3 weeks in 1200 words!

wow it has been waaaay too long since my last post but i guess that is just a testament to how fast my life feels now! Classes started last wednesday and the week before that was jam packed with orientation activities. There hasn't been a single moment where I have doubted coming here, i am having that much fun. Although maybe that means I am not challenging myself enough but I am ok with that for now.

Yonsei is located in Sinchon (pronounced Shin-chon), an area with lots of bars, restaurants, noraebangs (karaoke), food stands, and shopping. Man for the first two weeks of orientation I think I went out every single night!! More noraebang in the past two weeks than in my whole entire life. We even went to a DVD bang (bang means room, pronounced more like bong) where you are in a room with a really big couch about five feet away from a huge screen. We watched the original Grudge 2 (aka Japanese version). I am lucky to have such an awesome group of people on my program. It's funny, it took us weeks, even months, in Jordan to get as close as me and my core group here just because we didn't have alcohol in the mix. Just the facts of life, its a social lubricant, not to mention carrying your friends home brings us that much closer. Man I was so excited to start classes to have some stability!

My classes so far are AWESOME. I am soooo happy I decided to take those sports classes. So far I have gone to body building and swimming. Both times I walked into a room of about 30 Koreans, with two other females in the room. Almost all Korean names have three syllables so when the professor is taking roll he goes "blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, elizabeth lerret, blah blah blah, blah blah blah..." it's pretty funny. I like being the only foreigner. I will have no choice but to make Korean friends (not that I wouldn't choose to but it makes it a lot easier to escape the international bubble). Plus the attention amuses me and gives me a further push towards interaction.

For each of my class meetings in bodybuilding the first hour will be theory, that is memorizing bones and muscles, nutrition, how exercising works, bodily effects, rumors and myths, and whatever else the professor throws at us. We will have a quiz every week. The second hour is our practical time where we are in groups and hit the gym. I am really excited. I get to learn all of the cool medical/biological stuff without having to write a lab report! a dream come true. The professor was working hard to warn me that this class is not just gym time and specifically for sport majors but that just made me even happier. He actually did one of his PhDs at Harvard. Additionally, he asked me infront of the class where I was from, and obviously I said Cambridge, MA. A girl a row infront of me whips around and says she went to Matignon! I was shocked. So we can have come cambridge pow-wows in that class sometime.

So far I have been using my unscheduled time to hang out with my friends in Daejeon. Last friday I took a bus and my friend Jungwoo picked me up at the bus stop. We checkout the lab (and General Tso, the new lab dog), picked up Jeongsoo and went out to meet up with Alex and Sean, two guys from Drexel I met at the Atlanta conference after Korea last year. Even Taejin, who is always either playing starcraft or out with girls, left a girl to come say hang out with me, which if you knew taejin feels pretty monumental. did you know that Korea has this service where you call someone up and they will come drive your car for you if you are too drunk?!? its brilliant!! makes it that much easier to stay safe. the next morning jungwoo and i drove back to seoul so even though it was only 13 hours in Daejeon, it was probably my favorite 13 hours so far. I missed those guys like crazy!

Actually Jungwoo has a friend from high school that went to UMass Amherst! Last night the three of us went out to dinner and we ate pig heart, stomach, and intestines (and god knows what else was in there). The heart and intestines were reallllly good. The stomach looked like black brain coral and it was ok, just not my favorite. Micheal was suupper cool. He works for Samsung doing sport management-y sort of things and travels a lot to go to sports events around the world. I had a great time so I hope we chill again.

Just last night I stayed up until 8 am finishing a Korean drama. My god those things are addicting! This one is called Secret Garden. It is about a rich, snobby president of a department store who falls in love with a poor stuntwoman. On top of getting her to stand his presence, family and class issues, they end up switching bodies every time it rains. I had quite the emotional night watching the last 7 episodes (and they are all a SOLID hour+). I laughed, cried, smiled, squeaked into my pillow. There is a total of 20 episodes that i have watched in maybe 4 days. My roomate woke up this morning when I was watching the very last two minutes. she is learning all too well about me : )

My roomate's name is Jinsol and she is super chill. Actually I thought she wasn't coming until April so I was making no effort to keep the room clean (classic...). I came home one day to see the door open and boxes and the first thing out of my mouth is just "I am soooooooooooo sorrrrry." The room was a mess but secretly in my head i was so thankful i had done laundry that morning because it was strewn every which way across the room. But regardless we get along really well. She even said that I could come with her when she goes to visit her family in Gwangju. That would be really awesome since I haven't really seen Korean family life besides being at Jungwoo's house for an all of ten minutes.

I am a little annoyed that my Korean class doesn't start until April, but I signed up for that. It really isn't a problem, I just wanna impress my Korean friends and start attempting to talk with them in Korean. But since I will have class for four hours every day I know I will learn quickly.

When I first got here, everything I experienced was in contrast to Jordan. But now these experiences are standing on their own as I get more used to being here. wow i have been here almost a month! i cant believe it! i hope the rest of the semester doesn't go this fast. but if that means having less fun...fat chance : )