What a weekend!

I don't even know where to begin right now. Ever since we came to Dobong, the city staff has had non-stop activities for us (thus why I haven't really written on this thing because we haven't had the time to even sit down and think). I guess I can start with yesterday (saturday) morning.....

The boys and I decided we were going to try and get breakfast before we headed out for our long day. Stacy and Judit were still getting ready so the four of us headed out without them. We all noticed one thing about Dobong/Seoul that could be closely related to Las Vegas. The city is up all night and sleeps all day! As we walked to find the Dunkin Doughnuts that we had spotted the night before, we saw numerous groups of people dressed up, coming home from what seemed like a long night of partying. There were some that were even still sitting outside the convience stores still drinking. However, unlike Vegas were everything is open pretty much 24 hours, nothing opens here until 10AM or so and stays open until 2 or 3 in the morning. We finally find a doughnut place that was not open but the nice lady inside said we could still come in. Got our doughnuts, walked back to the hotel, and the day had begun....

The staff wanted us to get closer to the children from our host families so they arranged a trip for us to go to GyeongJu with them. It was one of the ancient cities that was about a 5 hour drive from Seoul. On the way up there, the staff hired an entertainer type man to play games with us on the bus to keep us energized. His name was Charlie Ho but told us that unless we called him "Handsome Ho", he would not respond to us. First he had us all stand up in the front of the bus and talk for one minutes about ourselves. After our minute was up, we had to sing our favorite song (he let some of us slide without doing that). All of the kids really wanted to hear Schuyler sing so he put on my ipod and rocked out to Lady Gaga (don't worry... Judit video taped it and I will find a way to post it on here when she sends it to me). As everyone introduced themselves, he had us right their name on a Bingo card. He had us play this massage game to the beat of music "to help us throw our stress away". Then he split the bus in half and we played a balloon game where we had to pass it down our row and back up to the other people. Lastly, he had us all put mini straws in our mouthes (like the ones you stir coffee with) and we had to pass their chips down through all of our teammates (they were kind of like funions so they were circular). We had to hold it on our straw and pass it down from person to person without touching the chip or our straws. Of course after all of our games, my team had the highest amount of points... GO BLUE TEAM!
When we got off the bus there was so much to see that I didn't even know what to take pictures of first. There were gorgeous gardens and ancient buildings every where!!! Unfortunately, most of the places I could not take pictures so I only have a few. After having a korean buffet for dinner (where we found out some interesting things about Korean food traditions such as putting cereal on your ice cream), they took us to this famous pond that was in GyeongJu. Supposedly the king used to walk around it with his servants. It was sooo crowded that they decided to just take us back to the hotel and call it a night...

This morning (sunday) we got up and had a big breakfast. We were all surprised to see that they had a lot of common breakfast foods like ham, bacon, eggs, and toast (among many other not so common American breakfast items). They then took us to two famous Buddhism temples. Before we got to the first one, it started raining soooooooo hard that when we got out of the bus, we were all in ponchos and umbrellas and still managed to get soaking wet. I think they got more rain in about 20 minutes than Vegas gets all year long. We had to hike up part of the hill but the sight when we got there was amazing. We even got to go into one of the buildings and watch behind plexi-glass one of the ceremonies. They had all of these beautiful laterns hanging with prayers all over them. We learned that each Buddha has a different hand placement to mean different things. Hence why there are so many different versions of Buddha all of the place. At the second temple, we learned that when you walk up stairs to see the Buddha, you have to walk down them either sideways or backwards. It is not polite to turn your back to the Buddha. We also got to see this awesome rock garden on the temple grounds where anyone can dig up rocks from the path and make a "wishing tower." You use one rock for every wish you would like for Buddha to help you with. Each of the six of us made a tower but it was interesting that we all only had 3 rocks compared to some of the piles of 8 or 9 rocks. I took pictures of mine! After that temple, the tour guides asked the kids what they wanted us to try for lunch and they gave the best response of the trip so far....

MCDONALDS!!!! Big Mac's, fries and cokes for everyone! I took pictures of all of our food and signs in the place. It was funny to see how excited the kids got. After another 6 hours bus ride back to the city, we met up with our first host families to head to their house. My family lives in the Samsung apartments on the 18th floor. Their apartment is about the size of a normal condo, except only one bathroom. Here in Seoul, if you have more money, you live in an apartment and not a house. Only the poor people live in houses. Their apartment is very cute. They only thing I noticed that I might have a hard time with is that there is no shower curtain in the bathroom. All of the bathrooms in Seoul have slanted floors because their use the shower head to clean the floors and just let the water flow to the drain. When I got into the shower, I almost hit my head on the shower head because I am extremely tall for the average person that lives here. This will be a fun one to get used to....

My host mom walked to me the school that I will be teaching at. Everyone in Korea thinks that something is only 20 minutes away. It definitely took us closer to 40 to walk there (its about 3.5 miles). I get to walk this every morning for the next 3 weeks so if I don't come back to Vegas about 15 pounds lighter from all of the walking... I have no idea how to get in shape! Now I think it is time for bed so I will try to update you again tomorrow..... goodnight!

FINALLY HERE!!

I know this post is a little bit late but things the past two days have been extremely hectic. I don't even know where to begin! Let's just say I'm the best person to fly with!! (NOT!!!!) At the Las Vegas airport on Wednesday, I was randomly selected for additional screening. Then at the San Francisco airport, the security guy sent my bag through the X-ray machine all because of my tiny bottle of nausea medicine. After we grabbed a quick bite to eat, I knew I needed to take the medicine in order to be okay for our long 12 hour flight. Little did I know that the medicine would do me no good. I got sick several times on the plane and didn't even eat my second meal because I just wanted to get off the plane. When we finally got to Incheon Airport, we saw that there was a page for me at the gate. Come to find out, they lost my smaller bag that had all of my shoes and bathroom stuff in it. Luckily, my bag with my clothes got here so I didn't have to worry about sleeping in the same clothes. They told me that my bag never got on the plane in San Francisco and would be here the next day. He gave me a number to call to make sure it got here and told me they would definitely speak English when I called. By the way, the one bag that did make it to Seoul on time, they completely broke both the pull out handle and the handle on the top so watching me try and figure out how to pull my bag through the airport was probably quite a sight to see.

It was soo funny to see how excited to the Dobong staff was to see us when we walked outside. They had smiles from ear to ear. They were especially excited to finally meet Travis because they thought he was super cute and all of the women have a crush on him. We took a bus ride that was about one hour long until we finally reached out hotel for the next two nights. By the time we got there, we were all so tired that I actually fell asleep in my clothes in my bed before Stacy and Judit even got ready for bed. It was a long day.

Yesterday, before we went to the district office, we got out and walked around the area of the city we were in. It was so funny seeing how many American companies they had such as Dunkin Doughnuts and Baskin Robbins. We had lots of meetings with the Dobong Staff in order to make sure we understood everything. They also gave us each our own cell phones to use while we are here in order to keep in contact with our host families and the staff. After we went over a few things, they took us to a traditional Korean lunch. I have never seen so much food in my life. The table was covered and all of us felt so weird not trying to eat it all. It is definitely going to take some time to get used to sitting on the floor with my legs crossed while eating. We got to try a lot of everything and I can honestly say I will not be eating any more Kimchi while I am here. It was just too spicy for my liking. After lunch, they took us to the bank that is located in the district office so we could open up our bank accounts for while we are here. I wish this part of our trip was a little bit more organized. They had no idea what type of paperwork we needed to fill out so it took us about four hours to set up 6 accounts. Needless to say, most of us were spent for the day after that ordeal. But of course, our day was far from over. We had a Welcoming Ceremony at the district office where we got to meet our host families for the first time and also the new mayor. The Mayor is a high position here because I was seated at his table with my families and both of my host moms were very nervous to meet him. I wish people got that excited about our mayor. We got to know each other a little bit more and heard several presentations about the city.

I am in love with both of my host families. They are all very modest because they said their English is not very good when we were emailing back and forth but after meeting them, I think their English is almost as good as mine. There are a few words that they mix up here and there but they try so hard and you can definitely see that in the kids. Both of my families just kept talking about my eye color because here, everyone has either brown or black eyes so to see colored eyes is a big deal! I am so excited to finally move in with them. After we all said our goodbyes, the staff took us back to the hotel and we took a slight rest until dinner. They met us back downstairs and took us to a Korean BBQ place. It was absolutely amazing. We had a meal called "Sam" which is like bacon only four times as thick and you grill it on this grill that is in your table. We were so full afterwards but we knew we wanted to dessert so we walked all the way up to Baskin Robbins. The place was packed! It was a much different scene then what we had seen that morning. We got our ice cream and headed back to the hotel.

Because the hotel staff didn't understand much English, I decided to call the number for the aiport myself and figure out if my bag had gotten here yet. When I called, of course, they didn't speak any English and hung up on me. When I tried calling back, they ignored my phone calls. So I recruited Travis (who speaks Chinese and has the accents down like nothing so he has an easier time using the translator than me), and we went down the front desk. We got the front desk to call the airport and after a few connections, we figured out my bag was here and it would be delivered between 11 and 12. Instead of waiting up, we decided to go to bed and we would just wait for them to call our room. At about 11, our door unlocked and the bell man came in not realizing we were asleep in our room. It scared Stacy and I so badly because we had no idea who was coming into our room. He went running out and then slammed the door shut. He then knocked and I answered and he apologized sooo much. I was just thankful to have my bag so I didn't care. We crashed for the night after that.

We are in GyeongJu right now, which is a very famous city in South Korea. My battery on my laptop is about the die right now and I packed the charger away in my big bag. I will write all about it tomorrow when I get to my first host family's house! Bye for now!

P.S: pictures will be up tomorrow too!!