Same Old Same Old

Hey guys!
so it hasnt been a particularly eventful week but figured i should stay in touch anyway.

on tuesday in taekwondo class we played this game where you hop around on one leg, using a hand to hold up your other leg and try to knock down the team members. if you let go of the leg you are holding up you also lose. last team standing wins. we played against one of the teams and won! you wont believe it but they gave us 20,000 won (a little under $20) for winning! It was awesome. My team went out to eat afterwards. I thought it was some crazy Korean game but when i went to tell my CIEE friends about it they had all played it before. i still think its a crazy game though, despite not being korean.

yesterday instead of having korean class all of the morning students had a festival. We all got matching t shirts and paraded to an auditorium across campus to watch dance, music, and theatrical performances. it was a nice break. 20 hours of Korean a week can make your head hurt after a while. also later that day i scored while playing water polo in swimming class. so all around a good day.

swimming class can be pretty funny because the guys dont really want to initiate pool side conversation. last week was the first time i was the only girl in the pool. i thought oh well this will just be like any other week but i could really feel the difference being the only female in the room. normally i dont feel too much like a foreigner in that class because i have my friend Yeji. Without her there though I felt like a super outsider. It is also a unique position because the male/female power balance is thrown off. I know how to swim but the people next to me are struggling. It would be intimidating to talk to a girl who has the upper hand. Since Yeji and I are both girls and we both know how to swim it is easy for us to talk but some of these guys dont look me in the eye (which is an indication of respect in the hierarchical sense). Not to say they are rude or standoff-ish by any means. Playing waterpolo was great because we worked together to make plays and score. One of my favorite images from Korea came from this class actually. One kid was clutching not one, not two, not three, but FOUR kick boards while playing waterpolo. It was hilarious. he was just bobbing up and down, going after the ball, but sometimes just falling over because he was so buoyant. Another kid was using his kickboards to block shots and beat the ball out of people's hands. we had a good time : )

i actually have quite an exciting few weekends coming up. Lukas is coming on sunday. He will be here until next sunday. Then the weekend after that i am going to a waterpark on saturday. If you are familiar with groupon, they have a groupon korea too! it was originally around 50 dollars to go but we are getting in for $14. Not bad. And then the next day we are going bungee jumping. We realized we had procrastinated all of these crazy plans that we have to squeeze it into the time we have. I also am planning to do one trip to daejeon before i leave to say a goodbye to the lab boys. It was awesome to see Jungwoo and Inho the other day (even if Inho kept saying I needed to study Korean 5 hours everyday instead of 4....grrrr inho!!!) and I want a chance to say goodbye to everyone else. I expect I will be busy with Lukas the next week. I will probably be doing my homework whenever I have spare time but try to write soon!
see ya!