The day (or two...I don't remember) before leaving Korea, I went with Daniel to Dobongsan mountain. It's been on my mind and been a goal since almost the day I moved to Korea. It's a beautiful mountain with a cut face that looks impossible to climb, making it look even more majestic. It's one of the harder mountains, so I didn't attempt it until the last minute (almost literally).
Daniel was a good sport, and he came with me. Climbing alone is not one of the funnest things to do, but it's ok if you've got a lot on your mind. I was so thankful to have him to go with me, and we ended up having a great time together. As we always do ^^
It took about 7 hours, but we made it to the top! Yay!! It's what I'd hoped for and dreamed of, and I couldn't have done it without Daniel. He encouraged me and when I was tired, he was patient and waited with me.
The last chance we had together, Juny and I had decided to go to the ocean for the day. The morning of, it was raining!! Oh no! We had to change our plans...so we met instead in Insadong. When we got there, it had stopped raining. There was a really beautiful restaurant made of wood that we went to. In the center, there was a garden surrounded by glass. We had chicken and soups and many other side dishes. It was really good, and surprisingly tasted a bit like American food!
We looked around at the shops, and stopped by one selling name stamps. He brought me inside and showed me a stone stamp with my name on it. He'd gotten it earlier! Wow, what a nice surprise! It was so sweet.
Lemon popbingsu was for lunch. It was a cute place with short, comfortable chairs and many books. We opened one, and it had signatures from all the different people who'd visited there earlier. There was one that showed names with numbers. Asking Juny what it meant, he explained it was a "matchmaking" technique. You count the number of strokes it takes to make your name, and add them up along with the names of the other person. The number indicates how close you guys are to being compatible. It sounds similar to something we do in America, so I begged him to show me, so we did our names. It only came out to 31%...Haha!
On the subway, he asked me to choose where I wanted to go next: the ocean or the zoo. How can you ask me to choose between 2 of my favorite things??!! ^^ So we went to the ocean. After 2 wrong turns and almost 2 hours later, we arrived in Incheon. There's a really neat island with a huge Chinatown. We didn't have time to visit there, but we went to the pier. There we saw a crowd of people feeding birds. While I was watching the people, he walked away and I followed. He told me I didn't need to follow him everywhere, so I stayed. Haha! Well, I didn't want to be lost in Incheon!
He came back a few seconds later with the bag of chips he had planned to surprise me with to feed the seagulls. They loved them...and so did we! It was actually really scary feeding the birds, but it was fun. They would swoop down and grab the chips from our hands. Juny tried to make the birds get it from his mouth, but it didn't work too well ^^ We found a firework store, so even though it was the middle of the day, we bought roman candles and shot them out over the ocean. What a beautiful day together! 40 minutes after arriving, we had to head back. I had a meeting with another friend that night, but it was a day I'll never forget, and worth every minute on the subway!
Here are a few pics from meeting with friends the last week i was in Korea. The first ones are of Grace and I at dinner. We had a really good meal of rice the guy stir fried in front of us. It was so funny, because when he was stirring the rice, he would fling pieces of it out of the tray accidentally, and it kept flying at us and in our waters! Yet he didn't seem to notice anything was out of the ordinary. The next pictures are of Jamie and her family and I at lunch. They've been such a great family to me. They drove us out about 30 minutes north of Seoul and we went to a restaurant that the Olympic speed skater from Korea apparently enjoys. The restaurant is famous for its dishes made of acorns. Now, I've had many acorn jelly tofu things, and they're not bad, but it was really fun to try acorn noodles, acorn pancakes, etc. The food was delicious as advertised, but mostly I just enjoyed spending time with Jamie's family. As a going away present, they gave me a thermos for tea! A few months ago, Jamie and I were shopping, and while looking around, I asked if she'd heard of anything in Korea that would have a place to drink and hold tea in a cup. She didn't know, and had told her parents without my knowing it. For the next few weeks they'd searched for one, and finally come up with one downtown. What a nice present! One I imagine I'll be using a lot ^^
My summer school class was a great group of students, all new, mostly from KBU. Although, I was honored to have 3 girls from other universities who'd heard about the program here. In 3 weeks, we went through an entire 3 months worth of materials. It was fun trying to think of activities for each 3 hour class together every day. We played the "telephone" game to learn about gossip, we watched "Supersize Me" to learn about diet and exercise, and we went to McDonalds to throw all that info out the window! Here's pics from our last day together. Game time! Pictionary...
I've noticed my spelling and grammar has gotten REALLY bad. In fact, I'll be writing about how "scary" something is, and going back, I'll realize I've written "scared"...common Korean mistake. Later in this blog I write the word "weighed" but I misspelled this word twice as "weighted". Or I was writing the title to this blog, Backpack, and my fingers mis-typed and wrote "backbaby". I don't know why, but that's one thing I'm looking forward to going home for....improving my spelling and grammar!
Anyways...
I was cleaning out my classroom/workspace at KBU tonight after meeting a student there, [sidebar: there have been so many kind students giving me little gifts to remember them by!] and with all my stuff I put it in a backpack. There were things like books and papers and pens and pictures. little things that I've collected over the year. Well, after packing up, I met another student to have dinner and coffee. At the coffee shop he taught me how to play Go-Stop, a Korean card game. I've had the cards a long time, but didn't know the rules exactly. So I just used them for a matching game. So I was SOO thankful to learn how to actually play!
On the way to dinner, he noticed me struggling a little bit with my backpack, but we kept on going. After a few blocks, I was having trouble breathing because the backpack was pulling on my shoulders in such a way that was blocking my lungs from getting enough air. Plus, the polluted air this summer has really taken a toll on me.
He switched backpacks with me (he'd been carrying one too with nothing but his wallet and a book in it), and after realizing how heavy it was, he said my going away present was him carrying it home for me. Wow! It was a really sweet gesture. So after saying "no" a few times, I gave in and was very grateful. We took bets on how heavy the backpack was. My guess was 6 kilograms (13lb), his guess was 7-8 (15-17lb). When I got home I weighed it, and it was 10.5!!!! That's 23 pounds! Almost double what I'd guessed. He's been a good friend this last year, so when we got home, I asked him to play football together, and after a while, we finished and I gave it to him as a present.
Even though school is finished for the summer, almost every day at least 1 student stops by to talk. I love that! It's so nice to have friends/students to talk to. Daniel comes by a few times a week, and I've enjoyed building our friendship. It's nice, whenever I have a question about Korea or Korean language, I remember it and wait to see Daniel. He's good at helping me with questions that I have, and I've really appreciated that over this last year. I hope that I'm as ready and willing to help international people in the states who want my advice/help with American things.
Last week we talked about underwater reservoirs, and how if your house is above them, then Koreans think that it is very unlucky, and ghosts haunt there. I guess kind of like lay lines. Only not having anythign to do with geography, but instead underground water. They use steel bars that move around when you find these underwater places. Kind of freaky. But interesting how everywhere in the world has similar "spooky" places and ways to find them.
We also talked about a theory that Koreans can all be put into 4 groups of people based on body and mind. It was so interesting! I guess because Koreans are a pretty pure group of people (they historically don't/haven't intermarried) that they can be categorized more clearly than say Americans could.
I came to a realization a few days ago. When I was first learning Korean, I could read easily, but first I would read through each letter in my head, and then slowly pronounce it. When looking at a page/board of Korean, it would all jumble in my mind, and no words would necessarily stand out. But during one of my talks with Daniel, the board was full of his writing, and I had no problem reading/pronouncing/understanding any of hte words. It is like reading English to me. I don't need to pronounce the words in my head first, I can just read them out. I'm not able to do it as fast as in English, but it's exciting to be able to have a base vocabulary and very basic understgadnign of how the Korean langtuage works. I'm so thankful for Daniel! He's been a good teacher/helper!!
Anotehr student came by Friday and was talking with me. After talking about a girl he likes, he asked about my guy relationships in the states and if I was planning to marry right away. I explained that I hadn't had an American boyfriend since high school, and he was shocked! He said that he expected that when I got to the airport that many American men would come up to me, tell me I'm beautiful, and ask for my phone number. He couldn't imagine anything other than that when people saw me. Haha! It was a very flattering idea... ^^
Daniel and JiSu met me at Yeouido this week to explore. We went to the National Assembly Building first to take a tour. We got there 20 minutes after the tours close though, so we just enjoyed the air conditioning for 15-20 minutes instead of taking the tour. Honestly, I was just enjoying the coolness, and didn't really mind if we did or didn't see the building. It was insanely hot! 91F with 60% humidity and almost no wind!! Soon to be military guys :) National Assembly Building We decided that dinner was next on the agenda, so after walking around trying to find someplace, we found a really cute Korean bibimbap restaurant. Bibimbap is mixed vegetables and rice sometimes in a burning hot place. The bummer was that the air conditioner was broken. We laughed about how we felt like we were bibimbap! It was the best bibimbap we'd ever had though, so it was worth it.
By this time it was almost 7, so we rushed to the boat launch, and went on a cruise. It wasn't too exciting at first, but there was a tv guy on the ship shooting for KBS, Korea's most famous tv channel. So that was kind of cool. We stood up for the first 1/2 of the ride, and then when we got to the turn-around point, the boat stopped in the middle of the river. The bridge in front of us started shooting out water, and it was beautiful! It moved and changed color to the music that was playing. It's the longest water-fountain bridge in the world. Not that there are tons of water-fountain bridges...but it was neat to see how proud my friends were that it's in Korea instead of any other country. I love how Koreans are so proud of their country. They want so badly for the world to see the uniqueness and power of Korea and its people. In the last few years, Korea has definitely come out of its shell, expanding its trade and building international relations that didn't exist before. I love being in a newly developing country. There are problems that of course come with this, with them trying to work out kinks, but overall, it's a really exciting thing to see first-hand.
Anyways...at the water show, us 3 were the only ones at the front of the boat watching the show. The others were farther back so as not to get wet. But it was SOOO hot, so the spray from the water felt so good. After 5 minutes or so of the show, it shot the water out farther than it had been, and the 3 of us were completely drenched from head to toe! I won't lie, it felt good, and we had been kind of asking for it standing so close to the front of the boat. What a fun day! I'll really miss these 2 guys... Boat Cruise 63 Building: the tallest building in Korea After we got soaked!!
Since I'm leaving in 1 week, I thought it was important to find a home quickly for my little babies. Even though I've had problems with them biting me, chewing on their cages, fighting with each other, etc, I'll miss them. Well, now I DO miss them. It was nice to have something to say "Hello" to when I came home.
Liz came over last Saturday, and after a Shabu-Shabu lunch, we loaded the hamsters into bags, and into the pouring rain we went. Thankfully I live pretty close to the subway or the hamsters would have drowned. This month and last month have been pretty intense with monsoon rains and wind. Well, they survived the subway ride, and at Liz's house, they were tucked into their places. It's funny how clean my place has magically become without hamsters. They like to kick their bedding out of the cages, so now my floor is spotless a majority of the time. It's been a huge difference. I'll miss them, but Liz'll take good care of them I'm sure ^^
When dad was visiting, we went to Children's Grand Park to see the zoo and walk around. A few weeks later, a professor asked Connie and I to accompany him and his son to the park, so that was time number 2 in the last month. 2 days later, a few students wanted to meet me at the Park and then go out for dinner afterward. 3 times in a 3 week period of time!! It was crazy, but I love the zoo, so I can't complain.
It was nice going with the professor's son, because I don't have a chance to talk with American children ever! It's nice hearing pure English from kids. We had a fun time, and even let loose at the arcade a bit before going home.
Monkey trying to get Isaac's ice cream Yes, these are guinea pigs...at the zoo... With the students, we had a fun time too. Sophie and Jisu (her boyfriend) are friends of mine, so it was so nice to spend time outside of school together. After the Park, we went to Taco Bell! It was the first week since opening, so it was really busy and crowded. But it felt like we were walking into America.
The day (or two...I don't remember) before leaving Korea, I went with Daniel to Dobongsan mountain. It's been on my mind and been a goal since almost the day I moved to Korea. It's a beautiful mountain with a cut face that looks impossible to climb, making it look even more majestic. It's one of the harder mountains, so I didn't attempt it until the last minute (almost literally).
