Oops!

Okay, so I know that it has been a very long time since my last post. I haven't been doing too much at all, but then I realized the other day that I never posted about the Colorful Daegu Festival or my trip to Yeongju, so here it goes!

Every year in October Daegu holds a weekend festival that totally envelopes the entire downtown. They had performers everywhere, art showcases, music showcases, and you could do anything from having your face painting to eating traditional Korean food. At the end of Saturday and Sunday night they held a huge parade. Their parade isn't like ours, however. There were very few floats. The parade mainly consisted of people ranging from very young (I am going to say 4 or 5) to university students and beyond. They were all dressed as different things. In fact, there was everything from a group of people dresses to represent the countries around the world (Guess what America was? Yep, that's right, a cowboy) to Price Charming, Snow White and the Evil Queen (whatever her name is!), to zombie brides and vampires. Elvis Presley also made an appearance along with Jack Sparrow, Obama and Putin. The best part was that I arrived before the parade started and got to take pictures with them all, which made them quite happy! And, as a picture is worth a thousand words, I will quit writing and let you see for yourself!

Supper at the Traveler's Grill before we head to the parade. French toast. Yummy!!!

                                            A performance given before the parade started!

Asian Jack Sparrow

Aren't they cuties?!

                                       Dancing sheets! How many people do you recognize?!

                                                 A retro dance along with a random Elvis!

The end of the parade, and the end of a great day! As it is very late, I'm going to head to bed, but I will post about Buseoksa Temple soon!

Food here, food there, food everywhere!

Well, I have kept rather busy this week! Monday was our teacher's birthday, so all of us students when in together and bought her a cake--two actually! They were sooo delicious!

Assistant teacher

The two in the middle are from Mongolia and the third is from Japan

Enjoy this rendition of Happy Birthday in Korean!

Wednesday we had another holiday, Hangul Day, so Yana, another Chinese girl and I met up with our "buddy guides" which are Korean students that are selected to show international students around. We went downtown and had Baskin Robbins and went shopping.

 Afterwards we all went out to eat. You can't believe how much food they ordered! We got several different dishes and then shared them all (which is quite common in Korea. Rarely, it seems, does anyone person eat a dish by themselves). It was so absolutely yummy!

Steak & potatoes!

Noodles that were not made out of rice!

"Pi-cha"

We could barely fit all of the food on our table!

What made it even better is that Daegu University gives so much money to each group as long as they submit pictures and a receipt, so the meal was absolutely free! When we finished supper we went to a photo booth store (not sure what else to call it!) and took pictures together.

Yesterday, after school I met up with another Korean girl for coffee, and then went to my Thursday Bible study. We have a new girl that is interesting in learn more, but she isn't a believer, so prayers for her would be very welcome!

Today I got all of my homework done for Monday, so I can completely enjoy my weekend for once, woo hoo! I just got back from supper with two of my Chinese friends that are in the same Korean class as I am.

Tomorrow I think I will go downtown and do some shopping and somewhere new to eat, other than KFC (even though it is really good!). Other than that, all I have done is study and attend class. Teaching English is going pretty well. Oh! It finally stopped raining here, which is good, because I was starting to think that I was going to drown, even worse yet, ruin my heels!!! Haha! Okay, well, I hope y'all have a nice, rain free weekend!

Well, hello, old friend!

I must say that I am becoming a firm believer in the power of Facebook. While, I don't use it for much more than connecting with people (no, I am not a candy crush saga fan, or whatever is more popular now), this is the third time that I have been able to meet an old friend in their home country due to Facebook, and it is the second one that was possible due to one of my status updates! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hyeyun, our former exchange student (10 years ago!):

She came all the way from Seoul for the day, just to see me! We went to T. G. I. Friday for lunch, and I had an absolutely wonderful bacon cheeseburger and fries, yum!!!

 

 Hahaha! I am now the tall one, instead of being the short one, like when I was ten :-P

After eating we did some window shopping, went to my Bible Study together (woo hoo!!!), a little more shopping and then we had to head back to the train station for her to catch her train back to Seoul. It was so neat to see her again after ten years!

I was really hoping to go to Busan, the second largest city in South Korea, which is on the Sea of Japan (also know as the East Sea) this weekend, but it was very rainy, and who wants to go to the beach in the rain?! So, as of right now it is on the slate for next week!

Today (Monday) was the regular Korean class and teaching English. One of my Korean friends and I went out for supper. I am proud to proclaim that I can now use chopsticks quite well (even though people keep trying to give me a fork!) another win for Abby, woo hoo!

 

Proof of my chopstick prowess! And yes, that is a french fry that I am eating using my chopsticks. They don't use hands here, okay! :-P

Tomorrow is class as usual. Wednesday we have another holiday. I am beginning to think that Korea has more holidays than Russia! Friday, in place of class, we are going on an excursion to another city! No clue what we are doing there, but not having class sounds great to me! The less they teach us, the less they can test us on, right? Well, here, that's probably wrong, but it sounds nice!

I hope everyone is doing well! 32 days until take off!

Study, study, study!

Well, not too much interesting has been happening in my life. Two things have happened. One thing that has--a global student gathering--I don't currently have pictures of, because my friend took them all on her camera, so I will save that for the next post. Number two is that my wonderful grandma, mother and Lela sent me a package absolutely packed with food! I can't believe all that they fit in one box! It was very worn and battered when it arrived. I saw it through the window, sitting in the manager's office, but he wasn't in. I continued to go down and check at least three times before I actually found him and asked him for my package!

They also sent me a package of rice with a note stating something to the effect of: "We thought you might be missing this, so we included it." I got the last laugh, however, because they put it on top of the trash bag in the box, and the box had become so tattered that the rice must have fell out somewhere along the way! Probably made some poor man very happy!

Since I don't have much else going on other than studying--I have a midterm on Friday which makes up 40% of my grade (yikes!), it's a very, very good thing that I am taking these credits as pass/fail--I decided to makeup a list of things that are interesting, different, or that I have done in Korea!

Here it is:

We eat rice every single meal,
I can cross "witnessing a metro turn around" of my bucket list,

All I have seen of South Korea is basically one long mountain range,

Seoul, the capital, have approximately 2.5 million more people than NYC,

Daegu, my city, has approximately 2.5 million people (almost equal to Chicago),

The Korean language is based on an Honor system. Speech differs between someone younger than yourself, someone your age, and someone older than yourself, which basically means that you have to learn three different ways to say EVERYTHING!

Asian people tend to be very expressive of their feelings, so if you wanna do a happy dance or yell at someone here, go right ahead. No one will think twice about it.

They put sweet potatoes, rice, or cabbage in about everything,

If you miss more than 10 classes your visa is revoked and you are sent home,

Downtown Daegu is extremely hard to navigate,

Being able to afford to regularly go to a coffee shop shows your status,

They put octopus in just about everything too, including pizza,

Wearing a nice dress with tennis shoes is perfectly acceptable (although I could probably never bring myself to do it!!!),

That is all that I can think of right now, and I need to go to sleep! It is already 1 A.M., and I have a midterm to study for tomorrow! Hopefully I will post more tomorrow or Friday after the midterm.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

P.S. For anyone who does not already know, I will be coming home November 9th-18th for a special someone's (Rachael Rosswurm!) wedding!!! See y'all then!