DoneZo

Orientation is officially over, as is the semester, which I am glad for! I'm sure Eddie and Clarence are also happy to have me out of their hair now, and Clarence will be glad to go home, or South America or wherever he decides he's headed next.

Nothing truly eventful has happened yet, it's all been pretty tedious. I have just been sitting in on Eddie and Clarence's classes, and "learning" how to teach. Since it's the end of the semester though, I do feel like they've been a little more relaxed. My schedule kind of stinks, but I guess it's one of those things I'll just have to deal with. I work 6:30-11am, then 6-10pm, with a nice 7 hour break in the middle. Officially, the new semester starts on Thursday, and I get to move into my apartment on Wednesday.

Today, I have to go to the doctor for a check-up, a requirement for my alien registration card. I'm not happy about it! Who knows what I will find in a Korean hospital!

Suwon, the city I'm in, is considered a small normal city here in Korea, but I think it's crowded and busy like New York. It's bright and the buildings are plastered in signs. Everything kind of looks the same to me, so it's hard to find my way around. And they don't have street names here, they rely on the area or a building in the area to find directions. For example, the bus stop where my cousin lives is the name of her apartment. And our addresses don't have street names. Each apartment has a number, and they're listed in an order so they're easy to find apparently. Then each apartment has a name and that's the address: # Name of Apartment, Individual Apartment #, City, County, State, Country.

On Saturday, my cousin took us into Seoul, the capitol city. It wasn't as crowded as I expected. I assumed it would be like Times Square in New York, but it wasn't like that at all. It was kind of like a normal city. We went to this very touristy shopping center called Insadong. It was cool, they really cater to the tourists though. And everything there is very expensive, like most tourists traps.

Next we went to a castle, KyungBok Gong or KyungBok Castle. It was beautiful and very large. From the outside, it didn't look that big, but walking around inside the palace walls we got lost. The castle is surrounded by mountains and makes for a lovely view. The castle had these guards, some that stood at the entrance and some that just walked around the palace. They looked so angry...and hot (like sweaty hot, not sexy hot). They were dressed head to toe in old fashioned gear. And you can tell they were really annoyed with the tourists constantly trying to take pictures of them/with them. My cousin made me take like 20 pictures with them.

After the castle, we met up with my mom's friend from Virginia, who treated us to potbingsoo, which is kind of like Korean ice cream. It's shaved ice, usually infused with milk, topped with sweet red beans and some other delicious things. Next, we went to Namsan or Seoul Tower. It's essentially like the Empire State building. We went to the top and I was TERRIFIED. It's 777ft tall, but it's at the top of a mountain. So when you look out the window, you're not looking at the base of the tower, you're looking at the bottom of the mountain. It's crazy. It offers a gorgeous view of the entire city though, so I'm glad we went.

And to top it off, I watch the movie Splice with another teacher in between classes...worst movie EVER.

And I think I'm going to start posting pictures here using a photo viewing device instead of on facebook or just posting the pictures on the blog itself. It'll save time, I think! So I have to figure out how to do that!