5 / Weekend 2

>Highlights of my weekend in Seoul:

Street Food / I could never get bored of trying new food. (: We stopped for dinner in a tiny tiny tiny little room off the side of a street where this old woman made us all our dishes right in front of us. When I say tinnyyyy, I mean smaller than my room back home. Amazing :O So good.

Bath House / Place you can stay over for 12 dollars a night, sleep, and use all the nice sauna and bath stuff. There were rooms full of hot jade stones and salt. Plus I got to walk around naked. Wheeee

Sweet Potato Latte / Sounds awful, changed my life.

Had a really great weekend with everyone. (: We went on a field trip to see Cookin' Nanta, and to Building 63 where there was a wax museum and aquarium. I made it all the way to the top AND I stood on the glass floor. . .For a second. . . Didn't cure my phobia, though :'c Good try, Sean.

Then we all sort of went our separate ways. Went shopping in crazy crowded streets. Can't get over the feeling of Seoul.

I really sit down and try to write, but it's like when I do I can't seem to remember it all clearly enough to write as well as I should. But if anyone is ever in Korea, I do recommend visiting at a bathhouse. It was amazing. Lying down in the hot jade... Going into an oxygen room... Soaking in those massage-y pools... Nice. c: We did have to sleep on the floor, though. With wooden pillows! And if they weren't wooden, they were hard sponges.

Today, Sunday, we were in Myeongdong shopping. So crowded! So crazy. I didn't find anything, but walking around was so great. I think I'm getting used to the movement here. People are always going somewhere, and always so fast too; they don't care if they bump into you a little.

Time at Orientation though is winding down. :C After Tuesday, everyone is off to their province. All of us in the same province will be together another few days, and then we're all heading to our cities and towns. I'm really getting excited, but I'm incredibly nervous as well. The next couple of days are going to go by so fast.

by the way, here are my two favorite gums I've tried here :s

One is XYLITOL, and the other is Rose flavored.

Now, XYLITOL doesn't sound *or* look safe to eat, but I bought it anyway. Something about the bottle made it seem like something that might make my life better. AND IT DOES. It's so minty and fruity and amazing. Why don't US brands make anything minty AND fruity AND good? That looks like vitamins? Psychology. Don't I look ready to face the world in that photo? Thanks, XYLITOL.

The Rose one is just nice and smells so pretty. Then when you chew it, it's like minty pretty.

EVERYTHING here is pretty. I was in a Starbucks the other day? It had everything Starbucks has at home, but somehow it was... better? Even the simplest things are so well put together and presented. I love it here.

2 / Got Some Seoul

Yesterday was a lonnnnnng day. We went into Seoul for the Opening Ceremony of the TaLK Program.... We're the 6th group [6th Gen] to come through as scholars and teachers. (:

The bus ride was really long, and our bus driver was a little... Aggressive? Clumsy? ... Bad combination ... Traffic in the Seoul area seemed like it was really crazy, though it was different than in the States... Less honking. Our bus driver tapped a couple people on the way to and from the ceremony and while one time he got out of the bus and I think had a... Discussion... There wasn't really a problem.

The Opening Ceremony itself though was great. I think that it really hit me what kind of a responsibility I've been given... There were a few speeches that made me feel so welcome, but also very aware of what my job is and how important education really is. I think that sometimes we lose sight of that a little in the States. A lot of people go to university because they have to if they really want a certain kind of life; that means sometimes it can feel a little more like a job than a privilege. But anyway... I really hope I can be a good teacher. I'm really starting to think about it more... A month of Orientation seems like a long time, but it really isn't! I can't believe that so soon I'll have a group of kids I'm responsible for helping educate. :d

At the Ceremony there were a few performances as well. (: There was a kid's choir I forgot to film because they were SOOO CUTE (and pretty talented!)... Then a jazz ensemble using traditional instruments... Very nice... Annnnd this group of BA kids doing a taekwondo demonstration. I have NEVER seen anything like that before. They were so organised and just... Woww, impressive. Seriously. Can't even describe it.

After all that, we went into Seoul itself for scavenger hunt where we had to find certain locations and take a lot of pictures. It was pretty awesome, but FREEZING cold. :p Group 6 Team 3 all the way. We got lost once, almost got lost a second time, but all around had a pretty amazing time coming in last. Seoul is a very vibrant city. I really enjoyed it, and I want to go back sometime soon for sure.

Hope it's ok I borrowed this pic from you, Asraya. c: 

The way the city was laid out was very interesting. It seemed like there were a lot of very big, very busy streets, and then a lot of smaller alley-like streets sort of branching off. So full of people... Vendors... Sounds. Street food! I wish I'd gotten to try some, but I guess we were on a bit of a mission. There were also SO MANY restaurants. I've never seen so many restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, etc in my LIFE. You'd pass one coffee house and then there'd be another like two stores down. A lot of "sandwich and cake" shops too. Eventually we all stopped to eat... We went to a restaurant that was very busy. I forget what the food was called, but we sat around a little table with a hot plate in the middle, and our food cooked right in front of us. Soooo good. I'm loving all the spicy stuff. (:

No matter how much I write, I never really seem to express what it's really like... I can't put everything into words. And talking about how I feel... I should try to get more in-depth about it, but it's just so... There's so much running through my mind and heart all the time that I can't really fathom how to write it down. I don't really feel like pictures would do the job either! I did take video yesterday though. I put some of it together:

                                              wooooowwwww..... seeeouuuuul.....

Like always, I'm still pretty exhausted, but I'm happy all the time and just really excited to be where I am. I hope that I can bring that to the classroom sometime soon. c: I'm also meeting a lot of people; it's really nice, but sometimes a little intimidating to be introduced to so many so quickly. I'm not the best at remembering names, too, so that's a little rough. :p I mean, there's 239 of us, so that's a lot of names!

Anyway, today I start lessons and that kind of thing... Looking forward to it. I'm going to try to write about more specific things I notice about the culture, or about different foods/places... There's just so much.