Day 9

Today was a rather uneventful day. I had my medical check up so even though I was awake at 8, I wasn't allowed to eat until after I went through the whole process, which my class was not able to start until 11:30.
The medical check up itself was fine. Normal standard stuff. I had to check my eyes, my height and weight, pee in a cup, give blood, check my temperature, talk with a doctor, and get a chest x-ray. After all that (which took an hour and a half), I was finally given a measly little salad-y sandwich. It was good, but not what I was craving. I was really craving a cheeseburger. We also got little cans of coke. Ji didn't want hers because she doesn't like the feeling in her throat (she grew up in Korea so she didn't drink many carbonated things) so I got to have two of the small cans. It felt very nice to have real soda after so long without it.

After the medical check up, we had an hour break before we had to get dressed up and meet our POE (provincial office of education) supervisor, 최 미 경(Choi, MeeKyung). She seemed like a nice lady, and from what I gather, the POE is in Gongju, where I will be living. That means I can help out if I have free time!
I had a hard time understanding Mrs. Choi because she was nervous and shy so she spoke quietly, but if I heard her correctly, our week-long orientation for our province will be in Gongju, and we will be staying on Kongju National University campus in the dorms. I got really excited when I heard that. If it is correct, then I will be on campus a week sooner than I was expecting, and I will be able to familiarize myself. HunYong is also staying on campus until school starts, so I will be able to meet with him when I have free time. I am really looking forward to it.

After Mrs. Choi spoke for a bit, we turned in our signed contracts, and then we were free to go. I came back to the dorms, used some laundry detergent from Ji, and washed my clothes. Now I have lots of clean clothes. I still need to do a load of whites, but it's too small right now. I really miss having a family around and being able to just put tons of clothes together for a full load just like that.

After my clothes were dry, I brought them back to my room, and I was putting them away when my roommate came in and said "Are you going to Korean lessons today?" I had completely forgot about them! I still had 15 minutes though, so I quickly changed from my PJs back into clothes and went to class. There were only about 10 of us there today! Everyone seems to be quitting. I think a lot of people want to go out into town and hang out.

In class today, we covered proper manners. We discussed proper greeting, as well as tabel manners. Because drinking is such a large part of Korean culture, we discussed how to properly accept drinks as well as how to take them. I also learned how to say "I'm sorry. I can't drink alcohol well." I still need to work on memorizing it. I have "I'm sorry" down just fine.
For a funny example of someone explaining the proper way to accept alcohol from an elder, we watched this video. It made me think of Max, because the beer is called Max, and she says "MaxJu Saeyo!" She's basically saying "It's beer!" so the guy helps and called out what she is wanting, Maksu, the Korean way of saying Max.

We also talked about how after dinner, Koreans always seem to go out for 노래방/Noraebang (Korean Karaoke). In order to practice, the teacher made us sing a silly song about bears. I cracked up laughing when I heard "ddung ddung" which means "fat". At the corn maze last year, Jina told Max to say "Nah ddungddung hae" which means "I'm fat." He went around to all the Korean girls saying "I'm fat." We all laughed a lot.

On my way back up to my room, I stopped on the first floor and talked with Chrissy, one of the TaLK coordinators. She was playing music from Wicked, so we talked about theater and showtunes. It was fun.

And I've noticed that I haven't taken my camera with me anywhere at all so far this week.
Tomorrow we are going on a field trip to visit a Korean elementary school. I think I am going to a school in CheonAn, where Jina's family, and YoSun live. After the visit to the school, we will go to an English camp, to see how they are ran. And after that, we were going to go to Everland, an amusement park, but because it is supposed to rain really hard tomorrow, we had a change of plans. We can either go to Lotte World, another amusement park type place that is indoors, or we can go to a movie theater. I've heard Lotte World is more for little kids and it isn't very fun, so I think I would rather go to a movie theater. It would be interesting to watch a Korean movie, even if I cannot understand what is going on. Or I could always choose to go to a Hollywood movie which will be in English with Korean subtitles. I am not sure what I will do. I guess I will see what Ji wants to do and if she wants to hang out