Surviving the First Week

I've only been in Korea for a week but it feels like so much longer! I'm sure time is only going to fly by from here though... Korean language classes started on Wednesday and it's so much more intense than Japanese courses when I was studying abroad in Japan - Korean class every morning for 3-4 hours straight. Our first quiz is on Monday! In the afternoon, we have workshops on adjusting to Korean culture, teaching, etc. Friday, we went out to dinner with one of the speakers, Michael Hurt. We had Dakgalbi which is chunks of chicken breast cooked with vegetables and dukbokki (rice cake-ish things) in gochujang (a spicy chili sauce).


It gets a little messy because you wrap everything in a leaf of lettuce and eat it with your hands like a sandwich. So they gave us aprons to wear while we were eating it!


Yesterday we took a trip to Seoul. There were about 30 of us at the train station taking up a lot of space and getting in everyone's way! When we got to Seoul, I broke off from the group to meet with KB, a friend I met studying abroad at Kansai Gaidai in Japan. Ended up taking the wrong subway line and went in a roundabout way that took an extra 20 minutes. (Maybe I should have traveled with the group after all...) We finally found each other an hour later and had lunch at a Japanese restaurant (which was kind of 懐かしい). We both had places to go/ people to meet though, so after lunch, we went around the National Museum for 20 minutes before we had to split. A lot of people were asking me why I don't have any pictures of myself (which would be because I'm the one taking them..) so I asked KB to take this at the National Museum:

Me in Korea!
(Korea is circled in red where the guy is pointing)

KB

After lunch and the National Museum, I went to Samgakgi, a station away, and met with Rachel who is modeling in Seoul. It's ironic because we grew up in the same neighborhood since we were 2, went to college (although we didn't really keep in touch) and while I was studying abroad in Japan two years ago, by coincidence, I ran into her on a train platform in Osaka! It turned out that she was there for about 2 months modeling. Now, two years later, we're in the same country again on the other side of the world!

Duho, from Lehigh, also joined us for dinner in the southern part of Seoul. We had some kind of pork barbecue. I didn't take pictures of the food (it was delicious, basically eaten the same way as dakgalbi) but Rachel and I found the women's restroom interesting...

Girls, now you can really have a bathroom party! And they wonder why girls go to the bathroom in groups... But when you're in there by yourself, which one to use?

To make for another interesting photo, on our way back to the station, we saw this outside a seafood restaurant:


Yummy...