Bendy Straw

Today, I saw the most awesome straw ever.  On my box of grape juice this morning there was a straw, but unlike any I had ever seen before.  It was different from the flexi-straws known to all who come in contact with juice boxes (namely, children and their handlers), in that there was no section for bending, rather, it consisted of two plastic tubes nested inside each other, and a locking mechanism that kept it extended once the tubes were extended.  Sorry to offend anyone, but it very much reminded me of a compact tampon applicator.  Actually quite smart, in my opinion, as this plastic was sturdier than the kind to be found in normal flexi-straws, and it actually reached the bottom of the box, to retrieve every last grape-y drop of juice.

Today's activities consisted of two lectures, one on Korean Politics (though it turned out to just be more like a general intro to policy-making considerations regardless of country), and one on Korean Food.  Nothing particularly remarkable happened at either, though the food lecture was interesting to me, as when I was younger I considered becoming a chef, and I still like to think that I have a better-than-average knowledge of food, though that's probably just an inflated ego that comes from watching the Food Network and thinking that actually counts as culinary school.

This afternoon until dinner (meaning the next 45 minutes) should be quiet, and I plan to continue work on my term paper on Christianity in South Korea.  It's an interesting topic, but I'm finding it hard to focus here.  Maybe it's just the fact that I'm not used to living with 10 other people, or the time change, or whatever, but normally I could bang out a five-page paper in maybe an hour or two (rough draft, of course), but here I'm slogging away at a snail's pace.  It's quite annoying.  But maybe that's just because our group got a B on our last group paper so it's dashed my spirits, as I thought it was quite good.  Speaking of group papers, we have another to write after dinner.  Darn.

Tomorrow and the next day make up our "Korean Homestay Weekend" part of this program, where we get randomly paired with another student, and then spend the weekend with them.  My homestay buddy seems nice enough, but I'd never met her until the names list came out and she figured out who I was, so I feel a bit odd knowing that I'll be crashing at her house tomorrow . . . I suppose on the bright side, pretty much everyone is in the same boat, though two of the other girls from Cedar Crest are going with girls who live in our suite, so they're not complete strangers.  Hmm.

In other news, I feel terrible that I keep messing up everyone's names here.  My brain just can't seem to wrap around the Korean names, and my mouth refuses to pronounce them correctly.  So annoying.

Also, it's very slippery here, and I'm lucky I haven't fallen and broken my neck yet.  There seems to be a high percentage of marble used as flooring and sidewalk here, which seems to be one of the dumbest possible moves, as it's constantly raining or misting or something (at least, it has been this week), and the marble gets impossibly slick when it's wet.  They really should have stuck with concrete.