walking in the rain

Hey everyone!
its been a while!

Last weekend my program went on an excursion to Taiwan. It was soooo much fun. We had three awesome tour guides, went on the worlds fastest elevator, biked around, and saw tons of cool sights. But before any of that happened we got into a car accident! What would a study abroad experience be without a little metal crunching? Our enormous bus didn't sustain any damage, no one was hurt, and heard a taiwanese lady yelling like crazy until the driver threatened to call the police (since it was her fault) and then she suddenly had an urgent appointment she had to get to...

We went to an AMAZING dumpling restaurant. best dumplings i have evvvveer had. When we first walked in the lady asked us if we knew how to eat dumplings. we were just like...uh yea? turns out we didnt. first you have to make the sauce with proper ratio of soy sauce to vinegar (1:3) over ginger. you then dip the dumpling in the sauce with chop sticks then transfer the dumpling to this spoon and poke a hole in the dumpling so the broth on the inside streams out. put some ginger on top and ta da! thats how you eat a dumpling. we got a lot of different kinds and they were all so delicious (except for the veggie ones...).

Even though I should have been focusing on Korean because I had midterms the day after we got back i learned some Chinese! It was exciting because there are five people from China in my Korean class so i impressed them with what i learned. I have the character for person, big, item, and Daoist temple down. I can say "I am" (washer sort of, hard to romanize chinese!), and "thank you" (shye shye), and that "joo" means wish if you say it with one tone but pig if you say it with a different tone...yikes. Each word has 5 tones that change the meaning. It was Yuri's birthday on the trip and our tourguides were joking around saying that some people sing happy birthday to you with the pig joo instead of the wish joo to be funny : )

I had such a great time! you should check the pictures on facebook out if you want to see more : )

I am almost finallly done with midterms. All I have left is swimming which i am not too worried about. I had reading and speaking Korean on wednesday, thursday was Children's Day so we didnt have classes, and then friday I had written and listening Korean. I think I did well. The other people in my class are doing a bit better than me but all they have to do is this class and then they spend all afternoon studying Korean while i have five other classes I am running around doing but I think I am still getting the hang of it to some extent. I am the only person on my program in level one doing the morning class (9-1) while everyone else is doing the afternoon class (4-6) and even though we stared 6 weeks later than them we are waaaaaay ahead so whenever I am feeling less than confident in my Korean I know i understand more than them : P

My taekwondo midterm was...interesting. We all struggled a bit but I had fun. After the exam the professor calls me over and he is standing next to this kid who looks super young. He tells him to introduce himself to me and I can tell the kid is kind of struggling, trying to come up with the english words but ends up just thrusting his hand out and saying his name. I shake his hand and introduce myself in Korean and the professor then says so do you know him? I am thinking he wants me to speak English with him or something because at the beginning of the semester he made everyone standup and introduce themselves in english. I just say uh no, kind of like uh obviously i dont know him...how would i? hes not in this class...hes just some random guy who happpened to be walking by...

well turns out he wasnt just some random guy. The professor says something about silver medal and speed skating or inline skating. i didnt really catch everything so I walk over to the TA afterwards and say uh why did i just meet him? and she says that he is very famous, everyone in korea knows him because he got the silver medal. i continued with but why did just i meet him? apparently everyone else knew who he was already...and hes not even 21 yet! I have tried since to find out who this was online but i completely forgot his name...maybe there was a g in it? i asked my roommate if she knew any famous skater and she said she had no idea, so im still investigating but anyway still cool!

Last night I went out with my class to celebrate we were done with midterms. We had a fun night learning some dangerous Chinese drinking games that I have to bring back to the US. Later in the night we went to a club in Hongdae, an area known for clubbing. When we got out of the club we discovered it was pouring rain. A friend of mine from class luckily had an umbrella and we walked around and got some food, hoping it would stop. It tapered off and he took a cab back to his house and I figured I was kinda already wet so I would just walk home anyway (its about a 25 minute walk). I put in my ipod and pounded the pavement. Not one song into my playlist I reach a crosswalk where there is a guy standing under an umbrella listening to his ipod too. As soon as he sees me he comes on over and shares his umbrella with me as we wait for the light to turn. He ended up walking me all the way back to my dorm! He didn't speak any english so we spoke korean together the whole entire way : ) I know a whole lot about his family (he lives with his brother, and dad but hasnt seen his mom in 5 years because she owns a korean restaurant in japan but hes planning to visit her in a year) and what food he likes (bulgogi, like me!) seeing as that is the vocab i just learned. He walked me because the busses weren't running yet so he didnt have anything better to do anyway. i figured the least i could do was chill with him until the busses started running again so when we got back to my dorm we just chilled outside talking together. it was fun! definitely got a lot of korean practice in. And then we went our separate ways. yet another reason to love korea, a random person on the street, walked with me for half an hour because i was walking in the rain without an umbrella at 4 in the morning. Sounds kind of sketchy. If a man were to walk up to me with an umbrella in jordan (nevermind the serious lack of rain) i would a. ignore him b. run in the other direction or c. lead him to a fake house, never under any circumstances show a man where i really live. but in korea its ok. I wonder if my parents prefer this or walking around the slums of giza with two random guys we met on a bus?

tonight is a lantern festival/parade in preparation for Buddha's birthday on May 10th. We have no school that day so I am sure there will be lots of things going on but tonight is supposed to be epic as well. so keep an eye out for the pictures!
until next time!