First Day of School and Meeting Chaeyoung Unni!

Today was the first day of school and it started out bad. The shuttle was scheduled to pick us up at 8:10 in front of the lobby, so me and Dianne (only 2 of us in our suite have 1st period) were out there by 8, one of the first. The shuttle finally shows up around 8:15, but it stops at the other end of the line of students, so that instead of first were last. The bus is too packed and says it will come back for us after it drops off the first load -.- It finally comes back a little after 8:45 and we are about 5 minutes late to our first class! But it wasn't too bad since it was just the first day. I just hated waiting outside for 45 minutes that's all. Maybe it's karma for eating 1/4th of the pecan pie for breakfast this morning....

So I have a sore throat, apparently because I'm being overexposed to AC. I guess it happens to a lot of people in Korea during the summer, since it's so hot that everywhere has AC on really high. Probably worse that I sleep with it on too, but everyone else in my suite seems fine. I sounded like a man in the morning, and we had to do self-introductions in class too :(

First period was Modern Korean History, and I'm dropping it tomorrow. No details necessary. 2nd period was Pre-Modern History, and even though I thought that would be more boring, the professor is a little funnier so I'm keeping that one. Plus, it would have been really redundant to take both simultaneously because the content overlaps a lot more than I expected. After 2nd was lunch, so I met up with my suitemates in the little shop downstairs (all our classes are in the same one building yay! minimal walking) and I had a roll of tuna kimbap for $2. Jyppers; you can get the same stuff for $1 right outside campus. My third and final period was Globalization of Korean Society, and we ended after only an hour, at 2:30, so that was nice! I decided not to take Korean Language during summer school because it's 3 hours long (the other courses are 2 hours) and it's not mandatory. It is required during Fall though so I'll take it then when it's not as intense as 3 freaking hours long. Anyway, woohoo for taking the bare minimum of only 2 classes! 11-3:30ish, with a 30 minute lunch break in between.

After, I went to the bank, bought my books, ran some errands. Then I rode the bus for about 45 minutes to my aunt's house in Ilsan. She has a 25 year old daughter named Chaeyoung, and a 23 year old son who I haven't met yet because he's in the army. Chaeyoung unni is 5 feet and about 70 pounds. I know. She tries to eat a lot to gain weight but just can't. Boohoo. Hehe she's really nice though!! I love her! Perhaps one of my favorite cousins here so far because we just click really well and she's very caring and talkative and funny! The three of us went to a little tomato patch/orchard/farm/whatever and bought some cheap, fresh, organic tomatoes!
Chaeyoung unni and me acting fobby with like the only two ripe tomatoes there:

Just kidding, here's the real me:

My aunt and Chaeyoung unni getting their fill of free tomatoes:


After, they took me to a choo-uh-tang restaurant, which is made from ground up "loach or mudfish". Never heard those fish names in English before but that's what the dictionary came up with for 미꾸라지. Ew huh? But it was really good and actually just tasted like dwenjang-jjigae, bean paste stew since the fish is not visible. We sat and ate, but even with my miniskirt I didn't feel so uncomfortable this time! I guess my body is adjusting to sitting on the floor :>

Then we went to a Ilsan Hosu, a lake near where they live. It was so pretty! HUGE too, so I couldn't get a good shot of it no matter how far I stood. It just looks like a boring picture of water, like this:

Can you even tell that it's the lake behind them? I'm quite far away and high up too!:

Right in front of the water:

As we were walking around the lake (by the way, props to me for walking around all day in [low]heels. The orchard was rocky and hilly, and the damn lake was sooo wide too. My feet were fine the whole time too! Just a little sore walking up all the stairs from the subway station at the end of the day, but that's it), a huge crowd and loud dance music caught our attention:

We got a little closer and saw they were aerobic dancing in unison!

It actually looked kind of fun so we joined in ^^ Here's my aunt (in red) getting really into it:

Apparently they have an instructor come and lead them every night for an hour. Koreans are really into public exercise.

After, we walked across the street because we saw the MBC building (one of the 4 biggest, main tv companies) and even though it was already 9 pm so it was probably closed, we just wanted to see if we could peek in and see anything cool.

Well we did!!! There were bright lights and a sizeable crowd with people holding signs in front of the building so we ran over to see what was going on.

They were filming a picketing scene for the drama "Sportlight"!! It's a really popular drama right now starring hottie Ji Jinhee and top female actress Son Yejin. Unfortunately a guard stopped us about 50 meters away from the scene and told us we couldn't get any closer. We chatted with him for a bit, which was how we found out what was going on. We docilely complied and walked away... and ran to the other entrance to the building to see if Ji Jinhee was inside, and maybe near a window!! Unfortunately, since it was so late the building was locked up, but Chaeyoung unni came up with a plan. She told me to talk to the security guards in English because they won't know what to do/say so they'll just let me in. I didn't think it made any sense, but I went up to the security office filled with 5-6 young men and said "Can I use the bathroom?" in English. The guy I asked is like "Wha??" and is all wide-eyed and "hold on! hold on!" in Korean and starts motioning to the other guys to come. None of them seemed to speak English either though, because I repeated myself to quizzical stares. Then I was like "restroom? toilet?? please!" When I said "toilet" one guy was like "hwajangshil!!!!" which is bathroom in Korean. He bolted out of the room and literally unlocked the entrance door and escorted us to the bathroom. As we were walking by the other security guards posted inside the building, he was like nodding all officially to them and saying "she's a foreigner~" as if that means something. Anyway, we peeked around but of course saw nothing but empty floors and security guards guarding nothing. We tried to laugh as quietly as possible in the bathroom and then finally left, and as we were leaving all the security guards bowed to us. Chaeyoung unni said they are never that formal and respectful to regular people! Hehe! She speaks Chinese (it's her major and she spent a year there) so she said she often uses this trick to act Chinese and get around sticky situations in Korea. Ridiculous!

After we left the building to meet my aunt who went to go get the car, we walked back around to the front of the building, where filming was still going on. But the blocker guy from before was nowhere in sight! We made a dash for it and I got THIS CLOSE TO SON YEJIN! She's beautiful. I tried to take pictures but I got stopped... :( I acted like I was complying and walking away, but I turned around really fast and snapped this blurry shot of her assistant fixing her hair for her:

Here's her in a black suit with a ponytail:

Sorry the quality sucks, I had to turn off my flash to be inconspicuous.
This is what I saw!


The weather was great today; hope it keeps up!