It's a fabulous life I lead

Well.. This week flew by me with quite a bit of excitement.  On Tuesday I met my Korean "buddy" with who I shall mentor English.  In lesser words, we hang out and I teach him about American slang.  For our first meet, he brought along his Korean "sisters" who were very excited to practice their English with me.  We went out to eat at a very nice, but very traditional Korean restaurant.  I was very excited to get off campus and try new foods, but unfortunately the food was not very successful.  In part this was due to my poor ability to use chopsticks.  I can mostly pick things up and mostly get them to my mouth.  Which to this point, has been perfectly acceptable.  However, I was very nervous in front of my new friends and by the end of dinner had managed to get very little food cut off of the bones and into my mouth and when I did, it was so spicy I may or may not have cried (bank heavily on the may have...).  We still managed to have a great time, and the dinner conversation was to die for.  The girls and my buddy are very in love with really terrible American movies and television shows.  Ghost Whisperer, Medium, etc.  They couldn't wait to talk television with me and to hear all about how I live over there.  Especially my friend who couldn't wait to ask if American girls really kiss on the first date, just like in the movies.  The boy is very excited to visit America, land of the first date kissers.  I have probably never laughed so hard in my entire life.

The girls discussed with me all of the places they couldn't wait to take me and my buddy interjected with a lot of "and we can drink soju after"'s.  I believe that I have come across the Korean versions of my friends.  Anyways, after dinner we all went out to coffee (I suspect because they felt terrible that dinner didn't work well), where my friend asked for my hand... It turns out that he meant he wanted to give me a hand, a phrase he had just learned today (along with "what is cracking?").. I had to explain that when you ask for a girls hand, you are either asking to hold it or marry her, which had all of his sisters dying in laughter. 

A very fantastic evening, if I do say so. 

The next few days passed quickly and suddenly it was Friday, the day of the big field trip.  We visited the Daegaya Theme Park and got a taste of the history of this very small ancient Korean province.  And then it was off to another traditional sit down (on the floor) meal with food easier on the chopsticks.  They offered forks to the Americans but at this point I was so hell bent on learning to use the chopsticks properly that I would not give in to the urge.  We then spent the rest of the afternoon playing on Korean standing swings, stilts, hula hooping, and trying to tightrope walk.  I would like to be able to say that I showed everyone up in the hula hoop contest and made America proud.. however, that would be a fib as I couldn't figure out the proper moves to make it for more than a few seconds.  It was a great deal of fun, however.  Afterwards I took a slight nap on the bus and then it was off to pick some strawberries.  This was my first fresh fruit since leaving America and I went nutty.  I didn't worry about the pesticides that might be covering them and I did a 1:1 ration on fruit put into my basket and fruit eaten.  Not a single regret though, the pesticides didn't seem to kill me.

I had big plans of traveling to Busan this weekend, but had to put them on hold while I try to kick this disgusting cough that I picked up.  There's always next weekend, I suppose.  And I'm certainly not going to begrudge a relaxing weekend spent in my sweatpants after the lively past few weeks I've had.

Anyways, that's where I'm at.

<3 you

Cara