Today Was a Good Day

I had a nice little break today, our class only ran for 2 hours instead of 4. Our teacher had to go supervise the mid-terms for all the other students. Our mid-terms are next week. However, we have class tomorrow (Saturday) to make up for class we will miss further down the line. This has been a tough week for time/brain power. At the end of class today I was feeling a bit overwhelmed again, but things always tend to work themselves out.

The big news around here is that the seniors are going to the U.S. tomorrow for their senior trip! An Hyo Sang and Heavy G are going with them, so things will be a bit quiet here until they get back. They are touring LA, SF, and SD. My boy Matt Gates is going to meet them when they tour UCLA and speak perfectly fluent Korean to them and ask them about all the stories with me. (JK buddy)

I was able to get a nice little workout in today at the gym after my meeting with the K-PACE director. Let me tell you a bit about that. He is in the main building here (tallest building) and I was to meet him at 3pm. I walk in and with instructions from Heavy G I head to the second floor. He told me just go through the big fancy doors and talk to the secretary. Cool, easy enough. I take the elevator to the second floor and step out. On this floor are two museums to my right, and two frosted doors to my left in the 4 corners of the building. Sweet, what do I do now? There is absolutely no indication on any of the doors where Dr. Rhee's office is, and I'm not about to go walking randomly in to offices where the top administration of the university works. I messaged Heavy G and about 5 minutes later he gives me a call on Kakao and tries to talk me through it. As you may have gathered from some of the videos I've taken of him, Heavy G's English isn't the greatest. Over the phone it's even harder. Luckily right as I was telling him I have no idea what he's saying Dr. Rhee walks down the hallway.

So I follow Dr. Rhee through the far frosted doors (probably the last place I would have gone) and straight ahead past 3 secretaries into his office. This place is nice, I mean REALLY NICE. We're talking CEO of a fortune 500 company nice. The office you all want in the corner (it wasn't actually in the corner) with a giant beautiful desk and 8-10 comfy chairs in a meeting area. I guess that's what you'd expect for the guy who's grandfather founded the university though. Good stuff! As we were exchanging pleasantries a secretary came in and brought us both some bourbon (it was apple juice).

He was worried about my financial situation so he had been thinking of some ways I could make some money. Apparently it is illegal to teach English as a tutor within 6 months of coming to Korea so that is out of the question for now. His son works at a Christian school about 30 minutes from campus and they have a part time opening which would be great. The only problem is that it's from 9-12 and that's smack dab in the middle of my Korean class. The other option with this would be to find something at the same school in the afternoon. Otherwise he had thought about asking the K-PACE program itself if there was anything I could do to help. The third option would be to have me help with some English work here at the school. All seem like good options so I'm glad to see what pans out. I know God will have his hand on this.

I had 왕돈가스 (Wang Don Ka Seu) which is a giant breaded pork cutlet (Wang meaning King). I actually ate this twice today. This is a Japanese dish. I didn't have the brain to actually take a picture of either of them, but trust they were excellent. Besides that I finally got a chance to catch up on some of my vocabulary work and finish my homework. The students and other RA's all went to bed early tonight because of their trip tomorrow. YJS has his second of three tests to become a Korean police officer tomorrow morning! Wish him good luck with that, it's a three hour test! Pretty intense from what I've heard.

An unexpected friend came in to my room to hang out tonight. Park Jeong Bin! (Yes Alex, Jeong Bin!) I met him about a year and a half ago up at Concordia when Dr. Carol invited me to meet the K-PACE students on their senior trip. We were instant friends and I'm so happy we've been reunited. I've written a bit about him in the past, he's such a nice guy and we get along really well together. We were reminiscing about when we met and he was sad and missed Dr. Carol. (I hope you get to see this Dr. Carol). I took this picture as he was pining.

Jeong Bin! Chillin' in mah 방 (bang) room.

I have Saturday class tomorrow! (Ohs noes :() so I must go to bed now. Thank you again for stopping in, and don't forget to post any questions you have for when I can get around to doing interviews of the other RA's!

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 눈사람 (Noon Sa Rahm) SNOWMAN! Noon being snow, and Sa Rahm being person. Pretty good stuff.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.

Things Happen Out of the Blue Here...

Today started normal, which was good cause my brain was destroyed after yesterday's onslaught of Korean language information. I got my usual dak kalbi for breakfast and headed to class to make sure I finished off the rest of my homework before we started. I didn't however, realize that we were having another dictation test today. Whoops! That one took me by surprise. I got a perfect score on yesterday's, but today I missed two :(. Next time I'm going to make sure to get a 200% to make up for it.

I finally learned why people say Korean is like 7 languages in one. 아요/어요 is the typical present tense conjugation for verbs and adjectives. However there is a polite form 습니다/ㅂ니다...yeah, so it's literally a separate language for polite company. Also if you're asking a question you have to use 습니까/ㅂ니까? This is not even getting into past tense polite conjugation which looks something like 맛있었습니다 (Ma She Suh Soom Ni Da) which is past tense "delicious" for a formal situation. Again, I feel pretty overwhelmed, but I know over time it will sink in. Here's a pic of my packet of homework.

Present tense formal conjugation...10 pages...

After class I grabbed some lunch with Heavy G. I got the 소불고기덮밥 (Su Bulgogi Deop Bap) or beef fire meat on rice. It was pretty excellent I'm not gonna lie. OH before I forget! Yesterday at lunch with my new Mongolian friend, we went to a buffet type place in the student union. The food was an attempt at American style food. I had spaghetti and some kind of beef/potato combo. They also had a cream soup out. The soup was actually really good, and the spaghetti was legit. The beef and potatoes tasted good but there were bones in the beef and I'm not into that so -1 for that. Here's a pic of today's lunch!

Su Bulgogi Deop Bap!

We went back to the dorm after lunch and I started working on some homework. Today there were no classes with the K-PACE students so it was relaxing time until dinner. After dinner Heavy G pops his head in my room and says "oh btw we're interviewing you today". Oh...ok. Glad I was warned about this. I tend to go with the flow so I'm not worried, but man everything seems to just be out of the blue here. I asked when the interview was...about 2 hours away. Great, who is doing it? Where is it? What do I need to bring/wear?

As it turns out the interview was a few pictures here in dorm, and Heavy G sending me some questions to answer online. I'm sure the actual post will look good though. I changed out of my typical sweats that I wear around campus here and threw on some casual clothes. Heavy G was a pretty good photographer. He had me stand in different poses, and thought up some ideas for other things we could take pictures of. Here's a few from the shoot.

Me and the other RA's An Hyo Sang (Right) YJS (Left) Heavy G (Back)

207 where the magic happens?

Nap time with Bae Shin Ja

A pose with 2 students!

On top of this impromptu interview, the director of the K-PACE program sent me a message on Kakaotalk (messenger that everyone uses in Korea). He might have a job for me! This is cool, and going to be interesting as it coincides with my Korean class times. I know God will guide me on whether or not I should take this. That's pretty much it for today. Check back in for my meeting with the Dr. Rhee, the director of K-PACE tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by.

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day:피자 (Pi Ja) Pizza! Not to be confused with 비자 (Pi Ja) which is Visa. Awesome.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.

The Busiest Day Ever.

Ok so I didn't have the busiest day ever, but it was by far the busiest day since I've been here. I had 6 hours of Korean class today. Yes you read that right, 6 hours. My brain is dead. We had to make up for 2 hours that we are going to miss on Friday due to mid terms. We are having our mid terms a week late so our teacher has to go supervise the other students. That meant the 2 hours we are losing had to be made up, and today was the only day that fit the schedule.

I woke up, went straight to breakfast and ate, from there I went to class from 9-1. Then We had an hour for lunch and at 2 we had our makeup class until 4. After that I joined the K-PACE students from 4-5 with their conversational English class that happens every Wednesday. After that it was time to eat dinner and go straight from there to the fitness center to help out An Hyo Sang with supervising. Finally made it back to the dorms around 7:30 or so. Long day.

The highlight of the day was having lunch with my new Mongolian friend from class. He actually speaks English pretty well and we had some pretty interesting conversations about Mongolia. I'm not going to even attempt to spell his name on here, just know that it is long and confusing haha. I believe it is something like Monkhmandh. The H's actually have a heu sound though so it makes pronunciation more difficult.

Anyways we talked about Mongolia. Something I'm pretty fascinated about because you never hear anything about them in the news. I guess their alphabet used to be sand script and was written downwards instead of left to write. However, they adopted the Russian alphabet because it was easier. So they speak a Mongolian version of Russian but seem to be closer in politics to China. Monk even confided in me that within the next 20 years he expects Mongolia to be absorbed into China. Very interesting stuff.

As you'll see in the video I took, with the K-PACE students today we built bottle rockets. I wasn't able to catch a successful launch on video but at least you'll be able to see the setup. We had a great time decorating the rockets and going outside to launch them on the soccer field. I also got a chance to talk to some of the English teachers there and let them know that I was interested in teaching English in Korea. Hopefully this can help me down the road.

Jun Hyuk decided to write a song he always sings on his rocket.

The soccer field littered with exploded rockets.

After getting back to the dorm I had to catch some of the dorm fun on camera. We walk in to Heavy G shredding every paper he owns. I'm still not sure why he's doing this, but he's filled an entire trash bag so far. That's about it for today, I'm about to collapse on my bed. I look forward to including you in tomorrow's day! Thanks for stopping by.

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 맛있었어요. (Ma She Suh Suh Yo.) This one blew my mind today, it's the past tense conjugation of delicious. Try saying that 10 times fast.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.

Overwhelmed.

Just when I think I'm getting the hang of this language thing they go and throw a million more things at you. I know I can handle it all, it just feels like an incredible amount of information all at once and it's hard to process. I've taken to letting it sink in over the course of the day, and after that it doesn't seem so bad. I can't imagine what it's like trying to learn English once you've reached a certain age.

Today we started easy, we reviewed the number system for counting (yes the Koreans have two number systems). That not being bad enough, math is mind blowing. Instead of the American system that runs off the 1,000's place, here it is the 10,000's place. So you don't say Eleven thousand, you would say 1 10,000 and 1 1,000. This is gonna be tough to reprogram my brain. Luckily I'm not majoring in math or engineering here. Next up was some more verb conjugation with the (으) 세요 ending. Se Yo means please in Korean. So you can take off the Da of every verb form and end with either Se Yo or Eu Se Yo and turn something like 'to sit' into 'please sit'. Pretty cool and simple.

Then we moved onto food and how to ask how much things cost. This isn't so hard, but learning about the different quantifiers is ridiculous. Akin to learning how to say 1 bottle of beer, 1 apple, 2 bowls of soup, 3 glasses of milk in English, well the Koreans also have different words for each.개, 병, 잔, 그릇 are just the 4 main quantifiers. There are plenty of others that we didn't even go over. Combining the counting numeric system with these quantifiers at the same time while worrying about sentence structure and tags was blowing my mind. I think after letting it stew in my brain the rest of the day I'm feeling better about it though.

I was in a pretty good mood today however. I'm making friends with the other American guy in our class. He's an interesting guy, and almost polar opposite of me I would say. He likes photography and seems to be pretty much a loner. I offered to help him though because he is struggling pretty hard, and I could use some reinforcement of the language myself. Otherwise, one of the Mongolian girls told her brother I was cute in class today. He was sitting next to me and leaned over and whispered that she said I was cute. Pretty cool stuff. I like Asia haha.

Moving on, I have been trying to setup a Skype session between some of our students here, and some of the students from the Concordia Wisconsin Bethesda College. Sam, who is an aid at Concordia and I have been connected on just about every social media platform trying to figure this out. First it was venue, then it was date, now it's turning to permission. Tomorrow I have to stop by the K-PACE office to ask the manager of the program if it is ok that we do this. YJS told me that's what I should do, I didn't even think about it. I thought we could just get some of the guys together in my room and bada bing bada boom we're Skyping. Guess not.

I think we'll end up able to do this just fine, but it's certainly an added pressure/worry to my already blown mind. Beyond this today was pretty relaxing. There was no fitness center (alas my lobby Yeo Ja) so I was able to get my homework done and hang out with the students. I am learning more and more names. Man just thinking about how much I've learned in the month that I've been here blows my mind too. My mind is just being blown all over the place.I love it.

The dorm always has some fun things going on. I caught Heavy G using what appeared to be a jack-in-the-box. Well it ended up being a Korean coffee grinder. I'm posting a short video of that. Also, An Hyo Sang the Bae Shin Ja himself bought a fanny pack for their trip to America. I think I gave him enough grief that he decided not to take it though haha. Poor guy.

An Hyo Sang and his fanny pack!

Oh! Last but not least I saw a picture of an aerial view of Daegu University in our classroom today. I had to get a picture of it to show you guys cause it looked so cool. Here it is!

Aerial view of the new Daegu Campus!

That's all for today folks, thanks for stopping in and I'll see you tomorrow!

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 좋아해요 (Joh Ah Hae Yo) Used as a verb this can mean I like something, which includes romantic meanings. As an adjective it can mean "Good".

TL:DR I'm in Korea.

월요일 (Wol Yo Il) Monday

So we are learning about time and dates right now. We have also gone over the days of the week. Each day was pretty easy to remember because it ended in Yo Il. Dates are a bit harder because the numbers are unfamiliar. We are also reviewing 과거 (Gwa Guh) past tense verb conjugation. Thankfully this past week or so has started to trigger the memory/understanding portions of my brain. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the language and how it works. I hope this lasts.

Breakfast today was dak kalbi. It's tough to go a day without having this for breakfast. Especially after a day with almost no meat, it really gets the juices flowing for a good day. Class today brought in 4 new students from Vietnam. 2 girls and 2 boys. As I said, things went well today and I hope that continues.

After class I got a hold of YJS for a lunch date. We headed over to 8 ho gwan and I got bulgogi deopbap. Fire meat and rice. Ahhhh the food today was glorious. The day itself was also glorious. It got up to 70 degrees. I was walking around in a t shirt and shorts and people thought I was crazy. They call me 상남자 (Sang Nam Ja) which means man's man. Apparently this is because I don't use an umbrella, and I wear shorts and t shirts when it is warm. Go figure.

After lunch it was time to nap. I didn't sleep very well last night, my nose was super stuffed up. I was planning on hitting the gym with YJS but I ended it calling it off in lieu of a longer nap. I needed it. After the nap it was time for dinner. We headed over to 8 ho gwan yet again (3 times in a day is really the best thing ever) and I got chicken curry bap. I went for the whole meat and rice thing today. I had to simplify after yesterday, get myself going again.

Heavy G then drove both me and YJS over to the fitness center to help with the students, however I was the only one to get out. I was worried at first that there was a miscommunication, but An Hyo Sang the Bae Shin Ja himself was there. My other buddy from the dorm was there too so I went down to sit next to him and show off a bit of my newly learned Korean. While sitting next to him and talking, the hands down most beautiful girl I have seen since I have been here sat down opposite us by herself. She was all dressed up and my mind was blown. I honestly didn't know what to do. At that moment An the traitor called us all to go upstairs with the students. He wanted to stay back himself. I couldn't believe it. The traitor struck me when I was most vulnerable. No I did not even say Hi to her. Why? I don't know. I know, I'm the worst. Also don't worry I made An feel absolutely horrible for doing a thing like that. He knows what he did.

Man, Monday must bring out the A-list in Korea. The fitness center was full of beautiful girls. I definitely need to start coming on Monday's more often. My job at the fitness center is literally to walk back and forth and make sure all the students are working out, and not possibly hurting themselves on equipment. That gives me plenty of time to interact with them, and check out the scenery. Yes, Monday is a good day. Oh! Speaking of scenery. The sun set just above the mountains today and it was GORGEOUS. I tried to take a picture of it but you couldn't see anything because of the glare :(. I wish you all could have been here to witness it.

I was able to get my homework done during class today so I had no homework tonight! That meant I could socialize with the students and other RA's tonight. I am definitely building relationships and it feels good. The students respond positively to me, and I'm starting to be able to interact with them in Korean. There are a few students who speak English well, and they are extremely surprised when I speak Korean to them haha. I have been told that my pronunciation is natural so that's an encouraging thing.

I was able to sneak a video of Heavy G smashing a moth that was flying around a student's room. His reaction when he realizes I'm filming him is absolutely hysterical. He told me to delete it, so naturally that means put it on my blog. Here he is in all his glory!

I have to make sure that I needle An a few more times about my 로비 여자 (Low Be Yeo Ja) lobby girl. There is a quota around here now of how many times you have to call someone a traitor by the end of the day. I think it's probably somewhere around 50. Bae Shin Ja-An could use a few more I think.

I got a few photos the other day from the Director of the K-PACE program who's Grandfather founded this university. They are from the first day I was here when we all went out to lunch together. I'm not sure if I posted them yet, but I'm going to throw them on here anyway. We went to a really nice place and got some bulgogi along with plenty of side dishes.

First Day!

That's it for today! Tune in tomorrow for more super fun foods and adventures!

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 상남자 (Sang Nam Ja) As stated before this means man's man. Nam Ja being man.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.

Let's Get Married!

Welp, here's the big news. I got invited to a wedding today. I met this couple literally last Sunday and they invited me to their wedding. I feel pretty honored and excited. I'll get to see what a Korean wedding ceremony is like. Here's a couple of pics of my invite (with my Korean name on it).

Wang Hyung Jun!

The front of the invite. David and Sue are getting married!

So apparently it's customary in Korea to take all of your wedding pictures before your wedding day. Obviously very different from America where it's considered bad luck to see your bride in her dress before the big day. Or something like that. Who am I kidding I don't know a thing about weddings or traditions of that sort. They just tell me to show up at a certain time in a suit and I follow directions. Luckily I brought a suit.

Today I didn't have to take an hour and a half bus ride to church! Wooooo! Instead I got a quick light breakfast at CJ. I honestly couldn't figure out the name of this dish nor did I take a picture to ask for help, silly me. However, it consisted of chopped up hot dogs and vegetables on one side of the plate, and something like shredded green beans on the other side. Then a bowl of some kind of leafy soup (no not seaweed soup I know what that is), and a bowl of Bap!

A very light breakfast for what I'm used to, but honestly it did it's job. In fact besides the bits of hot dog, I don't believe I ate any meat today. That might be the first time in my entire life...unless you count the days I subsisted completely off pizza.

I was doing laundry, and the machines here have super goofy timers. I have to run my wash through twice because after the first time the machine doesn't drain properly. Then when I put it in the dryer it countdown normally until about 11 minutes then just sticks there and goes back up to 30 minutes. Needless to say we left a bit late for church today.

We arrived in time to catch most of the second sermon. Unfortunately I have no translator for the main sermons (even though Ji knows English it's not well enough to translate for me). Still it is easy to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in this church. The congregation is really into it and I dig it.

After the sermon we had lunch at church. This was your typical seaweed soup with rice and kimchi, as well as some bean sprouts. Korean meal staples. Man I'll tell you, my nose runs like CRAZY every time I have a meal here. Not every meal is spicy, but my nose sure thinks it is. After lunch we headed to a cafe for some coffee. Now I'm not a big coffee drinker but I'll have a sugary drink with the boys every once in awhile.

A truncated pic of the cafe's menu.

Can you guess what I got? No...not a "What the Pong" smoothie. (Don't look that up btw, there are apparently some uncouth urban dictionary translations for what that is.) I got an Oreo smoothie! Yeah it was as good as it sounds. There were also many babes in the coffee shop. Maybe that's where I need to go to meet some ladies. Lets get jacked up on caffeine and go ask everyone out! Yeah! Best idea!

Heavy G and I headed across the street to a mart to pick up a few odds and ends after coffee. He needed Listerine, shampoo, and windshield wiper blades. Yeah, pretty interesting shopping list. I checked out the prices on alcohol there and a fifth of vodka was about $28, so yeah, don't buy anything but soju in Korea, got it. After heading back to church it was almost time for youth praise. We got back a little earlier than usual so we sat in on what seemed to be a brief sermon between the second sermon and youth service.

Youth service was good as usual, I got a personal translator again. This time it was the girl from the first week. She is a second grade English teacher. We had a short chat after service and she was telling me she was getting her students ready for mid-terms. Like WTF? Second graders? Mid-terms? I hadn't even heard of mid-terms until I was in high school. Education is INTENSE here. While I knew that going in, it's different hearing it first hand. She was telling me how the parents are crazy too. I can relate because of coaching ice hockey and dealing with them myself, but wow second grade? Next time you guys get tired of doing your homework just be happy you didn't grow up in Korea lol.

Time to drive home. As we are driving Heavy G is calling YJS and An Hyo Sang to setup an off campus dinner with all of us. The boys gotta get the boy band together every once in awhile to relax and regroup. The original idea was to get pork spinal soup? I don't remember what they called this (honestly there's so many new words thrown at me everyday I'm lucky to retain the few that I do know). After getting a hold of An Hyo Sang and much deliberation we decided on this soup. We called YJS multiple times but he didn't pick up.

Ji Sem (A nickname meaning Ji Teacher) or Heavy G had to get a haircut so he dropped me at the dorm and headed over there. I needed a nap after a big day so I laid down. I woke up to knocking at my door, and Heavy G (freshly chopped and it's hilarious) and YJS saying it's time to go. I throw on some clothes and we go to pick up An Sem at his one room (an apartment you can rent consisting of one room, these cost in the range of $300-400/month from what I'm told). I guess they boys discussed and decided they wanted 막국수 (Mak Guk Soo) or buckwheat noodles.

We went to a nice little place just off campus. These noodles are served cold, and you get a GIANT bowl of them if you order the large size. I like to live dangerously so I ordered the spicy kind. YJS got the same thing, Heavy G got some sort of different style, and An Hyo Sang got maybe the tuna kind? Here's some pics to sort it out.

My dish, currently unmixed.

Heavy G and his bowl (top right) and An Sem and his bowl (top left). YJS with a matching bowl (bottom left).

I'm not the biggest fan of cold food. If I'm gonna eat I want things to be piping hot and I want to still taste the blood. JK about the blood...but this was good, and they were right there was a lot. There was also a little coffee/hot chocolate machine next to us so we made some up before we headed out. We all headed back to campus in Heavy G's sweet Hyundai ride.

After getting back to campus it was time to prepare for the week ahead. Finish up homework, get my blog done, and get a little personal time in to make sure I get enough sleep. I admit the newness of everything is wearing off a little, but the magic and awe is being replaced by a genuine interest in others and relationship building. It's pretty fascinating to me how easy it is to make friends when you're in another country and the people are as accommodating and caring as they are here. Dr. Carol told me about their hospitality before I came here, but I am seeing it first hand and I love it. I lack nothing, and their generosity has allowed me to finally fully focus on seeking God which I believe is our ultimate purpose in life. Seek Him and all the rest will fall into place, no matter what the circumstances. I still have trouble focusing on this even though its something I am learning more and more about, and believe more and more in my heart. I continue to pray that he will strengthen me to fully trust in Him.

Once again if you have any questions you would like me to ask in my interviews please comment! I look forward to sharing the thoughts and opinions of my friends with you. Thanks for tuning in! More to come this week.

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 목사님/사모님(Mok Sa Nim/Sa Mo Nim) Pastor/Pastor's Wife.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.

Pizza Country and Chicken Princess

Today we had a birthday party! I wasn't really sure what the party was for, but it ended up being for everyone who had a birthday this month. Students and teachers alike, so it ended up being maybe 7-8 people. We got all the K-PACE students and RA's together along with one of the teachers and had a crazy 파티 (Pa Ti) Party!

Before I get to all that fun, I had something new for breakfast today! 불고기 덮밥 (Bulgogi Deop Bap) this is simply bulgogi with rice. Just like the dak kalbi I have most mornings, this is the chicken substituted with bulgogi. Here's a nommy pic.

Bulgogi Deop Bap!

After breakfast we went back to the dorms for a quick break before leaving for the party. I took a quick nap and got ready to leave. We walked to the K-PACE building and put the desks together so the students could fit 4 to a table. Here are some pics to bring the experience to life.

Jammin some KPop to get everyone movin!

My boi Jeong Bin at the head of the class keeping everyone entertained.

RA's at the front, ballers in the back.

Just passin out that good good.

Pizza and Chicken!

The grand finale! Cake!

 So the teacher came in and put up a grid on the overhead and had the students start rattling off Korean dishes. Apparently this was for a competition they are going to have in a month or so. They will be making dishes and wanted to pick 5 of all of the dishes suggested. I'm not sure how this will turn out.

As the title suggests, the place that these pizzas and chicken wings were ordered from is called Pizza Country, Chicken Princess. I love it. I absolutely love it. The pizza ended up being garbage pizza, with the weirdest stuff thrown on it. I think I had mushroom, green onion, black olives, shrimp, chicken, onion, and other stuff on it. Wasn't a fan of that one, other than that it was ok. I would say in line with something you'd get at a Domino's or Little Caesars.

The chicken was very good. They love their fried chicken here. I wouldn't say it was the best I've had while here, but it was very good. This party was quite American, and I wasn't complaining. We had Pepsi as our refreshment, and ended with two cakes! One cake was a sweet potato pie cake. That was amazing. The other was a fruit topped cake. That one I didn't like as much.

After hanging for awhile we cleaned up and headed back to the dorms. I spent all day trying to talk An Hyo Sang into hitting the gym. He kept saying "Nope" (that's his special word) that he was busy, but I finally got him to agree. A couple of the students wanted to join so we were able to go to the dorm gym and get a good workout in.

After the workout I got a shower in and started to watch my buddy Alex stream. My boy Jeong Bin stopped by and watched as well. We had a great time talking to Alex as he streamed and the students were rolling on the floor laughing. He is very popular with the students haha, it's a good way to bond.

Dinner was something new as well!닭갈비 카레밥 (Dak Kalbi Ka Re Bap) This is chicken with curry rice. I couldn't really find a recipe as this must be sort of unique to 8 Ho Gwan that we go to, but man it's good. I like teasing Alex with pictures of my meals on snap chat.

Chicken Curry Bap!

After dinner we headed back to the dorm and it was time to relax. One of the few times of the week where I get to just space out and be alone. As Alex gets more popular in the dorm though I assume that time will diminish as the students come in more and more. I welcome that though because we get a chance to bond. These kids are great and it's wonderful to start being able to converse with them in Korean as well as English. Today Hyun Ji, and Hwan Young came in and spent time watching with me. Jun Young made a few quick appearances as well.

A few things I forgot to mention yesterday, K-PACE is taking a senior trip to LA! They are going April 8-12th and are visiting the special needs program at UCLA. I kind of got pulled into helping plan their trip for them. I got here and they kept asking me about my buddy Matt Gates. Well I know him well, and admitted to it. After hearing this the K-PACE employees were all over me to email him and make sure that they get a visit to UCLA setup. This was out of left field to me, and trying to figure particulars out through the language barrier was rather difficult. I had no idea what was going on so I did my best to help. Matt did the hard part and made the introduction to the director of the UCLA program. I was able to decipher what they are trying to do with their trip, and get things squared away.

The second thing is something I'm excited to unveil! I am going to do a series of short interviews with the other RA's here. They will be in English, and have questions something along the lines of "What is life like growing up in Korea?" and "What are your impressions of the U.S.?" However I want as much viewer input as humanly possible. If any of you have any questions please post them in the comments so I can include them in the interview. I also plan on asking Alex's stream chat (probably the worst idea ever) on any questions they have. I think this could be a very interesting learning experience for all of us. Korean culture has been fascinating to me. Alex asked a question about KPop to one of the students today and I thought that was an excellent way to learn as well. Learning about their pop culture is a great way to see inside. Anyways, that's the plan folks! I'll be interviewing An Hyo Sang, YJS, and Heavy G as of now. I'll take other requests or ideas after that. I look forward to your input and thank you for reading! Tune in tomorrow for a recap on how church day #3 went!

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 잘자네 (Jal Ja Ne) This means Good Night, or Sweet Dreams!

TL:DR I'm in Korea.