Thursday the kids had the meeting and I was given the choice to go to the meeting or not so I chose to go to an after school activity at Yonsei instead. It was a kpop dance class, and all of us thought it was going to be fun and easy, and while it was fun, it was extremely hard. We learned "Bang Bang Bang" by Big Bang and the teacher was so peppy and made everything look so easy while the rest of us were actually dying behind her. She made us get into three lines of four and then at the end of the class we had to go to the front of the room with the rest of our line and perform the dance in front of everyone. We all did terrible so no one felt too bad about it haha. One of the girls I met in the class had studied abroad in Korea for a year during high school so i asked if she did NSLI-Y and she said no, but that she knew a lot of NSLI-Y people so we talked in class and then coincidentally met again in Sinchon as I was walking home (and ahem shopping a lil bit). While we were talking two of her friends came over and invited her (and me!!) to go to bingsu and they bought it for us which was so super sweet. After bingsu I picked up a sandwich from Paris Baguette and then took my bus home and went to the cafe near my house again for a little work and studying.
On Friday I went to school and then walked to Sinchon with my roommate instead of taking the bus. Together we bought donuts for our roommates because we are the best people ever, and then I got a bagel and frozen hot chocolate for lunch to eat on the subway while going to meet the NSLI-Y kids for one of their culture clubs!
On Saturday I went to the water gun festival in Sinchon again! I went two years ago and it was super fun, and then this time I went with my roommates friends and it was great. We didn't buy water guns thought so we just ran around and had people shoot us. They also had fire trucks and giant fountains that were spraying water into the crowd. It was super cold though so we left and rode the subway home, and then I walked home alone soaking wet which was a little weird but oh well. Before the festival we ordered pizza hut, which was crazy. The pizza came in a three layered box with two of our pizzas on the bottom and then with pasta, french fries, pickles, and other assorted condiments on the top layer. It looked like a giant present and our other roommate thought we had ordered a cake. After the festival I studied and then my roommate and I had the strangest dinner, consisting of a peanut butter sandwich, ramen, leftover donuts, and leftover pizza.
(the last one is just an attractive man promoting for sprite by handing out free soda and looking perfect while everyone else looked like they were drowning)
On Sunday I went to Yongin to meet one of my penpals whom I met last time when I was in Seoul. We went to the Korean Folk Village and getting there I was so afraid i was going to get lost. I rode the subway for 45 minutes to Gangnam and got on an express bus, but I only knew the stop I was supposed to get off at so I stared at the screen that announced the upcoming stops for an hour as we left Seoul and got on the freeway, praying that I was going in the right direction. After over twenty stops, mine came up and it was literally in the middle of nowhere, with only the Korean Folk Village there. Going back home I was a little more relaxed and I slept (maybe too relaxed-- I almost missed my stop and pressed the request stop button at the last possible moment).
The Korean Folk Village is a traditional style village that showcases Korean history and the old way living in the different provinces of Korea. I had no idea that almost all of the provinces had different styles of houses and different methods of doing things, but it makes sense. A lot of the provinces are divided by natural barriers, mostly mountains, so even though Korea is a small country it is really linguistically and culturally diverse. Some of the Korean dialects aren't even mutually intelligible even though South Korea is only about the size of Indiana. My pen pal whom I went with wants to be a Korean teacher when she graduates and she is really involved in traditional culture clubs at her university so she was able to give me some additional information on a lot of the stuff we saw!
It was also about 100 degrees outside today so even though we stayed there for almost five hours, a lot of that time was spent sitting down. We also watched three performances, one was "Thrillingly Steal Watermelon" and if that title is confusing that is how I felt about the entire thing. They were doing a special summer series of activities about watermelon because they had a watermelon field and watermelons are really popular in Korea during the summertime or something like that. I think it was a comedy performance but again, it was just very strange. The next performance we saw was a traditional music performance, and the third one was a horse performance where riders did a bunch of different tricks while riding horses and it was really cool/scary looking. I don't have all of the pictures from that day so I'll just put up the ones I have right now and the rest in my next blog post!
We tied our wishes onto this rock
Traditional Music ft. cool hats
It actually looks like someones home!
The cute sunflowers we made
That night I came back and went guess where- to Paris Baguette and got another sandwich and then like half a baguette that I sat down and ate right there. Coming home I went and bought milk at the supermarket and then when I got home I ended up eating a second dinner of Jokbal (pig feet) with my roommates.
When we took out the trash my roommate all of a sudden left for the supermarket and he came back with 50 INDIVIDUAL ICE CREAMS and even more sweet snacks as if our house doesn't have enough already. This is the same person who bought the water and toothpaste in bulk, of course.
Also here is a picture of the scary bear outside of the building next to ours.
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