Day 2

Well, it's 9pm of my second day in Korea. I think I may have met some new friends.

The Opening Ceremony for the TaLK program was today. We were organized into our groups, which are all the people who will be teaching in the same province. A girl sat next to me named Ji. She was very interesting. She doesn't like having her picture taken and she seems very full of energy.
There was a guy sitting behind us, named Mark, who is also in our group. After the opening ceremony, when we were waiting for the nurse to check our temperature, we talked and then when it was time for dinner, we had dinner together. Another guy from a different group showed up at some point in time when we were waiting so he also had dinner with us. His name was Roy. Ji and Mark are both Korean Americans, and Roy has been to Korea before and knows quite a bit of Korean. I don't know how often I will see Roy, because he is not in my group, but the other two and I will be seeing each other every day because we have class together.


The opening ceremony was very entertaining in the beginning. We had four performances. First was the TaeKwonDo group from KyungHee University. The second performance was a young childrens chorus group. The third performance was East Guinness, a b-boy group. The last performance was by three girls, called The Bloom, who were playing gayageums, a traditional Korean instrument, similar to a harp.

The TaeKwonDo group was really good! They did a lot of fast and high kicks. They also made it funny by dancing and acting out scenes.
The childrens chorus group sang three songs, two of which were in English. They sang My Favorite Things from The Sound Of Music. It was sweet, and it sounded nice, except that their accents were rather silly. They stressed the 'T's too much so kitten and kettle sounded really really weird.
The b-boy group was....interesting. I felt like they kept doing the same moves over and over. The beatboxer was really great, but the dancers weren't much, except for one. He still only did one move, but it was amazing. He would do a one-handed handstand, and then push himself off the ground, as if he were jumping. He did it over and over and over and never fell down!
The Bloom sounded so beautiful! I remember learning about gayageums when I was in choir class in elementary school.

The rest of the opening ceremony was just procedure. They basically read to us the information packet that was sent to us when we were accepted into the program. There isn't really much else to talk about, other than the fact that when we had to take our temperature today, we were told to shake our thermometers until the murcury (yeah, old fashioned thermometers) went below 35 degrees C. The guy behind me was shaking his, and he ended up hitting his termometer on the back of my chair, breaking it. I didn't get any murcury on me, but we all still kind of freaked out. When we told the people in TaLK about it, the said to not worry about it and that they would get it picked up. But we all kept watching it to make sure people didn't step in it. The nurse almost stepped in it. It was like she didn't even know it was there, even though we told her about it. It was kind of crazy.


Well, it's late now and my first day of classes is tomorrow, so I guess I'll head to bed. I'm looking forward to my lessons.

EDIT: And no pictures today, because I forgot to take my camera to the ceremony.
Except for one picture I took of my bathroom today to explain why I couldn't use the restroom when my roommate was taking a shower. Korean bathrooms have no shower stalls. You shower right in front of the mirror, which I think may be part of the reason Korean's are so conscious of their body image.

EDIT EDIT: I forgot to mention this last night because I was rather tired, but for dinner, I had, among other things, raw beef. I was a little hesitant at first, but it was really good. When I asked Ji and Mark about it, they explained it, and Mark said "Doesn't it taste like beef jerky?" And he was right. It was seasoned like beef jerky, and it tasted like it, only soft. And it wasn't super chewy like I was expecting it to be.
The baby squid I had was rather chewy. I didn't like it too much. It was bland.
And I'm starting to be okay with Kimchee. When I had it in America, it was horrible. But it was made by Americans who have never had Kimchee in Dulany, so I guess that explains it. Here....it's just so spicy, I can only handle a little bit of it.