My first weekend in Korea was nuts. Friday classes included TaeKwonDo. I tried to take it easy because my ankle was still bothering me from twisting it in Seoul. The warmups were intense and when the Master was having people lay on the ground, get up as fast as they could then run across the room...I sat out. I already almost hurt my ankle again and my bruised knee was not a fan of being kneeled on.
I did the kicks with my good foot, though; and played the tag games. They did a demonstration at the end with board breaking. They invited someone in the class to break the board, so I volunteered. The Master says the first most important think in TaeKwonDo is yelling, so I had to yell loud...and most people who know me know I can yell if I have to. The breaking was easy (I think it was just balsawood), but it was very cool, and I got to keep it.
Friday night I spent cooking. We made ddukbokki (duck-bowk-gi), a spicy dish with rice cake tubes, fish cake, and vegetables. They taught us how to make the sauce and Chenny and I made it a little sweet so it wasn't too spicy. The sauce is about two spoons chili sauce, one spoon soy, one spoon syrup, two spoons sugar, to taste.
Everyone else in the class enjoyed ours ^_~ So now I know how to make it. It's actually really easy, so I hope I will be able to make it again when I'm in my new home and eventually for friends and family when I get back to the states.
Saturday was our medical checkup >=( Luckily our group coordinator drew us to go second, so we were done before lunch. It all went really fast. I DID manage to trick Blizzard into letting me log onto Warcraft so I could /wave at Michele and Shelby from abroad. I doubt I will be doing much playing now, but maybe in a few months. We'll see...
During the day I went out walking with my roommate and a group of other people I'd never met in Jochiwon. We scoped out downtown, which isn't as boring as everyone makes it out to be. I guess I'm just a small-town girl...so anything with more than one main street of shops is cool to me.
Saturday night I went out with some of the girls from the EMU group to celebrate birthdays. We went to a jimjibang (bath house) which was AWESOME. Yes you have to be naked in the bath area, but who cares....it's sooooooo relaxing. I have been craving a bath since we got here. There's nothing quite like laying in a pool of hot water. The place in town we went to is called Dream Sauna and it is just 6000 won to get into everything; bath, saunas, tv room, and sleeping area.
The jimjibang are were you can go to sleep if you so desire instead of getting a hotel, love hotel, or hostel room. It's not private or terribly comfortable, but for less that $10 it's a steal for a place to crash when you're out of town.
Afterward we went back to campus to pick up the less brave of our crew for a late dinner. We wanted to go to a noraebang (kareoke) too but we were a little late for curfew. We ate at a barbecue. It was so delicious.
Definitely a special occasion sort of thing, but I enjoyed it immensely. I also discovered I enjoy my kimchi when it is grilled. Also, I like soju and Korean beers! We didn't have a lot, just a bottle of each that we shared among a group of eight.
Today there was a trip to a Buddhist temple. We ate lunch, took a tour, and made prayer beads and woodblock prints. I forgot to get my memory stick back out of my computer from Friday so I only had the video camera. I stole a few pictures from my group-mates. I hope I will get some time this month to edit the footage I took into a little video of all I saw there today.
Heated floors are a big thing in Korea, and I think we were all very thankful for the heated floor in the one building we gathered in twice. I don't know why it's such a luxury in the US, maybe because we centrally heat everything. Difficult to say, but a heated floor is awesome.
As we were leaving we ran across a group that was playing drums, gongs, and flute outside at the base of the mountain. We got pulled (literally) into the circle to dance with middle-aged Koreans. I was even strapped to a drum and marched around for a bit. In between they definatly went into the nearby building for more bottles of rice wine and were pouring us all drinks. Some of us were trying very hard to refuse politely, but I'm all about it. It's hard to refuse an earnest attempt of a local to bond with me through impromptu food, drink, and song; especially when all I have to go on is pantomime. The men tried to talk to me a little, but I had a hard time understanding their little bits of English behind their accents with the drums going behind. But, it was a lot of fun. I'm really glad we ran into them.
