Celebrating America in Korea

These past few days we have been getting lots of little tastes of home, which has been extremely nice. On Friday after the GLEE Club party with the Korean students at the University almost 60 of us decided to go to a HoF (aka a bar) in town. The RAs called ten cabs and the cabs drove back and forth taking us to B&B. The full name is Beer & Bewer. Koreans don't have an equivalent to the English letter r so they have a really hard time recognizing the sound in words. Thus brewer becomes bewer. The HoF was really fun even though it was mainly our group. There was only one table of actual Koreans. Most of the bars here also serve complimentary food with your drinks and all of the American tables received fries, dumplings, egg rolls and other greasy, fried foods whereas the Koreans received dried fish.

Our greasy American bar food.

Some of us at B&B

Our Orientation Coordinators also realized that we all had missed the Fourth of July because we were flying to Korea so they bought a lot of fireworks and we set them off near the soccer fields on campus. It was really fun and very nice of the Orientation Team. They have really done an excellent job keeping everyone busy and happy.

On Sunday the OCTs also surprised us with dinner outings. My group had an American style dinner on the veranda overlooking the fields. We ate pizza, fried chicken, and some American-style Chinese food. It was a delicious reminder of home and much appreciated because the cafeteria food gets mighty repetitive.

Today we visited a Korean Elementary School in Cheongju, which is about an hour away from Goesan. We received a tour of the school, had tea with the principal, ate lunch with some students in the cafeteria and observed a current ETA teaching one of her classes. It was an extremely rewarding experience. All of the kids loved seeing a large group of 14 foreigners and we were constantly garnering cheers, screams, hellos and bows. It was adorable. I also really enjoyed being able to visualize what's in store for me this coming year.

After we returned back to the University a few friends and I went on a hike in the hills. The hike wasn't really on a trail and so we did a lot of bushwhacking but it was very neat and the view was astonishing. We also caught a glimpse of the nearby Military University. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures because I forgot my camera but hopefully I can grab some from a friend or just repeat the hike!

Tomorrow's my first day of Korean class, TKD and GLEE Club plus we have a teaching workshop so it will be a very busy day!