Oh yeah- I'm here to learn!

I finally started my other class this week.  It's Political Geography, but my professor really likes to call it Geography of International Terrorism.  I LOVE it so far.  The funny thing is that there are only 3 people in the class, counting myself.  There were 4, but the only Korean in the class dropped it today.  I made the mistake of telling my teacher that I'm a geography major, therefore he looks at me for almost all of the answers, but I don't mind.  Surprisingly I haven't been stumped yet and I surprised him with my knowledge of the Middle East.  Looks like I did learn something in my Geography of Asia class this past semester.

My professor is from the University of Utah and has worked for the Defense Mapping Agency and the NGA.  He's very qualified and really knows what he's talking about.  He's told us plenty of times that he's not here to stress us out or give us too much work... he's just looking to give all of us A's.  Fine by me!  I even feel like I'm learning a lot too.

This week went by really fast.  Tuesday night we went out to the back gate (figures, it's our new favorite hang out now that we finally know where it is.) I'm not sure if I've mentioned this already, but the back gate has a ton of great shopping, restaurants, and pubs.  We (Megan, Zahra, Lillian, Kierstie, Teddy, and two Korean buddies) grabbed Pizza Hut and had some hilarious conversations.  The two Koreans we were with were hilarious.  One of them is Teddy's buddy and the other is his best friend.  It's funny to see how the language barrier really gets in the way and they don't really understand certain things that they probably shouldn't say... which actually makes it funny.  For instance, Zahra took a candid picture of me and it was rather unattractive.  Kitae looked at it and went, "Oooh, ugly ugly ugly!"  We all laughed pretty hard and then explained that in American you can't just go around calling people ugly. Then he said to me, "Oh no it's not that you're ugly, I'm just not interested in you." That made it that much more funny. We teased him all night.  This type of situation has happened more than once.

Kitae, Me, Lillian and Megan at Miller Time

After Pizza Hut, the boys took us to "Miller Time," a bar that they figured we would like because they serve Miller Lite. It was a relaxed setting.  We just sat around talking about Korean customs, what we wanted to be when we "grow up," and dating life in Korea and America... topics that are apparently all pretty common to talk about in Korea.

The sign at the back gate. I thought I should put this in here since I talk about it so much. From back to front its Latifah, Megan, Kierstie, Lillian, Tiffany, Jasmine, Me, Zahra and Jing!

Wednesday we don't have classes.  My buddy and Kierstie's buddy picked us all up and took us to lunch before our cultural trip for the day.  They took us to a local Korean restaurant where I finally got Kimbop again! I found out it actually has crab in it... and I still loved it.  We were also forced to try Pig Stomach. Not kidding. They ordered it for us and asked us to try it.  We asked what it was and our buddies just said it was best for us not to know, and rightfully so. It was absolutely disgusting. After lunch, we headed back to the dorms to catch the bus to go to the Gwangju Cultural Center for pottery making! This was a lot of fun. We didn't actually use the wheel to make the mugs, they were already made for us.  We did trace designs on them and paint them. After, a photographer found Megan and I and made us go to the pottery wheel to try out the actual molding of the clay so that he could take pictures of us. Once again, I felt like a celebrity because everywhere we walked pictures were being snapped. It was fun though!

Korean Girls love doing this. We fit right in. :)

Tomorrow (Friday) after class I leave to go on a homestay. I'm living with a family this weekend who lives in the Gwangju area. I got an e-mail today that said that it's a married couple that has two kids that are 11 and 5. I'm not too sure what I'm going to be doing with them, but I'm with them until Sunday! I'm nervous, mainly because of the language barrier, but the e-mail said that they've had a lot of experience with foreigners so hopefully that's a good sign.

My buddy In also has made a list of things for us to do together. Some things on the list include shopping downtown, kareoke (which is HUGE here,) and going to this dance club that she loves going to. We also plan on taking the bus up to the mountains to go hiking and hopefully making it to a baseball game. Gwangju has their own team here, and apparently baseball games are a lot of fun! I'm missing watching the Cardinals games, so hopefully this will be just as good.  I hope everyone has a good weekend!