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.