Day 5

Today has been a pretty a-ok day!
My first class was Korean Papercraft, and we had to 'make' a fan.
All we really had to do was tear the paper and then paste it on to our fans, but I enjoyed it. And there was a prize awarded to the prettiest fan in class. My fan was the prettiest so I got to pick one of three prizes. I selected a small hand mirror with pretty Hanji (Korean Papercraft) flowers on the back.

After that, the day was okay. Nothing special or big happened. I really can't remember much other than I received the prize and I was on an emotional high after that.

My last class today was a class about traveling in Korea. I got a lot of great ideas for places to go and things to do. I've decided I want to rock climb while I'm in Korea, do some hiking, and volunteer at an orphanage or a hospital, where they need people to help out with the newborns that the mothers give up.

I didn't go to my Korean lesson today. I've had a headache for most of the day, and listening to someone speak to me in Korean for an hour didn't sound like fun. Did I mention two of my classes were conducted in complete Korean today? They were. The papercraft class and my class on Korean culture, which the instructor decided should be changed to Korean philosophy. However...he didn't tell his translator that he would be changing subjects, so when he started going on about something she didn't know about, she got scared, upset, and then she started crying. It was really sad.

Um...what else happened today...Oh yes! We always get a snack between 3rd and 4th class, so today, our snack was a small baked potato.
Yes....a baked potato. It was totally strange to me to eat a potato in a bag, but it was kind of fun. And it tasted delicious!

Tomorrow, we are going on a field trip into Seoul. After the field trip, we can stay in Seoul on our own, but I think I'm just going to come back to the dorms. I would like to stay in Seoul for a while, but I don't know anyone in Seoul right now, and I don't want to walk around a big city by myself. I don't know if I'm shy or just anti-social, but I haven't made very many connections with people here. A lot of people smoke so they all sit outside between classes and talk. I usually go to my next classroom and either take a nap or read the notes for the upcoming class. It makes me kind of sad.

I've mostly been okay about being away from home, family, and friends, but it gets to me at night, when I have to stay up late in order to talk with people back home after they wake up.
I've talked with Max at least twice everyday so far, which has been very nice because I don't feel so far away from home then. It just feels like a normal summer day, except that I stay up late to talk with him when he wakes up, and then I talk to him again after I wake up in the morning, before going to breakfast.