Back from Songnisan (with pictures)!

Hello! It's 7:23pm on Sunday evening, and I should be preparing for my lesson, which I teach tomorrow, but I decided to blog quickly instead! :) I had a really nice weekend at Songnisan National Park. It wasn't actually as relaxing as I'd hoped, because I realized that I teach on Monday and I don't have any of my handouts ready, but I still had a good time.

Let's see... the bus ride was about three hours. We arrived, ate lunch (sitting on the floor). See pictures. It was... not terribly good, but very fancy. After that, we had some small-group discussions about goal-setting and other stuff, which was mostly stupid. Then we had an American buddhist monk who'd been living in South Korea for 20 years give us a lecture on Buddhism, but that was also when I figured out I had to teach on Monday, so I wasn't really listening. It was pretty boring. After that we visited the nearby Buddhist temple (lots of pictures), and it was interesting, but I didn't really know what I was looking at. There were a lot of interesting buildings, a huge golden buddha, and an actual temple (in which I couldn't take pictures). Then we heard the monks do the daily drumming, which was pretty cool. I took some video, and later I might try to upload it to YouTube so you can see it.

After that was dinner, which was a little better. Then, I decided to go out for the first time in South Korea. We went to a Noraebang, which pretty much translates to "singing room." It's like South Korean karaoke, only it's way better, because rather than a bar where you have to sing in front of a bunch of people, it's just a bunch of rooms that you rent out by the hour with karaoke machines in them and big screens, where you just sing with your friends. I wasn't actually just with friends, unfortunately, because there ended up being like, 40 of us ETAs in two rooms (very warm), but it was kinda fun. I didn't drink much, just a couple shots of soju during a drinking game, and I turned in before midnight, but I was still proud of myself for going. I realize it doesn't actually count as going out in Korea if you go out with a bunch of other Americans, but alas, that's the best I can do.

The next morning, some people were getting up at 3am to go hiking to see the sunrise, but I felt that was ludicrously early. There were also some people going on day-long hikes, but then I discovered that Alison and Meghan were going on a much briefer hike (about three hours) and they weren't going to go crazy and try to scale the whole mountain, so I decided to go with them, which was awesome. I took a lot of pretty pictures, and it wasn't too intense. A lot of it was crazy stone stairs up the mountain, but we took breaks and had a nice time. We didn't end up going all the way up to a peak, but we stopped at a hermitage (see pictures), which provided some nice views. And on the way back, we ran into Mrs. Shim (the director of the Korea program). She was with the office staff, and she called us over and told us to eat with them. It was some kind of fried potato pancake, and it was really good. And then she asked us what we requested on our placement forms. I told her I wanted to do the program where you get to teach at two schools, and she started going off about how I would be placed in Naju, and how she'd already seen my homestay, and it was very peaceful, and all that stuff. Which would be really exciting, but I don't think she's actually seen the list yet, so she couldn't actually be sure. Buuut... if I'm the only one who requested the program, then maybe it's for sure! I thought about it a lot, but I'll know on Wednesday! Way exciting!

So then I showered, and napped, and went out for dinner. We were just walking around for ages looking for places, and then we stumbled upon an awesome restaurant that advertised "Mexican chicken." (see picture) We decided to be adventurous, and it turned out to be fried chicken covered in sweet and sour, which we ate with chopsticks, and it was really good. After that, we ate a lot of ice cream, went back to the hotel, and I went to bed early. This morning I mostly spent studying, but I know a lot of vocabulary now. We had bul-go-gi (a really well-known korean dish) for lunch, and it was really good.

The most depressing thing that happened this weekend was when I tried to do laundry tonight and the spin cycle apparently didn't work, because my clothes were really sopping wet. :(

Man, I have more to blog about, but that's what happened this weekend. More later, when I'm done with my lesson planning!

Here's the pictures. Don't forget to check out the captions!

Weekend Away #1

Weekend Away #2