Almost 3 months...Another Update...Sorry!

I'm sorry! I'll try and be better, I really will.


First of all, let me see if I can cover what has gone on in the past month or so since I last blogged.

It's 3 days away from 3 months.

Let's see, I'm going to do this event by event to give a more detailed summary of how AMAZING each thing was.


         The week after you last heard from me,  I biked around a baseball stadium with my Korean friends (10/19). I went with my whole class, and it was really an interesting experience.I loved it so much! Since we're in Busan, there's not many trails that are large enough for you to take bikes on, and you definitely can't take them on the roads unless you have a death wish, so Koreans share their baseball stadiums with their bike enthusiasts! My class had just finished exams, so as a reward, they all voted to rent bikes and bike around this huge stadium. We biked underneath the stadium, mainly. And one of my good friends even learned how to bike, and it was so fun! I wish I could do that every Friday morning instead of school.

 I also went to an amazing fireworks festival that made me feel like I was in the best city in the world (because I am) (10/28)! It was amazing. As someone who never gets to see fireworks except on Fourth of July, I was really excited to begin with, then factor in how much I love fireworks, and you get an event I'm jumping up and down excited for. And I was NOT disappointed. Busan is really amazing about the whole thing. They do it in front of the diamond bridge on the beach, and it's breathtaking. They go on for an amazing 50 minutes or so, and I couldn't take my eyes off of the light show. It was truly spectacular. And yes, yes that is a bird firework.

  The week right after that, I went to 2 opera concerts (10/30 and 11/3, same week!). One was my host mom's concert. She's a pianist and was accompanying a tenor. It was really beautiful, and the tenor sang in German, French, and Korean. Afterwards, we went to a Korean barbecue thing. It's not barbecue like Americans think of barbecue  it's just what we call it. Basically, they have fryers built into the table, and you cook your own food right there. Needless to say, it's delicious.  We went with a large group of my mothers host friends, and when they sang a traditional Korean song right there in the restaurant in perfect harmony as a group(about 30 people) I was almost moved to tears. It was absolutely beautiful, and so simple and unassuming.  Here in Korea, family and tradition are a big part of their lives, and being let into such a loving and tight-knit community really amazes me. Even though all I could do was sit back and listen to my host family and all their friends sing, I couldn't help but feel like I was part of the group, too.    4 days later, I got the opportunity to go to another concert, this one was with the other exchange students, and included percussion and multiple singers. It was more fun and the dancers broke out into Gangnam style during their final little song, where they sang an upbeat Korean song, and encouraged the whole audience to sing along. Like I said, Koreans really have a sense of community and I'm reminded of it almost everyday, in little ways.  

This past weekend, a week after the opera concert, Korea has a holiday called 빼빼로 데이 (Peppero Day). It's on 11/11 because the ones look like 4 sticks of peppero standing up. Basically, people buy each other boxes of peppero and exchange the with each other. A lot of times it's between boyfriend and girlfriend, but a lot of friends do it, too! (For those who don't know, pepper is similar to Pocky, except better, because it's Korean, and everything is better when it's Korean.) On 빼빼로 데이  I went to a soccer game with my Korean friends. Even though the game ended with no goals, I still felt like I had won at the end. I got to do all of the chants and fight songs in Korean and at half time, they gave away prizes, one of these went to the best dancer, and guess who won a 100USD gift certificate to get their hair did? I did! No one can deny my mad dance skillz now. I'm almost certain it was because I was the only foreigner in the entire crowd and Busan loves foreigners, but let's pretend it's my mad skillz, I like that better. Now all I have to do is decide on what to do with my hair...

Now for upcoming events...

I WILL BE GOING TO JEJU NEXT WEEK (11/22-11-25) I AM SO EXCITED.

Basically, Jeju is this vacation-y island off the coast of Korea and we're going there as a little trip with RYE. I'm so excited because Jeju is supposed to be really beautiful and I can't wait to fly out and get there! And in December I'm going to SKI. I can't wait to do all of this, and I will be sure to do a better job of updating everyone on how I'm doing!

I hope everyone stateside and worldwide are doing well!!