Bittersweet Goodbyes

Okay, okay, so I haven't written in awhile.  To be honest, the past few days have been kind of strange, with all the planned activities winding down, but at the same time, things have been getting more hectic as everyone is preparing to leave.  I last wrote on Monday night, before our party with our RA.  Now it is Friday morning (as I write this beginning, it is bound to be much later once I reach the end, as I have to leave for the bus for my flight in only about 45 minutes), so I have a lot of ground to cover.  Let's get started!

On Monday night we did have our party with our RA.  He and some of the Korean girls went out and got tons of snacks and drinks and a cake for us to eat.  The cake was the highlight, it was a white cake with fruit on top from Paris Baguette, the cafe which we have all fallen in love with while here.  In addition to grapes and other standard fruits, the cake also had some cherry tomatoes on top, which I guess is okay because they're technically fruits, but it was somewhat strange as in the USA, we never ever eat them as fruits.  Our RA is very sweet and kind (Later proven by official vote, as he won the "Most Caring Staff" award during our end-of-program dinner.  More on that later.), and it's a shame that we didn't get to spend more time with him.

Tuesday was the day we had to prepare our group presentations.  Our group decided to cover Drinking Culture in South Korea, and my part of the presentation, along with another girl, we covered popular alcoholic drinks in Korea.  I got to talk about Hite Brewing Company (specializes in a Budweiser-like beer, most of the beers here are very very light, kind of a shame as I like darker beers) and Makgeolli, which is Korean rice wine (I quite like it, if you mix it with Sprite, it tastes like champagne).  The other members covered the history of alcohol in Korea, some current issues with alcohol, social venues where you can drink, and some Korean drinking games.  It only took a short amount of time to actually work on the presentation, the majority of the time was spent trying to coordinate with the other 10 members of the team.  11 people is quite a lot when you're trying to put together one coherent presentation in a short amount of time.  In some of the down time, one of the other girls and I did some online window-shopping for Tom's shoes.  Back at home, I'd heard of Tom's before for their charity work (the company will donate a pair of shoes for every pair you buy) , but never really seen anyone wearing them.  Here in Korea, they are EVERYWHERE.  They're supposed to be very comfortable and durable, and the money goes to a good cause too, so I'll probably end up buying some once I get home (yes, I know, more shopping).  Our discussion group got done in the early afternoon, and then the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing.  After a bit of reading and napping, we decided to make a movie afternoon out of it.  It was raining like crazy, and there were a couple of cracks of VERY close thunder, so it didn't make sense to try and go out sightseeing anywhere.  The first movie we chose was called My Sassy Girl, and it was a very crazy romantic comedy.  Tough to describe really, it was just very funny, and very random.  We watched that up until dinner, and then after dinner, we watched a movie called The Chaser.  It was a crime-drama movie about a serial killer, and it was quite good, though quite scary, and a plot twist at the end featuring one of the dumbest characters ever featured on screen made me a bit mad.  The plot was loosely based on a true story, which made it all the more creepy, but luckily we didn't know that it was based in reality until after the movie was over, or else I'm not sure we would have made it to the end.

Speaking of all the rain that pushed us to have a movie afternoon, we found out on our last day in Korea that they have been having floods that are breaking all kinds of records, the term "flood of the century" has been thrown around a couple of times.  My homestead buddy showed me a picture of the parking lot outside of her apartment, and it was COMPLETELY underwater.  All the cars had brown muddy water halfway up their sides, and she said that her family couldn't go to work because of the flooding.  Luckily her family lives on the ninth floor of their building, so at least their place is safe - but the first floor of the building is flooded.  I wonder if that's structurally sound?  It's so strange to think that the place I stayed less than two weeks ago is now totally flooded.

Wednesday was the day we got to present our group projects to the rest of the students and to the faculty for grading.  The order for the 10 groups to present was chosen randomly, and we were lucky enough to get to go third, early enough that the people in the audience were still awake and somewhat focused, but not right in the very beginning, where we might have been nervous about having to go first and set the pace.  We later found out that our group grade was B+, not too bad, especially considering that our choice of topic may or may not have made the professors slightly uncomfortable . . . 

The presentations got done in the early afternoon, and then we had a few hours until the Farewell Party that night.  I spent some time packing and getting everything in order for the next few days.  Dinner wasn't served in the cafeteria like normal, instead we went to a large meeting room, where they had set up round tables with white linens, and fresh flowers and candles in the center.  There was a buffet with tons of foods and desserts, and a stage was set up for the "Awards Ceremony."  The night before we had been given forms to fill out, where we had voted on "Most Flirty," "Mr. Popular," "Most Koreanized," etc., like for high school yearbooks.  The results of that survey were announced at the dinner, and there was also a talent show and a raffle where about 20 people got prizes.  We also watched a slide show that had been put together from all the photos that had been taken thought the month.  After all that was over, everyone found out who their "Secret Angel" was.  I believe I explained this before, but to explain the "Secret Angel" program in a tiny nutshell, at the beginning of the month, we were given the name of a person to give small gifts to throughout the month, and we were that person's "Secret Angel".  At this Farewell Party, the tables were turned, and now we were to give a gift to the person who had been our Secret Angel for the month, as a kind of "thank you."  The girl who I gave gifts to gave me some Korean snacks as her "thank you", I decided to save them all until I get home, most of the other snacks I bought with the intention of taking home, I ate already.  Whoops.

After the Farewell Party, my roommate also gave me some gifts as a going away present.  She and I were quite a good match for each other, as we are both somewhat quiet and reserved, not big praters, and she was always very accommodating, even when I had my cold and was hacking on a regular basis.  I gave her some things as well, but not until Thursday night, as I wanted her to have them as close to the end of the program as possible.  Thursday night turned out to be quite a crazy night - but I'll get to that in a moment.  I have to cover the rest of Thursday day first!

Thursday was the final full day, and we were awarded our certificates of completion, and a few speeches were given by students, visiting faculty, a staff member, and the president of Seoul Women's University.  A number of people could be seen crying during the presentation, as all the speeches were quite good, and some were quite moving.  Our certificates are quite fancy, possibly nicer than the diploma I received for completing my Associate's degree.  They're in blue velvet covers, with the seal of the Seoul Women's University embossed on front.  We also watched a compilation video of all the footage that had been taken during the month.  We had an amazing videography staff, with one dedicated photographer, one dedicated videographer, and a few other cameras that would circulate among the staff when they weren't busy with other tasks.  For this program, there are literally hundreds of photos on Facebook as a result (not even beginning to count all the photos all us students took of each other), and as soon as each day's pictures were uploaded each afternoon, friends would tag each other.  This turned out to be a quite efficient method for this whole month, as we all took care of our own friends and acquaintances, and the matrix of who knew who was wide enough that we would get done quickly.

Note: I am currently writing this section while on the plane home, and we are experiencing quite a bit of turbulence, so I apologize if my thoughts seem a bit rattled as a result, that may have something to do with it.  =)

After the official certificate ceremony, some of us decided to venture out to Lotte Plaza (yes, ANOTHER Lotte item).  We had gone to Lotte Plaza a few weeks ago to see a movie, but we hadn't had enough time at that point to actually look around or do any shopping.  One of the girls from Cedar Crest needed to pick up a second suitcase to take home al her extra purchases from this trip, but it turned out that Lotte Plaza was one of the worst places we could have thought of to look for that.  The best way I can think to describe Lotte Plaza is to compare it to Sax Fifth Avenue.  It's one big building, about 10 stories tall, and each floor is dedicated to a different type of item (basement is food, first floor is cosmetics and handbags, second floor is junior's clothing, etc.).  Within each floor, there are a number of vendors, but they don't have shops with walls like a traditional USA mall, they just have some floor space, and every shop just spills out on to each other shop.  And it is VERY upscale.  We stopped to ask the price of a suitcase that we saw, and it was around $300.  Not quite in our price range.  We did do a bit of looking around, just for fun, and I did find a shirt for $12 in the Zara store, a steal in this otherwise very expensive Plaza.  But after an hour or so, we realized that there was pretty much nothing we could afford, and definitely no suitcases (which was the point of this whole excursion), so we went to ANOTHER Lotte outpost - Lotte Mart.

Lotte Mart is best described as a store with a severe identity crisis.  On the floor with suitcases, there was also the cosmetics section, which was right next to some pianos that were for sale, near the kids' toy section, which was right next to the book store, which was right next to the underwear section, which was right next to the pet section.  And when I say pet section, I don't mean that these were items for pets, I mean that they were literally pets, and they were literally right next to completely unrelated things.  On one shelf on a cage was a rabbit, above him was a lizard, facing that shelf was a bin full of puzzles, and across the aisle was the men's boxers.  Whoever organized the store definitely had an interesting way of deciding what items were related to each other.  We did find a suitcase, and some of us bought a few other small items too (but I didn't, my shopping spree ended with the $12 shirt in Lotte Plaza).  You had to check out on each floor, so we went down a level to look for something to drink, and on that floor entered a grocery store.  There were tables out offering samples every few feet, and as a souvenir I picked up the flyer advertising what was on sale that week.  The groceries also suffered from confusing arrangement, and random food groups were thrown together.  If I remember correctly, I think the lighting section might have also been on that floor.

Once we got back from shopping, we went to dinner in the dining hall, and it turns out that we were in the minority by doing so.  Pretty much no one else was there with us, nearly everyone must have decided to go out for the night.  After dinner, some of us watched a movie called "My Girlfriend is an Agent," which was a cute romantic comedy/spy movie, but due to the fact that we were watching it curled up with our blankets and pillows on the floor of our common room, and I was a bit tired, I fell asleep about halfway through.  I awoke to the sound of a siren or alarm in the movie, and got to watch the last five minutes or so.  The three of us who had been watching (or sleeping through, in my case) the movie stayed on the floor for a bit, though while we were there a GIGANTIC bug flew by, a bug that one of my suitemates said was a mosquito, but I think it was some completely different species of animal - I have never seen a mosquito that big, I think it might be biologically impossible for a mosquito to grow to that size.  I need to look that up when I get the chance.  We worked on our laptops for a bit, and then heard over the intercom system that we were to clean our rooms.  We emptied out our trash cans, but our curfew time was right around this time as well, so it meant that everyone was back in their rooms for the last night, and then roommates and suitemates and schoolmates started handing out presents to each other and reminiscing - then the tears started.  Nearly everyone start crying, and for a good couple of hours, any room or suite you walked into would have at least a few people crying at any given moment.  Of course, these people would then wander around to find their friends to tell them what had happened or what they had received or whatever, and then some new people would start crying.  Ar our headcount meeting last night, we were given a DVD of the photos and videos from the program, and our RA also wrote each of us a note.  I told you he was quite nice.  In our room, we also did what the Korean girls called "rolling papers," the name of which, I have to admit, threw us off when they first mentioned them.  We all went "What?  Rolling papers?  Are you talking about cigarettes?"  Not quite.  How it really works is like this - everyone takes a piece of paper and writes their name at the top.  Then the paper is passed to another person, who writes a note to the person whose name is at the top, and this continues until everyone writes on everyone else's paper, and each paper has a note from every person.  All the 11 girls in our room participated, and we also wrote a rolling paper for our RA.  After this, it was quite late, though I stayed up for a little bit to spend some more time with the girls from our room (and the Cedar Crest girls who technically were staying in other rooms, but spent most of their time in ours).  About 2:30am, I headed to sleep, and that was that.

This morning (Friday) around 6:45am, the one Cedar Crest girl who had to leave on an early flight came in to my room to poke me awake (I had said she should, so that I could say goodbye to her).  Unfortunately I was a bit dazed, and not nearly as coherent as I thought I would be, so I just kind of sat up and stared confusedly at her for a few seconds until she was like "Okay . . . I have to go now."  I then said "Bye!" and fell back asleep.  I got up about an hour later and took a shower and went to breakfast.  There were very few people eating, though that's not necessarily because today was the last day, as the program has been advancing, fewer and fewer people have been getting up in time to eat breakfast, probably because they've been staying up later and later as they get more comfortable with their roommates and other friends.  After breakfast, I made one last trip to Paris Baguette with one of the other Cedar Crest girls, and then had a few hours to poke around until our bus for the airport left.  Now I'm on the plane, and once I get home and back online, I'll post this.  I suppose that does it for this official program, but I'll keep on posting some of my thoughts and experiences from South Korea once I get home.

Shopping Sunday & Military Monday

It appears that I am falling a bit behind in my posting . . . I suppose the fact that I know this trip is almost over makes me feel like I can slack a bit, as I'll have time to catch up once I get home and the excitement slows down.  But if I let myself become lazy, then I know I'll start to forget some of the things I've done, and I won't write them down, and then this trip will all become a jumble in my mind, and I won't have a record to refer to.  So I shall continue on.

On Sunday, the second day of our free weekend, my roommates and I once again got breakfast from Paris Baguette.  I got a cappuccino and four different pastries, ate three of the breads for breakfast, saving one for later that night.  It made for a quite tasty (if not particularly healthy) breakfast.  After that, some of us chilled in our rooms for a bit, while the others continued work on their papers.

An hour or so passed until those of us that were ready decided to venture out to Namdaemun Market in Seoul, where a number of stores and stalls sell clothes and trinkets and some snack foods and whatnot.  There were only three of us, and all Cedar Crest students, so were adventuring a bit by having so few people attempting to master the Seoul subway system.  We actually did just fine, not getting lost once, except for getting confused a few times by signs that seemed to contradict each other, but luckily the confusion this caused was minor and easily remediable.  We got to the market and as soon as we got off, encountered a stall selling slices of watermelon and pineapple and other fresh fruit.  I bought a slice of watermelon for only 1000 won, and it was delicious.  The vendor also sliced the piece in such a way so that it was each to eat without having to bury your face up to your cheeks in order to get at all the fruit.  I'll have to remember that trick once I get home.

We wandered around a bit, and found a stand selling clothes in the most disorganized manner I have ever seen.  I don't have a clue where the clothes might possibly have come from, but there were a few tables set up that were covered with the most random assortment of clothing items you can imagine.  Mainly (I think) women's clothing, there were tops and pants and skirts and dresses, with the tags from all kinds of companies, and in all kinds of sizes (though mainly the clothes were on the smaller size, considering that Koreans tend to run smaller than most Americans).  I didn't see any duplicate items, and the fabrics and patterns ran the gamut.  I bought a dress made of some kind of jersey material, completely devoid of any tag or label, but it only cost me 4000 won, and it does in fact fit (forget about finding a fitting room in these markets).  The girls I was with also found some items, and they also bought shoes, but I was unable to, as I couldn't find anything big enough for my size 9 feet.  The shoe sizes here aren't American, but through trial-and-error the other two girls managed to find out that they were size 240 and 245, respectively, I'm guessing I would be around a size 260, though the biggest size in the store we looked at was 250.

Though Namdaemun was reported to be an all-day trip, we finished in only an hour or two (we're still not sure if we missed some major portion of the market or if the guidebook just lied), and then tried to figure out what to do with the rest of the day.  None of us could think of places that we knew we wanted to visit, but we didn't want to return to the dorm and waste our free weekend while all of Seoul lay out there for us to discover.  After some guide-book flipping, we decided to go check out Olympic Park, from when the Summer Olympics were held in Seoul in 1988.

Considering it was a somewhat spur-of-the-moment decision, we didn't really know what to expect once we got there, but it turned out to be a beautiful park filled with sculptures (SOMA Art Museum is right there) and the Olympic buildings ringing the outside.  There was also the Peace Gate and plenty of exercise equipment sprinkled about.  That's something I've noticed, next to playgrounds and such, a number of times I've seen outdoor exercise equipment installed, I suppose Korea takes its citizens' health seriously.  As we walked, we heard some very loud music, and it turns out that the K-Pop band Girls' Generation was playing in one of the Olympic Buildings that day.  Compared to our bands back in the USA, the K-Pop bands I've seen seem to have a LOT more members.  For example, Girls' Generation has nine girl singers . . . I don't even know if they play the instruments, or if they have extra members for that.  Much larger than any American bands I can think of.

Walking around Olympic Park had made the three of us rather hot and sweaty and hungry, and we searched for a place to eat.  We went into a Chinese restaurant to eat and were told it would be a 10-minute wait, which we were fine with, until we started waiting and started to see the prices for the dishes . . . and then we decided to try elsewhere.  A bit further down the road we found a Burger King, and decided to check it out.  Though I am vegetarian, and usually most fast food restaurants don't offer me anything reasonable to eat, I was fine with stopping, as I like to see what items the international branches of American fast food companies offer.  This menu offered a "Bulgogi Burger" in addition to most American favorites.  The one disappointing thing was that the menu of sides was completely different from home, offering fewer options, which is how I ended up eating corn salad, a brownie with ice cream, and a cappuccino for dinner.  Oh well.

We then returned back to the dorm, and called it a night, as we learned we had to get up early this morning for our trip to the DMZ.

We left the dorm at 7:50 this morning in order to get to the border at a reasonable time.  It took us about two hours to get to Cheorwon county, and once there, a guide got on the bus to show us around.  We first stopped at the 2nd Infiltration Tunnel, which is a tunnel that North Korea built to sneak-attack South Korea.  Our guide said that, had the tunnel been completed and used, it would have been able to transport something like 30,000 troops into South Korea from the North within an hour.  We were allowed to travel down it, and it got quite chilly as we went down.  It also got quite short and narrow, and we were glad for the helmets that had been provided, as every couple seconds you could hear a *thwack* followed by the "OW" of someone someone hitting their helmet on the rocky roof of the tunnel.

After the tunnel, we got to stop at the Peace Observatory, where we could see some North Korean lookout towers, and mountains that were the sites for various skirmishes during the Korean war.  It was a bit odd to look around and see the sites that were the location for such historical conflicts.

That's about it for today, though tonight we are having a bit of a party with our RA, who has been a very nice guy in dealing with 11 very giggly young adult girls.  Right now he and a few of the Korean students are out getting the snacks and should be back any minute to hang out for a few hours.  Tomorrow we have to meet with our discussion groups in order to prepare a 20-minute presentation that we will give on Wednesday (the day after tomorrow).  I'm not so much concerned about the presentation itself, as I am about the preparation tomorrow.  I don't know how 12 of us will be able to choose a topic and all contribute to the presentation production process - within 3 hours or so.  In order to not have the process drag on interminably, we've set ourselves some time limits, though I wonder if we'll be able to buckle down and really be able to get down to business in that short amount of time.  I guess we'll have to . . .

Octopus Breath

Today's fun and frolic was the tangible benefit of finishing my term paper early.  I knew being studious and an early worker would pay off eventually.

I slept in until around 9:30 this morning, and then took a nice long shower and waited for the rest of my suitemates to get up.  Once we reached a critical mass of people, we headed off for the Paris Baguette shop down the street from the university.  Paris Baguette is a shop similar to a Panera bread, though there's tons more pastries to choose from, and the prices are much lower.  Oh, and there's one about every 300 feet in Seoul.  There's also a chain of shops called Paris Croissant, but I haven't tried that store (I imagine it would be fairly similar.)  We all picked out various pastries and drinks that we wanted to try, and then brought them back up to our suite for brunch.  I had a vegetable bread, parmesan doughnut (yes, that's right), and a custard-filled bread.  We all agreed that the food seemed to be the best we had ever eaten, and I think that might just be because most of us are going through bread withdrawal, as the main carbohydrate here is rice - nothing wrong with that, but our American palates are used to starches of the more processed and baked and yeasty kind.

This is where the positive benefits of finishing my term paper early start to appear.  After we finished eating, three of the girls from Cedar Crest decided it was time to buckle down and finish their term papers, while the three of us who had gotten done early decided to do some more sight-seeing.  Two of the Korean students came with us as our guides, and so we set out.  We decided to go back to Insadong, even though we had been there back in the first of the week trip, as the two other Cedar Crest girls needed to buy more souvenirs, and I was game for anything.

On the way to Insadong, my coughing cold kicked in, and as I didn't want to have a giant hacking fit on the subway, I tried to hold back, but this somehow messed with my sinuses, and I started crying involuntarily.  The two Korean students with us couldn't figure out quite what was going on, so to them (and the rest of the subway car), I just spontaneously started crying.  Luckily one of the other Cedar Crest girls was able to explain to our Korean friends what was going on, and they understood that I was really okay (other than the whole random-coughing thing).  This cold I have is strange, as 90% of the time, I'm fine, but all of a sudden I'll be hit by a wave of something, and I'll sound like I'm dying, and I won't be able to hold back.  I just hope that I'm all fixed up by the plane ride home, and today's subway episode isn't repeated on the plane . . . that might be a bit awkward.

In Insadong, we wandered around the streets that we had been down before, but this time there were WAY more people, probably because it was the weekend this time, and there were far more foreign tourists.  Maybe it's because we normally travel with Korean students as our guides, but I don't feel like a tourist in the way I normally do when I travel.  I mean, I get that I obviously stand out as not Korean, but I don't feel like a tourist tourist.  So every time I think "Oh look, a tourist!" I have to remind myself that I am actually a tourist myself.

While in Insadong, we decided to revisit a waffle-and-ice-cream restaurant that we ate at the last time we were there.  It took a good 20 minutes of scouting to figure out where we had gone last time, as we tred to retrace our steps and failed miserably, going up and down the street and disagreeing about where we had eaten, and whether it was important to eat in the exact same place again.  In the end, we went back to the same place, and it turned out to be a good thing, because one of the Korean girls was friends with the waitress who worked there, and after we had ordered and eaten our waffles with ice cream, she brought us an order of patbingsu for free.  I think I mentioned this dessert before, but in case I haven't, it's kind of like an ice cream sundae with extra shaved ice that you mix up before eating . . . the wiki article on it can fill you in on the rest.

We got done with Insadong much more quickly than we had thought we would (perhaps because we had been there before and kind of already knew what was there), and from there we decided to visit Gyeongdong Market.  This turned out to be a huge market selling all kinds of dried foods and fish and seafood and fruits and everything you can imagine.  Most of the items I have seen before in various travels, but there were a few unique items.  We saw some dried centipedes, which actually looked remarkably vegetable-like.  There were also a few butcher stands selling dogs' legs, which was a new sight for me.  The one Korean girl was embarrassed to tell us what they were (we kind of guessed from the appearance, but were just asking her to confirm our suspicions), afraid that we would freak out and/or think Korea was weird.  We assured her that we were fine with the concept, just making sure that we had correctly identified the item in question.  We had.

We continued walking around, and eventually ended up at Lotte Plaza (I wasn't kidding when I said this store is huge in Korea), where we went in and spent some time poking around.  At the beauty shop I bought some items, again, uncharacteristic for me, but fun.  The clerks threw in a bunch of extra free samples in my bag, one of which says it contains "snail essence," so I'm torn on that one, as to if I should use it as a vegetarian.  That, and I don't even know what kind of product it is, so I'll need some Korean help in figuring how I would use it, if I am going to.  Around Lotte Plaza there were a number of little kitschy stores which we wandered through, and I bought a pair of socks.  Random, I know, but there seem to be socks EVERYWHERE here.  Socks with bunnies, socks with cats, socks with Korean flags, whatever.  The cuteness factor of Korea is inescapable, and even the socks are touched by it.

We wanted to try some Korean pizza, so after we were done shopping, we took the bus to what is apparently the Korean pizza center of the world, as a number of restaurants' workers were calling to us to try their shop's pizza (though they were calling in Korean, so we only knew what they were saying after translation).  It turns out that the place we went to, I had been to before with my homestay buddy and her friends, but the rest of the Cedar Crest girls had never been there before.  It was quite funny, that two Korean girls, without contacting each other, would both choose the same restaurant as the prime choice to get Korean pizza.  I guess the place we went to must be pretty popular . . .

The Korean girl (in case you're wondering, our group started out as three Cedar Crest girls with two Korean girls with us, and in the middle of our adventure, one Korean girl left to spend the rest of the free weekend at her parents' home, so that explains why I switched from "girls" to "girl") ordered the most popular Korean pizza for us, which isn't really pizza at all.  I'll let wiki explain what pajeon is for me.  Ours came with lots of green onion and octopus, which I really hadn't planned on eating, but I at least gave it a shot (last time we had the kimchi pajeon, so I hadn't been worried about eating meat and messing with my vegetarianism).  The octopus was really chewy, though the taste wasn't bad.  But given that eating a lot of meat tends to make me sick, as I'm not used to it, I did my best to eat around it and just have the onions and "crust".  It was quite good, and we shared a bottle of Magkeolli.

And to just think, if I hadn't gotten my paper done early, I wouldn't have had the chance to do all that.  Makes me glad I'm not a procrastinator.

Lazy Days

So, today is the last full Friday of this program.  Next Friday is the day we all head back out to the airport to take our flights home (except for the people who are continuing on to other adventures, or staying on in Korea to make the most of the flight here).  I have to admit, I am looking forward to some of the familiar comforts of home, though I will be sad to leave. Inevitably when I travel, once it's time to return home, I never feel like I've absorbed as much of the country and culture as I should have.

In my last post, I left off with checking on my wash.  As a bit of an extension to that, I never really realized what a difference using a dryer can make.  Only after two weeks of having only line-dried clothes, and then going back to drier-dried clothes, did I realize how wonderful drier-dried clothes are.  Nice and fluffy and flexible and no funky smell.  They're also the correct size. (The washer here is a monster that stretches everything out about a size or so, so all my clothes have been baggy since I've washed them, but now they're back down to size after a spin on the drier's hottest setting.)

This morning we had Sports Day, in which everyone in the program was split into two teams, the White against the Blue team, and then we competed against each other in a number of activities.  There was a soccer game, a variant of tug-of-war in which the players had to lay on the ground away from the rope and then run to grab the rope before the other team, Korean wrestling, a cheering competition, a game called chicken fight where players hopped on one foot and knocked the other players over, and a mission relay.  I ended up not playing anything, I thought I had been signed up to play tug-of-war, but when I checked the list this morning, my name was not to be found, so I was just a member of the supporting crowd.  Our team (the White Team) won everything except for the cheering competition and the relay, though we hit a number of unfair roadblocks in the mission relay, and had they not happened, we probably would have won that as well.  For instance, one of the missions for our team was to find a certain staff member and give them a piggyback ride, but apparently this certain staff member was not told of the plan, because as soon as she heard what the mission's instructions were read, she ran out of the building and our player had to chase after her.  The other team did not face such similar problems.  However, given our wins on all the other activities, we won overall for Sports Day, which was a nice little boost.

The afternoon was free, and in the original schedule we were supposed to work on our term papers to get them done before the 5pm today, which is Friday, but since our deadline was extended until 5pm on Sunday, due to network maintenance issues, nearly everyone I know took a nap.  Unfortunately this means that the procrastinators among us will be spending their free weekend working on the term paper, but such is life, I suppose.  I woke up from my nap with just enough time to spare to get ready for dinner, and then returned to the room until it was time for our group discussion papers.

That's really it for today, though once I got done with my group paper, I came back to the room and helped edit two of my suitemates' papers.  It made me realize how lucky I am to know English as my primary language, and it also made me realize what a strange language English is.  Coming from the US, I just know instinctively how English works with its articles and prepositions and tenses and whatnot, but as I worked to fix the little glitches in their papers, I discovered that it's hard to come up with rules for how to use the language.  It's got a lot of little words that you just need to know how to use, there's no easy way to explain how they work.  It seems to be a language of exceptions to the rules, which makes it strange.

It's almost 4am.  Now I remember why I don't like to take naps, they totally mess with my body's rhythms   Thank goodness this weekend is the free weekend, where we can do whatever we want . . . including sleeping in.  I think that's the first item on my agenda.

Rivers and Dances

I'm getting a bit behind in my posts.  I'm still a bit sick, not feeling all that bad, but I sound horrible, and am quite sleepy in the evenings.  Our term papers are also due soon, so I've been devoting most of my writing skills towards completing that.

Yesterday in the morning we had a lecture on Korean music, which featured a lovely performance of traditional music played on traditional instruments.  This was different from the activity we had a week or two ago where we got to play instruments - those were more folk-song and festival-music oriented, these were more classical-music and court-music like (and we didn't get to mess with these).

In the afternoon we took the SWU school buses to the National Museum of Korea, which is a beautiful building filled with tons of artifacts from Korea and the rest of Asia.  Unfortunately the majority of the signs were in Korean, so I didn't quite understand how many of the items fit into the general scheme of things.  But it was nice to spend the afternoon in a beautiful building surrounded by Korean history.

After that, we took the buses over to the 63 Building, which, until a couple of years ago, was the tallest building in South Korea.  We wandered around the bottom of it, which has shops and a food court, and had dinner (once again) at Lotteria (I told you I'm turning into a junk food junkie).  I had the bizarre combination of french fries, cheese sticks, and a waffle with strawberry sauce.  You gotta love pieced-together meals.  We all also got ice cream, which definitely hit the spot after all that salt.  I also saw my third LUSH store for this trip, which makes me wish that we had this density of LUSH shops back at home.

Just a short walk away from the 63 Building is the Han River, and the six of us from Cedar Crest relaxed on some steps under the Wonhyo bridge.  In the movie "The Host" this bridge plays a big part, and it felt so neat to be there.  Aside from any associations with monster movies, it was a very relaxing way to spend an hour or so, just observing the scenery and taking in the setting sun.  There was also a jet skier out on the water and he kept performing tricks for us, so that was entertaining as well.

At 7pm we met up with all the other students in the program to go on a river cruise on the Han River.  The timing was perfect, as the sun was just setting, and I managed to get some pictures in before it was completely dark, which is when my camera completely gives up and won't take any decent pictures of anything.  The cruise was very relaxing, and we passed under a number of the bridges on the water, which was neat as the one was a bridge for trains, and a number went over as we were crossing under.

Last night after that was quiet, as I just finished up the rough draft for my term paper, and then went to bed.  Tonight I plan to edit my paper and then print it, and that will be the end of that.  The deadline for the paper was initially supposed to be tomorrow at 5pm, but due to that fact that IT will be doing network maintenance tonight and no one will be able to access the internet from 1am to 8am early tomorrow morning, they decided to give us two extra days, until Sunday at 5pm.  But I plan on continuing to pretend that the paper is due tomorrow, as I'd like to have it off my plate and no longer on my mental to-do list.

Today's activities included two lectures, the first on Korean dance, and the second on Korean architecture.  The dance "lecture" was more like a dance class, as I don't know anything more about Korean dance than I did before, but I do know a few moves.  However, there were so many people trying to learn from one professor, that it was next to impossible to see the instructor, so my moves are not very good.

The afternoon lecture was supposedly about Korean architecture, but it felt much more like an overview to Korean thought about space.  I kind of wish this lecture had been earlier, because I really feel like it helped me to understand how Koreans think in general.  Maybe that's just because I've been here awhile and can relate to what he talked about (taking off shoes before entering a room, approach to personal space and manners, approach to education, etc), but it was one of the best lectures of this program.

Tonight seems like it will be a quiet night.  After dinner, some of us went and got snacks from the convenience store down the road (which is probably making a killing off of all of us junk-food-hungry international students), and since then I've been writing emails and this post, helping my roommate with some citations for her paper (do you know how hard it is to cite something in MLA format when the source is in a different language that doesn't even use the Latin alphabet?), and doing laundry.  I haven't used a dryer since I've been here, given that the ones I've found are usually out of order, but my roommate showed me a hidden dryer room that I plan to use in order to avoid the funky-smell plague that is a result of air-drying clothes in this climate.

Speaking of that, my wash should be done.  I should go check it.