First couple of days

Sunday morning I woke up kind of kind of tired, but still quite hyper about being back in Korea. Some people suggested going up to Seoul for some shopping and cellphone hunting. I was going to go, but then my friend SeungIl randomly messaged me and asked if I wanted to go to a baseball game. Since I'd never gone before, I immediately said yes. Baseball games in Korea are so different than the US, not because of the way the players play, but the audience. There is so much audience participation, and it seems that every one in the crowd knows the right cheers for when each player comes out onto the field.

The two teams were the Seoul LG Twins and the Daegu Samsung Lions. It's funny that the teams are Twins and Lions but everyone's yelling out LG and Daegu... oh Korea. It seemed that LG was doomed at first, but they managed to pull at 6-5 win at the end. The game was really exciting, but I could only pay attention to about half of it because there was so much excitement in the stands. They were just as amusing to watch.

Afterwards, we went to Shincheon (not to be mistaken for Shinchon), which was pretty cool because I hadn't been to that area before and it seemed like a smaller version of Hongdae. We had some Kamja-tang (potatoe stew) for dinner. SeungIl said that the ability to eat Kamja-tang with chopsticks makes one an expert-chopstick user. I dunno about that! But I guess I'll take the compliment? It is quite difficult though because you gotta dig the meat out between the bones and cartilage.

Monday, we got up bright and early for orientation. Most people got to meet their Kyunghee student buddys that would be our language partners and university guides, but mine was busy and couldn't make it. They introduced our professors to us, and made a presentation about Kyunghee University. I was hoping to get Lee Junho as a professor because there are two intermediate sections. I heard many good things about him as a teacher, and he's also a Korea University professor (where I studied last time), so that's a plus!

After orientation was the dreaded placement test. It totally let all the air out of me, and probably everyone else in the room. More than half of us couldn't read the directions for each section let alone guess what the vocab said! We all thought that we would fail and end up in beginners. But I think the idea is that if you actually did well, you belonged in Advanced. But we didn't find that out til later, and kept complaining to the professor proctoring that it was way too hard. The speaking and writing parts I actually did quite well on.

When it was done, we went to get pictures taken for our school IDs. We met Lindsey and Helen's KHU buddys, and went with them for lunch. After that, we went to a cafe, and Jacqueline and her buddy JungYoon joined us. All of the buddys were from the foreign language department, and JungYoon's major was Russian, so I was quite excited to test out her skills.

At four, we received our textbooks, and me and Meredith went back to her room to attempt to study because we were really excited to get our books! Unfortunately, the minute I got to her room, I totally crashed. After half an hour, I woke up and went back to my room and slept til 2:30am. Now I'm just surfing the net because I can't sleep.

Today we will go to the US Embassy in Seoul for a debriefing. Hope I get to meet the ambassodor!

P.S. KyungHee Suwon campus is SOO beautiful.