American football, pizza, and dancing

Yesterday was sports day with the Fulbright camp. Although we didn't actually do many sports, the kids had fun doing team building activities and relay races and other fun games. I taught some kids how to throw a football (a little vortex one) and even did some relay races with my team because one of the students was on crutches.

I could even remember a few of the kids' names. I have trouble remembering the Korean names, and I feel bad asking kids over and over what their names are, because I get a lot of "Hello Ben"'s throughout the day. I think the hardest thing to do when I get to my school will be to remember names.

Friday night I had pizza and beer. I really do miss Italian food. Sometimes we'll start talking about what we like while we're eating in the cafeteria, but then stop quickly because it's not a good idea when we're staring at Korean cafeteria food. So I'll stop thinking about it right now. But I am excited to have good Korean food once I get to my homestay.

And last week we had our first little dance party out at a karaoke bar. It was fun, but it was no W&M dance party. For one of the camp's night events, we might have a dance for the kids. I don't know if it'll happen, but I think I'm ready to show some dance moves to the Korean middle school students.

New Focus

We found a great place for going out on the weekends. I called the New Focus, and is a really chill bar and karaoke place. On a rooftop. We can sit inside or outside, and we pretty much have the place to ourselves. It's my new hotspot.

After a rough second hour of Korean language class today, my roommate Conor said probably the best thing he could have during our break. He didn't realize before he went to the bathroom during the break, but he forgot to put on underwear this morning.

Monday I turned in my school placement preference form. We were told not to pick a certain city and to get our hopes up, but I ended up doing that anyway while I looked through the guide books for Korea. I would really like to go to Daejon, a city in the center of South Korea. I think we find out where we will be placed next tuesday...

I'm also trying to study Korean more. Even though we've only been learning it for two and a half weeks, I'm beginning to think it would be a good idea to be able to form coherent sentences when my Principal and Vice Principal pick me up in Seoul to take me to the homestay. Otherwise, it could be a slightly awkward train or bus ride.

This week was good

I enjoyed this week. We had a Korean quiz, I worked out three times, played basketball and soccer, decided what I want to preference for my homestay location, and generally had fun.

Tuesday we had our first real quiz. And when I say quiz, I only mean quiz. Like 10 questions, probably took about 5 minutes. But it was going to be graded. So even though we're not going to receive final grades or anything for the Korean class we're taking, all of a sudden monday night it was like we were back in high school or college. The stereotypical overachievers feel the need to stay up late studying. I did study that night, but I wasn't going to lose sleep over it, so it was kind of funny to see people stressing out like that again. Wednesday night one of the girls in the program asked me why I wanted to study wednesday night. I said because I want to learn Korean. She asked where the motivation was if there wasn't going to be another test until next week. I reminded her the classes aren't for grades...

Tuesday night we went out to a bar to "have a few beers" to celebrate taking our first quiz. But that turned into a lot of Soju, because, well, we're in South Korea so we have to drink that, and more than a few beers. Getting up for class the next day was rough for some people.

But class we sure worth it. At one point our teacher asked us if we were all tired. We said yes. Then she asked us if we had time. We weren't sure what she meant - some people got excited - was she going to let us out early? No! but even better. She invited us to go to Karaoke with her Friday night! I was the first one to realize she was serious. So let's get the party started.

Then today in class we learned that Koreans don't say "my house" they only say "our house." So I said well then we have to sing our house tonight at Karaoke. The joke was really under-appreciated.

We also found out more about the Fulbright English camp that starts on Sunday that we'll be helping run for the next two weeks. Much more of a time commitment than we were anticipating, but we'll get our first chance to interact with Korean middle school students and actually teach English. Some other stuff has probably happened, but this post is long enough. Oh and if you know and see Keith tell him congratulations, he got his first job! Hope you all have a smashing good time this weekend. I'm going to dinner, and yes I will be eating rice.

Weekend Photos

Here are some photos from the weekend:

The golden Buddha.

Some refreshing mountain water.

Sravan, Forest, and me at the top. Not much of a view, but still cool.

If there are any formatting issues with the photos I'll fix them the next time I post pictures to the blog!

Mountain weekend highlights

Yesterday we got back from a weekend at Songnisan - a famous mountain city in Korea. The name means break from mundane chores, And it was a really nice break after a long 4 days of class. Some highlights in no particular order:

1. Seeing a buddhism religious service at a temple. I had never seen one before so I enjoyed the chance to meditate and reflect on being in Korea. The temple had a really tall standing buddha. As the sun was setting monks began to chant and then started drumming and ringing a huge bell. It was a nice atmosphere and I realized it would be nice to know more about buddhism because I know very little right now.

2. Not getting up at 3am! There was another monk service at 3 am for which some people woke up/stayed up. I didn't need to do that. But it's interesting to consider that the monks do that every day.

3. Western breakfasts. We had to sleep on little blankets on the floor at the hotel (it's a Korean tradition!) but the breakfasts had western food like eggs and sausage and bacon. I love food, so this makes the highlight reel. I ate a lot.

4. Climbing a mountain. Saturday some friends and I set out to climb the mountain in the park. The trails were steep at times and I didn't have on hiking shoes. The climb up took about 3 hours. Liezl, Sravan, Forest and I were sweat-soaked and bug-bitten but glad to be on top and able to enjoy a misty view of the mountains and valleys around us.

5. A lot of hardcore climbers from a Korean "Climbing mania club" passed us on the way down, practically running down the mountain.

6. Drinking fresh mountain stream water. I've been used to not drinking tap water here, so being able to drink from a mountain stream while hiking was great. I felt really at home with nature.

7. Beef is expensive. The waitress at the restaurant four of us went to had to call her english speaking friend on her cell phone because she wasn't sure what we were ordering. We ordered a beef dish, which was good, but cost $60! I think I'll get chicken next time. I was also dreaming of going to an Outback steakhouse in Seoul, but I'm rethinking that.

So life is busy here... the food is still... okay. This week we have teaching workshops, which is good because soon enough we'll actually be teaching english!

I'm a student again!

Language classes have started - Korean is hard. I read the Hangul (korean alphabet) very slowly so tonight's reading homework will take a looong time if I do as much as my teacher suggested. I've had 5 hours of Korean class each each of the past two days, and I've needed to do something active afterwards. Luckily there's a funny story for each day.

Monday I joined the university gym. It's a nice facility with a cardio room and a weight room. Bad thing - I had to bring different shoes to wear in the gym than the ones I wore to the gym. Good thing - I think I found free shirts and short shorts at the gym that I can change into there and they'll be washed. So I was the only American in the gym, and the first thing I do when I get into the weight room is almost kill someone. I took one of the 20 kg (44 lbs) weights off a barbell on a bench. Big mistake. I didn't notice the bar weighed less than the typical US one, and the barbell flipped up and landed on the next bench. Luckily it hit the weight there and didn't hit the Korean guy doing bench press. The rest of the workout went without incident expect a nice old man told me there were no shoes allowed on the stretching mat.

Tuesday doesn't really have a funny story that would come across on the blog. Sorry. I played ping pong this afternoon and lost several close games. My excuse was the equipment, the paddles are different than US paddles. Then I played basketball and on my way back to the dorm scared of one the girls because I had sweat so much.

So what's a flight to South Korea like?

It's pretty long. I flew from Boston to LA in six hours, and then from LA to Seoul in what was about 14 hours. After the getting off the Boston flight I met some of the other ETAs (english teaching assistant) and they are quality people. We are going to have some good times during the orientation. While we were waiting in LA to get on our plane, we did some jumping jacks and stretching to get the blood flowing since we would be sitting for a long time. One nice thing about flying internationally and not being able to understand what the gate agents are saying is that you can board the plane whenever you want.

After I got settled in the middle seat, I met the people who would be traveling with me - some nice Korean people who didn't like to get up to let me out when I needed to go to the bathroom, so I became good at climbing over the seats. The in flight movies were really bad, so I didn't watch them - instead I read Bill Bryson's 'A walk in the woods.' I thought of you Freiberger - out there on the trail battling bears and boredom. The plane food was delicious and would be my last american style meal for a long time. The flight attendants were very attractive, a plus for the flight. I later found out that South Korea doesn't have as many anti discrimination laws as the states, so when they lose their looks, they lose their job... remind me never to become a flight attendant on a Korean airline.

Safe and sound in South Korea

Well, I have made it South Korea. The program is starting off very well except for the kim chi. I wish that was a joke. I arrived yesterday morning at 5am Korean time (South Korea is 13 hours ahead of the US - EST) and have met a lot of the other sixty people on the program, and they're nice. I have a roommate named Conor who went to Holy Cross and knows three people I went to high school with. Small world.

Last night I played basketball with some of the other Fulbright guys and some Koreans - so you know I'm doing well if I can play bball here on the first day. The court is pretty rustic and the rims have no nets so my shot was off. It is located inside a sort of small coliseum that also has a dirt soccer field. It was fun to dodge defenders and errant soccer balls and to think that maybe on the weekends the Koreans all pile in to watch gladiator events.

I just took my placement test for the Korean language class we'll be taking for the next six weeks. Since I am a beginner it took about 1 minute. Yesterday at the opening meeting the head of the program mentioned that we'd have to take a final for our classes and that we'd also have quizzes. You could tell that some of the other people were nervous all of a sudden at the mention of tests. I think it'll be okay guys - I doubt we're going to get sent home if we make an effort to learn some Korean.

And I went to bed early last night and slept for about 10 hours. Take that jet lag.

thanks for the thanks!

One of my roommates from last year, Matt, still has one year left at the College (of William and Mary). He works for the phonathon and calls people to try to get them to donate to the College. Apparently, since I "donated" to our senior class gift, I was on a list of people to thank. Now I didn't actually give money to the class gift outright. I bought a W&M beach towel, which my class officers were selling in order to persuade people to give, because, well, it isn't easy to persuade college students to voluntarily give money back to their school when they're about to graduate. I don't know, something about how tuition was really really expensive.

I'm on vacation in South Carolina with my family right now so I didn't get the privelege of receiving Matt's call. I learned that he did this by email. Now which it more ridiculous: 1) that I was thanked for donating $8 to our senior class gift when I was really buying a beach towel OR 2) that Matt doesn't know how to spell my name correctly after living with me for an entire year? It's Bennett with two T's. I don't really care, but I just found it funny. It's also funny out of all 5 of the other roommates you were the first one I happened to bring up in the blog. That's staying power Wetty.