am not going to try to explain here seeing as I can't do it even when I'm actually talking to someone so.... Then we sat around a bit, then we had dinner, then we sat around for a while longer. I was yet again just talking to Anna and Kaytleen sitting outside. A little bit before we walked back in something interesting did happen though. There was this Korean guy that walked past us, but after a few paces he turned around and walked up to us. He had his camera out and he didn't say anything he just held up his hands and mimicked taking a picture. So we took a picture with an absolutely adorable, silent Korean guy. He did say thank you (very quietly) afterwards though. And I noticed as he was leaving that he had a tattoo on his arm that said "Serendipity". It was so funny. It was probably just an English word that he thought would look cool and be hard to pronounce, but it was hilarious how it fit the way he looked and acted. After that we went inside and watched an absolutely hilarious talent show where everyone's talent was dancing in a group to a Kpop song.
Friday I went out for the day again with Ochun, Kaytleen and Jack. Ochun also brought his friend Gunhee along, which was nice. I'm in need of more friends. He was really polite and sweet. I liked him. We didn't really do much except see a movie and eat and walk around and ride the bus, but it was really good for me to get out and go somewhere without adults and with people that I already knew, instead of meeting new people again. It's not that I don't appreciate when people take me out places, but I get kind of tired of meeting people thinking "I'm probably never going to see you ever again.".
Oh my goodness, I almost forgot Choosuk, Korean thankgiving! It was on Thursday. The day before we spent a couple hours on the floor in the kitchen making a ton of food, including burdock and lotus roots (strange, but not gross). Then on Thursday morning we got up early and went to my grandparents house. There my dad and grandpa set up this whole thing for a ceremony to honor their ancestors. From what I saw in all the other exchange students pictures, most of them wore hanboks, Korean traditional clothes, and saw a lot of family on Choosuk. But me and my brother (who came back for a couple days) and sister, didn't have hanboks and we didn't participate in anything, and we were the only relatives there. We just sat in the other room and eventually fell asleep. Then we ate and then slept more while the adults talked a lot. It was much more boring than I expected the day to be, but that's ok. The food was delicious.
So, yeah, that's how I'm feeling at the moment. I love it here, a lot. It's simply beautiful. Before I came I thought that I might not like being in a big city very much, but I love everything about it. Even though a lot of things have been really hard and frustrating so far, this has already been one of the best experiences of my life and I've learned so much about myself. I can't wait so see what the next few weeks have in store. (Sorry, no quote this time. Too much work).

A Revelation From Davies

School trips.

Wow.

I went on a three day school trip, this past Wednesday through Friday. It was absolutely crazy. The first day we set off from school at maybe nine o'clock. We sat in the bus for just a short time and went to a place where people made ceramic things. I wish I could tell you the name, but... no one ever told me what it was. We just sat around a bit outside a while. Coraline and I just sat and talked to a few of the boys. Then we went inside a building and we all sat down at tables with paintbrushes and paint sitting, waiting for us. We were given the choice of painting a plate or a cup and I chose the plate, simply because of the ease of painting something flat (well, nearly). I started by drawing a design on my plate like everyone else, but halfway through, I looked at my design, said "screw it" and just started painting over it. I decided to paint it blue with one corner that had little pink flowers. I didn't quite have enough time to put in all the flowers that I wanted to, but it was enough to satisfy me. I honestly don't know if we're going to get the things we painted later after the ceramics people finish them, or if we just painted them and never get to see them again. I guess we'll see! After we finished that we outside and ate the lunches we packed. Coraline and I yet again hung out with the boys. Coraline much more outgoing than I am and I just kind of followed her everywhere and that's where she went so.... Yeah. It was fun to actually start to get to know them a little. We had a good time. And I also found a very interesting phrase ( 30 Sexy Years!) on the back of one of the boys shirts.

After the two hours we had for lunch we hopped back on the bus for about another three hours of driving. We drove through an incredibly beautiful area full of mountains. Every single mountain was completely covered in trees. It was just gorgeous. I was very happy to discover that the place we were staying at was right in the middle of the mountains. It was just incredible walking out the door every morning. But the first thing we did when we got there was just kinda sit around while we waited for dinner to be prepared. Coraline and I sat and talked with a couple boys while a few others played Korean soccer, which isn't normal soccer. It's kind of like a mix of volleyball and soccer. There was a low net and the point was to get it over the net and not outside the bounds. The ball could bounce once in between every kick and the same person couldn't kick it more than once in a row.  Those were basically the only rules. It was fun to watch. Then we ate dinner, which was delicious grilled pork. After that we just hung out some more and watched more soccer and then went to bed around maybe ten.

We got up the next morning and had breakfast at eight. At about nine we hopped on a bus and headed out a little bit higher into the mountains to go fourwheeling. It was funny how hesitant and bad most of the people were. It was pretty obvious it was their first time. Most just went at an average/slow speed around our little practice area while Coraline and I lapped them a few times. Then we went on a couple of different trails after people got the hang of it.

Immediately after the four wheeling we went out to go paintballing. We got all geared up with greaves, breastplates, helmets and swords.... I mean, guns. I don't really know whether I ever hit anyone. I got hit once on the hip, but it didn't burst (just hurt quite a bit). I also got a lot of green splatter on my shirt despite my armor. I didn't really think it was all that fun, so I only played the first two games, and even then only about half of them due to gun malfunctions and a depleted supply of ammo. I sat out the last game and just watched. Our team had switched sides and I really didn't like the other side. It was much to dangerous.

As if paintball and four wheeling didn't expend enough of our energy, we also had a busy afternoon. After lunch we went rafting. It was very easy rafting, simple, no white waters, but it was still fun. We had eight people and our "driver" in our raft. The actual rafting part of it really wasn't what made it fun (it wasn't fast enough for me), but the scenery. The river we were on was gorgeous and clean and the surrounding mountains breathtaking. (The picture isn't from our rafting adventure, but just of the mountains nearby). Swimming in the river was awesome as well. We had a short break half way through and there were a few people standing with just their legs in the water. There were a couple guys who were all the way in, but were just sitting there, not really looking as if they were enjoying it. I, on the other hand, jumped right in and floated around a little bit. I also really like the competition we had with all the other rafts. When we got close to one another we were suddenly counting our strokes at about twice volume and using twice the strength. It was a blast.

The third day of our trip was much less eventful. Most of it was spent in the bus. But we stopped in Gwangmyeong (I really hope that's the right name) to go to a Kia Company. There we watched a video about Kia's growth and how it was put into the top 100 worldwide brands. It was about twenty minutes long, and then we left. But we did get a souvenir: a model K5. After that we went home. I didn't do much once I got to my house, as I'm sure you can imagine. I was in great need of restoration.

The very next day my mom had an outing planned for me. In the morning I went to Jacks house and helped his mother wake him up and then watched some TV while we waited for the others (whom I had never met before) to arrive. As I was flipping through the channels I miraculously found that Pokémon was on. Jack was sleeping on the floor in front of the TV so I didn't bother to find out whether it was something he wanted to watch. It was strange seeing it in Korean, but I know the characters well enough that I knew what was going on and still found it to be hilarious. When it ended, I was kind of at a loss on what to watch (we were still waiting) but not for long. Just a few channels away I even more miraculously found Howl's Moving Castle! I was so happy. I, yet again, didn't understand the Korean, but I've seen the movie so many times I knew exactly what they were saying. A little bit into it two of Jack's friends from school, Ochun and Hyunsup, arrived. We chatted a bit (Ochun has fairly good English) and waited for Kaytleen, a Rotarian from France, to come. When she did we all sat down and ate Bibimbab, which was delicious (of course).

After lunch we took the bus out into the city. We walked around for a while to waste the time away until our movie started. We stopped in a couple different places and I finally bought myself a notebook. We stopped and sat in a café for a bit. Then we saw Now You See Me (me for the second time. It was just as good). Afterwards we went out for dinner and ate 닭갈비. Then we went back to Jacks house and hung out for a while. It was really nice to finally feel like I had real Korean friends (meaning Koreans that were real friends, not as if I have friends that are fake Koreans). I know the people in my class, but I still don't really feel like they're my friends. Yet.

 

Even though I've only been here a little over two weeks it feels like it's been a couple months. I've read so many books about fantastic worlds and often times I've thought that I would love to be in them and experience them. But the world we live in is also covered in beauty and filled with wonder. “But life is not a legend or a story. Reality is far more precious than a story...” (David Clement-Davies). Being exposed to new places really helps me to believe that and truly love this world despite it's failings. But I also remember that this isn't my home, and if I love Earth so much, I can't even begin to think what Gods Kingdom will be like.

A Challenge From Stevenson

"Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen have asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back...."  (Robert Louis Stevenson). This, my dears, is a hard task, but I shall do my very best to remember everything that I can so that you can have a good look at what Korea is like.

A few days ago Oppa took me to McDonald's! It was wonderful and tasted exactly like America. Although, the uniforms here are worse than the American ones. All the employees have to wear red and white striped half length ties. And the cups that we used for our soda weren't paper. They were plastic and we put them in a stack just like the trays, which was strange.

On the topic of food, the next day Umma, Unni and I ordered chicken the day afterwards. Sounds pretty normal, but one kind of chicken that we got was in a obviously Korean sauce (sorry, there's really no other way to explain it), which really made it new for me. And we ate the chicken with plastic gloves on, which was strange, but definitely cleaner than the way that we Americans do it. I was very appreciative of that fact, as I often see the way Americans eat slightly gross.

This past Saturday was our first district-wide meeting. We got an orientation! Yay!....Not really. It was quite boring, as everything we went over I already knew from my sponsor district and it was all said twice, in Korean and English. But besides all the lecturing it was pretty fun. Our district has five people from France, four from America, two from Brazil, two from Taiwan, two from Mexico and one from Sweden. I loved getting new pins to finally start filling up my blazer. And as it turns out, one of the Americans is from Platteville, Wisconsin, the town where I was born. Fancy that.

After the orientation was fun as well because Unni, Umma, and I went out to lunch with one of the French girls, Melissa, and the two Taiwanese boys, Jack and Guan Yu. It was so hard because Melissa was speaking French and just a little English, my mom was speaking Korean, and my sister was speaking Korean and English. It gave me a huge headache to translate in three different languages, but it was also fun. Misunderstandings can be a good way to have a laugh together without really knowing each other.

So, the orientation was Saturday and obviously the next day is Sunday, so I went to church for the first time! It was...really strange to say the least. I didn't know what denomination of church I was going to because I didn't know how to ask. But it started out with five people leading some hymn-like songs while people arrived. Then the choir sang a few hymns. Then the reverend came up, said a few words I didn't understand and then led us in a couple more songs. Then there was a guy who prayed for over ten minutes I think. Then the reverend gave his sermon, while I just sat and smiled, not knowing what was going on. After a couple more songs at the end Umma and I went with a couple of her friends to the basement cafeteria to have lunch together. Thankfully about halfway through Umma's friend called over a guy who spoke very fluent English (he lived in the Philippines for six years). So, I was able to ask him things about the church. I found out that there is a teen service on Saturday nights, so starting next week, that's what I'll be attending. Hopefully he'll be there too to translate for me.

Monday was my first day of school. It starts at about 8:20 with is a huge plus for me after arriving at Hempstead every day at 7:10. I met Coraline outside the school with our moms and then we met our homeroom teacher. He showed us to our classroom and gave us seats right in the front of the room. We had met our class before so they just said hi and kind of looked at us to see what we would do (not sure what they were expecting). But, even though our class was pretty laidback in the beginning the other classes were most definitely not. As we walked through the halls we literally had groups of people following us and whole classes crowding up to their classroom windows to see us. Half the people we walked by said hi and then looked really embarrassed and pleased when we responded. When we were in our room there was usually a whole row of people lined up outside our room window to see us. Our teacher had to keep telling them to leave. I found out today that it's because this school has never had a western foreign exchange student before.

Our first class of the day was a creative activity. We had to write a letter to a friend. Me and Coraline didn't really understand what was going on and didn't have any friends anyway, so we just wrote short letters about ourselves. But one of our classmates, Eunbin, wrote us both really cute letters saying something like "Hello! I don't speaking English! I love you! Eyes so pretty". It was really nice. For our second period we went outside for gym class. One of the students (whose dang name I can't remember) led us in some half hearted stretches. Then we played some volleyball. Actually we passed back and forth in partners, but it was fun. For third period a new teacher came into our room. I'm not sure what the subject was, but all the teacher did was show videos about subjects varying from bookbinding to wedding planning to car constructing. It was weird. And over half the class was asleep. Not that the teacher did anything to wake them up....Then our homeroom teacher came back and we drew these little character things for about ten minutes before it was lunch time. Lunch was kimchi soup and fish and, of course, rice. It was all really good. Afterwards we finished our drawings. Then we had science. Even though I didn't understand anything the teacher said I could tell by the pictures and graph that they were talking about particles and energy, so I don't feel bad that I wasn't paying attention.  I wouldn't have learned anything new anyway. A lot of people slept in that class too. Our last class of the day was industry. It was obvious that the students liked that subject and that teacher, who was awesome, a lot more than the other classes; no one slept. And then at the end of that class, I went home.

Ok, so that was the play-by-play. Here are some more general remarks. In between every period we have about 10 minutes to do whatever. Most students we down to the little café downstairs to get a snack or a drink. The only student in our class that speaks any amount of useful English is so shy that when he's asked to translate things he doesn't say much and isn't much help. So our homeroom teacher does most of the explaining to us in choppy English and sometimes talks to me in Korean when that doesn't work (Coraline hardly speaks any Korean). There was a group of three or four guys that came to say hi to us in between every class. I had a couple people tell me that I have a small face (that's a compliment). The teachers punish students quite often. Sometimes they'll hit them with an umbrella or something (lightly). Often the students have to stand in the front of the room facing the wall with their arms in the air.

The second day didn't hold much that was new. We had math class today. Definitely my favorite subject here (someone tell Mrs. Weires) because they're doing things I did three years ago and find very very easy (the distance formula, for those of you who care). I went up and did a problem on the board. Then two others were asked to go up and they just stood there staring. In the afternoon we went to a computer lab with a different class to do stuff with and illustrating program. For the first half we sat in the back talking to people while others used the computers. That was fun. Then we made gradient rectangles. That part was boring.

For dinner today I went out with Umma, Jack, and his mother. We had some delicious shellfish and noodles. I asked Jack about how his school was going and what it was like, but we didn't talk much. He understands English as long as I don't use big words, but he doesn't speak as well and isn't a big talker anywho. But when we got back to his house I was designated to be his Hangeul (Korean alphabet) teacher. So, I spent about 45 minutes teaching him the sounds of the different symbols.

Tonight I packed for the school trip that I am going on tomorrow. It's three days long and in the region whose name I forget with lots of mountains. I don't know what we're doing the first day, but the second day we're going to mountain bike and go rafting. The third day we're getting a tour of a Kia company building. Hopefully I'll start to actually get to know my classmates. So, I'll be back in three days with lots of stories. Until then!