konbae
Mood:  celebratory
Konbae!! (that means cheers!) Because I have been here a whole month! Kim Gabin asks, "Is one month special for you?" but hey, any excuse is a good excuse to celebrate! And yeah, one month is special! I have accomplished so much since I've been here, and when I look back over what I've done, I see how much I've already changed. It's so amazing, I can only imagine how different I'll be 6 months from now!!

Last night my parents took me out to eat at a really nice restaurant! It is a bird observatory and the 11th floor is the restaurant. It goes in a circle, and the tables are on a platform that rotates slowly, so your view is always changing. You can see practically the whole city of Gunsan. We brought my grandfather too. He doesn't speak any english, so that pretty much eliminated me from the main conversations, but i really didn't mind. I think just listining to them helps me absorb some of the language. It at least gets me use to hearing it.

My host mom bought me a hanbok. I was so excited. I had watned one since I first got here. It is so pretty and I'm extremely thankful! yes me and my host mom are getting along quite well! it was a lil rough to begin with, but look how good they turned out. :) My hanbok is bright pink, with a white top. The 27th 28th and 29th are koreans equivilant to thanksgiving. I get to wear my hanbok and eat a lot. I think we go to either the fathers house, or an uncles house. I haven't met any uncles yet. Who knows, but the eating part sounds exciting, as if i havent' gained enough weight already!

So i'v been staying busy with this and that. 2 days ago Ye-il invited me and rose to visit the academy he goes to. yea-lim and yea-min go too, so we all went out to eat before making an appearence at (haggwan) academy at 7. That was fun, all the students were pretty impressed with us, and interrogated us about (miguk) america and "do you have a boyfriend?!?!?!" that has to be the most commonly asked question. It's like a soap opera. Usually people don't have boyfriends or girlfriends until highschool or college. but they are all curious about dating and watch so much drama television it makes me laugh!

On Tuesday the exchange students all went to the Elementary 1, and had normal classes with the students in the 5th grade. next week we have classes with the 6th graders. We had 2 math classes, a music class and english class. I got absolutely nothing from the mathclasses. we couldnt talk to the kids. Just multiply...as if we need the review. come on, give us something useful to do! music class was an improvement. we sang with the kids, and i made 2 new friends! they are such sweethearts. Almost no english, but we can communicate somehow! (p'yal) means star. that's all i got out of music class. English class was the most productful. we sat in groups and had a chance to meet the students. The teacher had us act out a skit from a book so they could hear the words from a native speaker. even the teachers pronunciation is poor. I don't know how they ever learn english. It was not half bad. The teacher is kind of scary, and i'm looking forward to switching to the 6th grade next week, that teacher seems so much nicer!

Tomorrow my host mom is sending a package of mine out to the post office. The plan was to send it much earlier, but sorry everyone, i jsut got busy with other things! so tracys cameras and mom's package are finally in the mail. As for jesse's card....well...Korea doesn't believe in greeting cards. They don't believe in any sort of card. i'll have to make one, using my astounding creativity.... hah hah hah. But trust me, i will send a card. Even if it does look like a 4 year old made it! I'm invisioning that by the time it gets there Jesse will be fine judging by how long it takes mail to get anywhere, and in hopes jesse has a speedy recovery!

Dany has promised to teach me spanish, which i'm really enthusiased about learning. the korean is coming along very slow. Dany was going to come over monday wednesday and friday but so far was only able to make it on monday. Languages don't come as easily to me as they do for rose, or dany. dany and emilio already know 2 languages! that seems so amazing to me! I studied german for 2 years and I can't have a conversations wth someone in german! but dany has taken english for 2 years, and she's very very good at it. She says she wants to learn more, and speaking it with me and rose helps her a lot. so i'll help her improve her english and she will help me with spanish!

Tomorrow we go to the Elementary 2. I'm pretty excited about that, the kids there are really adorable!!! We were suppose to go today but we chose to go on friday instead cuz friday is their "fun day" like the other elementary had.

its kinda late and i have a lot of other stuff to do, so i'll end it here.

-che.min-

1...2...3...kimchi!!
Mood:  incredulous
"urbane * \er-BAYN\ * adjective
: notably polite or polished in manner

Example sentence:
Korea is the epitome of an urbane population. their expectations are for the people to be meticulously groomed, faultlessly polite, always poised and gracious in every situation. "

^a revised example from the websters dictionary

i have a whole new appeal for the english language now. it seems like such a better alternative to learning korean. but the korean is still coming along.... slow... no word yet from the german teacher. that would really help.

I think my english classes are getting better. We're working on sentences, and rose taught me a few of the simple basics of the english language and sentence structure, all of which i skillfully avoided learning during my elementary and middleschool years. (can i get a 'horray!' for mt view rejects?) yeah.

today was saturday, (oh glorious saturday) and we only had half a day of school. It was fun and laid back. kim gabin took us to an old fashioned style farm house. it had all the antique farming equipment. the explinations for these rice farming utensils wasn't really exciting. we have farms in maine too, with just as much farming equipment, and it's just as unappealing. but after the tour we sat with the owner and ate grapes and drank coffee. we stayed for a few hours. it was a good time, and they took some pictures which i'll get sometime, and post! :)

on Thursday we went to a diferent elementary school. I like this one better, and the children aren't as scary. It had a seperate kindergarten, and we can go there if we want. the kids are sooo adorable!! i miss collin sisi and darrell so much! we didn't attend any classes, instead we went to a play with the kids. we took the bus with the kindergarteners, and they kind of chose which exchange students they wanted to sit with. my 2 were sooo cute! 2 girls. julian was bombarded by like 5 boys, daniela was so jealous! one looked just like a cabbage patch doll, omg! the play was maybe an hour. it was entertaining. i'll add the pics of us with "our kids" :)

friday we went to the elementary school we had gone to on tuesday. i'll call that elem. 1. they had a sports day were were "invited" to attend. we didn't participate in much of the events, just the stretching. my host mom went for a little bit, and we got to talk to some of the kids, which was amusing because they don't speak english, maybe a few words, and we only speak a few words of korean. but we had fun! this school has banasters that you can slide down. and we did! julian has the pictures for it. me and dany were going to go to the computer room, but the door was locked. (that never stops anyone at dong-gang,) so we slid the window open and jumped in. all was fine till i went through the window, then this alarm thing went off! ahh! we ran out, and acted all innocent, and i guess someone turned it off, but we didn't get in any trouble. it was a pretty fun day over all i think, but it was sooo long. i got home and went right to sleep at 8 o' clock!

thursday me and julian went for a jog around seocheon (+ sprinted down the 13 flights of stairs so fast my head was spinning at the bottom....) then the sports day on friday, and today me and rose went swimming with yea-lim and her family. all this exercise i think i can handle.

yea-lim's family is really great. it would have been a whole different experience if i had been living with them. we ate pizza, and after we went swimming we went out to eat mcdonalds food. i'v gained 10 pounds since i'v been here, and i'll never be able to lose it at this rate.

swimming was fun, i had to waer a cute lil swimming cap like pro swimmers do, i felt sooo hot. yep. but everyone had to so we all all looked equally stupid. :) swimmng was fun, i kicked so much butt in the race between me rose yea-min and ye-il :P

host dad wants to teach me a korean game, its like checkers or chess, or something like that...so i'm gonna go absorb the korean culture. :)

-lori-

L--U--N--G "rung!!" a nd W--O--O--D--S "oozeh!!"
Mood:  lyrical
"i wished for you on a falling star wonderin where you are, do i ever cross your mind?"

i'm doin' alright, despite the cold and lack of sleep! actually i feel great right now! i was just reading through some other blogs of travelers at tripod, it's pretty entertaining. No one from korea though, so far.

i havent written since sunday. so monday i started teaching my classes for english. i really hope i recieve my english credit for that back in the states. I'm mildly worried how i'm going to make credits in the us, if i only go to a high shcool for half a year. english is the only credit i absolutly have to get because i don't want to take 2 english classes my senior year. Its my opinion i should recieve some credit for the class i'm teaching, if i can get kim gabin to contact mt views guidance councelor or some thing like that. monday's class was unproductful. rose wasn't there, so i had her students too. that was fun i guess. ok it really wasnt, i was totally unprepared and even though i had yea-lim and jin-suk for help, i was pretty much flying solo on that one. they had even less experience than i did at teaching a class. so i went through their names, i know several of the students, but the people i'm familiar with were all in rose's class. :( but i'm getting better at remembering faces, and they have english names too. i am going to memorize thri korean names too, out or respect. MOnday was so much fun, except for the english class. we didn't have any tests cuz rose wasn't there. yay! we did get a lecture though, like the one we recieved on sunday. that was crumby, but it was better than a test! pretty much she said we couldnt go anywheres unless we were with our host family. bs, and no one took her seriously. after school i went to julians house to "study" but instead we hung out with his mom and hee-sung, and had snacks. later we studied some vocab words, and the plan was to go jogging but i was sooo tired, this cold is kicking my butt. so rain check on jogging.

tuesday, um yep that was yesterday...

rose was back on tuesday. we were all suppose to arrive at school early to catch an elementary school bus to the elementary school. unfortunatly my family got me to school JUST AS THE BUS WAS LEAVING, oops! so kim gabin had to drive me there :) it was scary. i changed my mind about being enthused at the prospect of spending 2 days a week with k-6 graders!! they are mean! honestly. one tried to bite dany, then me. a teacher thwarted his efforts, but it was still unnerving. we didn't go to any classes. we ran around outside with the kids as they prepared for a sports day they are having on the 10th. all the exchange students have to go to that too. i'll remember to wear sneakers that time. sandles just don't cut it. they let us rest for about 10 minutes in the library. i passed right out on the couch, i was sooo groggy from this head cold!the library is really a comfortable atmosphere, and the books are right at my reading level for korean, maybe a little to advanced even, haha! but hey i'll get the hang of this eventually! the elementary is huge! it has 3 floors. they are really big and have many class rooms. there is like an entertainment rooom on the 3rd floor, and it has a museum type set up. it is really interesting. kim gabain went to take a closer look at one of the items and nailed her head on the glass, and it really wasn't that funny but oh my god, i could not stop cracking up. everytime i looked at her i started laughing again! after i got myself composed julian or emilio and dany would look at me and we'd all crack up again. i laugh about it now, even as i'm writing this. kim didn't have the slightest idea what that was all about. then today at my house i went to throw something away and ran right into a sliding glass door seperating me from the pantry. i never even knew that was there before! they really need to warn me about stuff like that. me and ji-eun had a good laugh about that.

on a more mature note.....class on tuesday was a little better, we played pictionary. i tried to figure out where they were with vocabulary, but it didn't help me much. we spent longer explaining the game to the class than we did actually playing it i think. they can't really make sentences yet, so they're right inbetween learning simple words and forming sentences. that doesnt make it easy for me, i'm really not cut out to teach english. i dont know any of the terms or crap like that, my english is poor, so what ever i teach them isn't going to be exact anyways. but we'll see how things go. today i made them do a skit like they are at a restaurant, one person is the waiter, the others order food. we did that sort of thing in my german class. i'd like to get intouch wtih my old german teacher, and have her give me some advice on that sort of thing. and maybe refresh my memory in german. i'd like to contiune learning german but obvously they don't teach that here.

WELL I'M off to badmitten, at 9 at night, i know weird huh? well more later!

I'm lost but I'm hopefull baby and what it all comes down to is that everything is gonna be just fine fine fine
Mood:  irritated
i'm so tired but i'm gonna write a little bit anyways. on friday bum lee won greeted me with a little gift. its a korean style key chain its sooo cool, that girl is sooo sweet!! mi-jung was back in school too! yay! i missed her so much! she had been out of school for a few days cuz her grampa died.... :( *tear* and school just isnt teh same with out her. she is so lively, it was like, everything was so much quiter! but thankfully shes back and in good spirits. :D

we've been having testes in school every day on teh vocab, but yes rose is right, (like usual) that we need more vocab, more of a challenge, just learning random words won't help us very much. and mrs kim doesnt let us laeve our host homes to hang out with the students unless it is something she has planned. other than that we are expected to stay in our homes and study, study, study! oh please, we only have 20 words to memorize, we could be learning so much more if we got out into the community and communicated with the people! that's what rotary tells us to do, "don't pen yourself in at home, get out and learn about the culture," but korea has never had exchange students before, so they have no idea what they are suppose to do and what methods are most beneficial. we only get sunday, and half of saturdday off, and it is unhealthy to make us stay at home to study 20 simple vocab words. she is redicluous. i am getting really frustrated with her whole system. she has final say over wether or not we are rested enough to go out with our friends. She is overprotective to the maximum, and it's really irritating!!! like tonight, i think i'll get into that later, i could go on forever bitching about her, but i dont want to waste my time right now. i'll just fume over it on my own time.

saturday was confusing cuz i thought i was going to julians house, but julian was going to ri's house, and my host sis had gone to seoul for something so she wasnt around to tell me where to go. the whole bus thing scares me. the bus that they usually take is on strike! such an inconvience. i ended up going back to my apartment, cuz i was unable to make plans on my own. its so hard to do, it involves going through so many channels, and i dont speak enough koren explain it to my host mom or anyone elsees host parents. i rely on the korean students and my host mom to make plans and such. but i wanna make my own plans, err!

(sorry... i'm really tired, so i'm gonna complain a lot :-P)

after i got home and all settled in ri called to say i should go to her house. its like a 20 minute bus ride to bien. we went to the beach, (it was a really small beach, but it had a beautiful selection of shells and rocks.) the walk wasnt very long, bang went with us. he's so innocent its hilious. his friend went with us, and seo-jeong, me, rose, ri, julian, hee-sung (he's mine i claim him!!) hahaha. i collected some seashells before the tide was in. they're so pretty, i hope i can bring them back to maine with out them getting broken. i don't know how i'll accomplish that one. we didn't stay at the beach long. i could have stayed there all day just collecting seashells. later me and rose went on a chocolate run, and now we are proud joint owners of a box of frosted flakes! woo! it was a lot of fun, mostly hanging out wtih rose, and ri and seojeong. they made ramen noodles but they were so spicy! i was the only one that thougth they were spicy, but damn my mouth was on fire, and it didnt even slighty bother anyone else. *breathes fire* yeow!

today i slept until 10. it was so nice! i kept having dreams about people back home in the US and i didn't wanna wake up at all. but at 10:15 oma came in and told me it was time for breakfast. uhhh!
we went to ji-eun's grams house, its near dong-gang middle school but its like an old fashion farm. i love it, its so korean. we ate grapes and talked. i didn't do very much talking of course, cuz it was all in korea. but her gram said i was very pretty. i was so flattered. :) we stayed for like an hour, just talking eating grapes and drinking coffee on their porch. i had to catch a bus at 2 with the rest of the crew to the beach. the bus was pretty expensive cuz the normal bus is stil on strike!everyone met at the seocheon bus stop, which conveniently happens to be like 2 minutes from my apartment!

julian gave me some 30 spf sun block, which is excellent cuz i am soooo tired of getting sunburned. everyday it gets a little worse! it comes with the territory of having red hair i guess. the beach was fun. dany came with us, which made things that much more exciting! she didnt go in the water though. it was prety much me rose julian and emilio that went in the water. hee-sung did too, and started a mudd fight which sucked cuz i was wearing a white bathingsuit! lil bastard.on the way back from the beach, everyone noticed something down about rose. she had been really quite all day, and i got to talk to her about it. that was nice, i feel for her. rose is great. but we almost got hit by a huge truck while having this heart to heart talk. he didnt even try to avoid us. i swear he was only inches away from me.

rose got really sick, no one knows what its from yet, but getting off the bus at seocheon she stumbled and was so dizzy she almost fainted. they helped her walk to a restuarant. she didnt get any better and before we went to the noraebang mrs kim showed up and thats when we got our lecture. julians parents came too, and mrs kim took rose away, i think they went to the hospital. hopefully. julians mom is such a wonderful woman. i love her!! she took us the the noraebang (i have no idea how they spell it!) but its karaoke (?) cant spell taht either! wow i'm on a roll tonight...

well school tomorrow, and i have to study some stupid vocab. i'll work on sentence structure too while i'm at it. haha or maybe not, i'm pooched. later

-lori-

cheese puddle of wombat
Mood:  vegas lucky
Now Playing: 80's mix
yesterday was the welcoming ceremony. it was so much less than excitng. actually it was closer to traumatizing It was roasting the the gym and i hd to wear my blazer and jeans! and then make a speach. that went alright, but i thought i would pass out from the heat. you can only imagine how red my face must have been. but it's over and i'm on to new and better things.

dany is getting along here with us so well! me and rose took her shopping the other day. we were only in seocheon so there werent many good places to go shopping. we found a nice shop and each bought a skirt. rose's and my skirt are excatly alike and dany bought a skirt too. we all wore our skirts today and it was totally unplanned. we are good! we're so on the same level all the time! except when rose is breezing by all of us in korean class. haha that is so annoying!

we didn't have any normal clases today, or on tuesday for that matter, because next week every tuesday and thursday we will be going to an elementary school to learn wth the kids there. how cool is that! i always wanted to go back to emelentary school. oh how i'v missed nap time!! haha! instead of going to class we had an all day interview with a girl from seoul who is with a big name news paper or something like that! it was really fun, i liked her a lot. rose did most of that talking, like usual!!! haha. then we went to the store across the street and the news woman bought us ice creams. she was pretty young but she spoke excellent english. she took a lot of pictures which were the most fun. me dany and rose all love to get our pictures taken. **cuz we so cute** :) the interviewer said she would send us each a copy of the enws paper when it comes out in a few weeks. there was a picture of all of us in the news paper a few days ago too. kim sonsangnim showed it to us online. its so cool!! we're celebrities!! i always knew i was bound for stardom....hah! (NOT)

today after school julian came over, which was a nice change of scenery cuz it's usually extremely boring after shcool. he showed me some things for guitar, and then ye-il and yea-min came over. i wasn't expecting them, so that was pretty cool. they stayed till they had to go to the academy at 7. julian showed me the video and song the dingdong song! so i finally heard it! it's sooo funny! the koreans love it, but they don't understand what a tra-la-la is or a ding-dong, and its so hilarious explaining it to them. sooooo cute and innocent! :)

all for now, i'll try and post some of my newwest pics really soon, like as soon as i figure outhow to get them off the camera! that might take a while...


-lori-

your spanish really turns me on, but then again so does chicken!!
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: barenaked ladies ;-)
so i'v been here for 2 weeks! wow i thought it was only a week, but i've completely lost track of time since i'v been here! i'v ben really busy!

the first day of school was alrightr but it wasn't like the normal days of school, which are also really fun! on teh second day i had a full day of classes. first, korean, then "practice korean" which is another korean class. then 2 classes, like social studeis and gym, which is what i had today. guy was fun, we just walked around outside, the gym teacher is so kick ass! it was just the exchange studnets in this class, we're all together for the first 4 classes. they are only 40 minutes long, or something insanely short like that. if feels like we are out of class more than we're in it! after those 4 classes we have lunch. everyone has lunch together, since the shcool is so small. i'm still getting use to the chopsticks thing, it takes a lot more coordination than i what i have. rice is teh easiest to eat. the kimchi here is so much spicier than what i tried in the us, i can't handle it. emilio doensn't even like it, and HES USE TO SPICY MEXICAN FOOD! lol

after lunch we all go back to normal classes, there are 2 more before school gets over. since the exchange studnents cant understand the lessons we just sit there and doodle or stuff. me and rose sit together and play cards. today she taught me the game speed, that is fun. its a good way to pass the time too. the teachers dont care what we do because they want the exchange students to be happy, so we can be late, or not pay attention and stuff, its great. i found the ping pong room on the second day too. that is sooo much fun!!! im not good at it but it doesnt matter! its sooo amusing! its a race to get there before there before the boys. the girls dont like to play, but i love it! it makes me laugh. :-) i play that in between all my classes. after school on saturday a big group of us went to julians house. his mom is soooo cool! she is the sweetest lady ever! it was really hot and they had a cook out on the roof, cuz they live on the highest floor of the apartment. its a really nice place, but i think i got sunburned during the cook out. then we watched kangaroo jack and made milkshakes! it was the best time. i had to leave early cuz the guitar guy was at my house.

on sunday my fam took me to a temple about an hour from our house. its really cool, it was really small though. compared to some of the temples i saw on the tour thing around korea. then me and host dad and host brother climbed the mountain all the way to the top, it was a looong climb, and it was soo hot. i got a pretty good sunburn too, it sucked! but it was refreshing to get to the top, you can see a lot from up there. it was really high up, wow, i was impressed wth myself. i got some pictures there too i'll have to add to my pic site soon. while i was at the temple i got to practice how they do the bowing thing to buddha. the monks do that for like horus at a time. i dont think i could ever do something like that in good conscience!

i was so tired at the end of the day! it was looong. then at 8 we went out to eat at areally nice restaurant, it was on the 10 floor and you could see all of seochoen. then my host mom came late, and told me she had bought me an amp for my gkuitar!! i was so happy! and they bought me cocktails at the restaurant, i guess its alright to do that here, and we can buy soju too with out id! kick ass! lol

today! finally! school taody was fun, korean korean practice, then gym! i love it, i pressed some flowers, they're diff from american, or at least maine flowers. social studies after gym but i didnt understand any of that! after lunch i got my ass kicked at ping pong by a mexican! haha jus kiddin emilio SARANGAEYO! lmao, *does heart thing over head*

the otehr mexican exchange student arrived. we all had super with her, she si soooo cute!! shes 16 korean years, so 15 american. but she looks a lot older. she so nice too, me and rose were gonna take her out shopping but kim teacher wasn't really cool with that idea, cuz dany needs more time to settle in i think. me and rose are still gonna go anyways. shoppign is so much fun! emilio is having so much fun with dany around. now he can talk to someone in spanish. hes in heaven. its so cool. she starts school tomorrow with the rest of us! she doesnt speak much english though, and no korean, so school for her should be interesting! :-( hope she catches on quick

so i guess i'll end this now, its really late n school tomorrow!! yay!

i got to tlak to mom on aol today it was so weird, but it was great! autie was on too at grams house, but mom said she wasn't feelign good. i hope she feels better! gram is doin alright i hear, i hope laurie gets to see her a lot! that would be fun.

i havent heard any thing else about jesse but any news is bad news i guess, so i hope he is doing better and i'm thinkin buot him a lot! :-( anywahs serioulsy all for now!

-lori-

back to school back to school to prove to dad i'm not a fool
Mood:  chatty
it was the first day of school today, if you can really call it that, because we didn't have any classes. I had plenty of oppertunities to explore my new school. it's actaually pretty nice. I only saw one of the buildings on the first day, but there are 3 in all. The class rooms are small though, and have a stale smell to them. I think i'll like it there though. I dont have to get up until 7:20, and school doesnt start until 8:30. Today we just cleaned the classrooms. The janitors aparently don't do that, it is the student's responsibility. it makes me have more of a respect for janitors i think. next kid who writes on a desk is gonna get shot. Me and the othe exchange students cleaned the english room. the have maps of america, and an american flag, and a map of the world. like america is the only country that speaks english. canada sure doesnt, england nahh...australia nope, what about india, uhhh no only the united states. haha whats up with that? its funny. I finished cleanin the english room and roamed around the school. most of the people i meet in the halls i knew from the tour. all the people wave and smile, its an extremely friendly atmosphere. the cleaning took up such a short period of time, everyone went back to their classroom, or wandered around. sonsangnim took the foreign exchange students to the teachers room to go over the basics we would need to know for school tomorrow. like how to read our scheduals, and that stuff. a man was there from one of the local news papers, and he asked us questions. it was a battle between rose and julian to see who could say the most. me and emilio just sat back and listined. he didn't even choose south korea. it wasn't one of his selections, so he didn't have a lot of contribute anyways. we took a break for lunch, which wasn't very good. i should never have complained about mt vies's food. it's a treat! after lunch everyone was leaving, there was nothing else to do, so people just walked home, or hopped on the bus. the bus stop is right near the school, and that's how most people get to school. i'm lucky ji-euns dad gives us a ride. but when we left we were planning on walking. some of us got rides and we all met up at a CNA (?) store. i got some notebooks, and later i went back with oma and jij-eun and bought a hat i liked. its baby pink. I thought we were going home after that, but we went to julians house instead. he lives in an apartment really close to where i live! its in walking distance! his apartment is really beautiful. I love his host mom, she is the sweetest woman!!! she fed us grapes and made us food. hee sung let me play his guitar, i didn't want to leaev/

got an email from mom saying jesse was in the hospital, broken neck, car accident. i guess hes gonaa be lright. more later

and he said::::take my hand...live while you can
Mood:  lazy
so much has happened since i last wrote. it's been a pretty busy few days!

On monday my family informed me they were going to taejon and i was not coming. fine with me. So they arranged for me to go to roses house for the night. all day i pretty much spent the day sending e-mails. i feel so lazy!! i finally got around to checking tracys blog. she got to bring friends to the airport with her! thats unfair!! i was told nooo, its a family thing. what bs! haha. i'v been studying korean a lot still, everytime i learn a new word they're soo impressed! i love it. they laugh at my korean a lot too. for the longest time i didnt know there was a difference in saying hello and good bye. but apparently there is, and i was always telling people hello when they left. oops. anyways, rose lives with ri, her host sister. i met her on the trip around korea. when they came to pick me up they talked for a long time.

sitting on the floor is only fun once in a while. my ankles dont like it very much. i mainly talked to rose cuz everyone else was speaking in korean. after a while it just starts to sound like jibberish. like back ground noise. wow i have been so deprived of talking to people in english

ri and rose don't live in seocheon they live in a close by town called beun (?) its a lot smaller than seocheon but its nice. they live in a house, not an apartment like ji-eun. ji-euns family is pretty well off money wise. but Ri's home is so much more homey and more laid back. her mom is a piano teacher, rose warned me, 8 in the morning i would surely be woken up by the kids poor attempts at learning piano. lol they have a piano parlor, it has like 4 or 5 tiny rooms with no door, with just a piano and a seat in each, thats really all that will fit. i'v seen that before at the place where ji-eun takes flute lessons. I met Roses dog, apple. i forget the word for apple in korean. apple, its whats for dinner! I also met Ri's brother ba.ng (pronounced BONG) that is so kick ass. His friend was there, min-young, who has claimed rose as his girlfriend. its so cute! (quiyopta!) lol minyoung only stayed for supper then left.

me and rose talked for the longest time! we talked about everything... EVERYTHING! just speaking in english to someone was such a relief, she showed me her art work, I AM SO AMAZED its incredible...i want to put some of it on my yahoo photo page. makes me wish i were creative. she is someone i can really relate to, too. there are things that have happened to her that happened to me and i felt like i could tell her my deepest darkest secrets! she reminds me A LOT of maxine, the things she says, i'd swear her and max are related. shes gotta get in touch with max some time. she has this saying "rose just is" and that was like, so maxine-ish! "max just... is!" and she's got me saying "oh you're a cute one!" in that old lady kinda voice. its really catchy, try it. :) after we were done confessing everything we had to go to the store for chocolate. yes a girl after my own heart! oh i miss chocolate, i should have brought my stash with me to her house, she would have appreciated that. lol. it was late when we went to the store, Ri was iffy, she doesnt like walking in the dark. sEriously, girls here are not sure of them selves at all. me and rose assured her though, we're beastly women :D the store was really close too. thats so awesome, i'v never lived anywheres close enough to a store that i can walk to! we bought 1 of every kind of chocolate they had. thas only about 8. the jenne chocolate was the best. i'll stock up on that when i run out of hersheys.

roses host family is so great, i think i'll be there a lot more often! bong has really good english so we talked to him about his trip and everything. his mom was right in the room, but she doesn't understand much english, nothing more than the basics, so we were free to say anything we wanted, it was nice. their host mom made snacks, then at around 11 at night, totally out of the bue, asks if we wanna go to the beach. hell yah. it was like 20 minutes away, maybe more. it was like old orchard beach, with the town right next to the water and everything. we went down on the beach and me and rose went wading. first time i had been in the water since i had gotten to korea. the water is a lot warmer than in maine. even at 11 AT night. they bought us fireworks and we got to light them off on the beach. koreans love fire works. people were lighting them off all around the beach, it was a sight. me and rose collected some shells and sand, so we can say "we got this sand IN SOUTH KOREA" all sophisticated like. 8)

the next morning i slept until 10:30! my fam usually wakes me up at 8:30 so that was pretty cool. then roses host mom made me FRENCH TOAST! mmmmm! me rose and ri all headed to the beach. on the way there they gave me my korean name! it's che min. :) i feel so special! rose ahs a korean name and its a lot like mine. we just can't escape it!

when i got there ji-eun had brought my dig. camera i ordered a few days ago. its really nice, i was so excited to use it. doesnt hold much though, stil needs a memory card.

the weather was so hot and sticky, i couldnt wait to jump in the water. i put sunblock on, but it didnt do too much good, i got a sunburn anyways. but it isnt too bad. it was nice and calming at first, just floating around. (we were in the yellow sea...doesnt sound that apealing. ) then everyone started a war over tubes, and it got prety rough. me and rose got the worst of it cuz people could just pick us up and dunk us really easy. me and rose started a mud war too. my new white shirt got so covered! it was everyone against me at one point, (rose ditched me toget some soju with emilio.) thats a rugged sport. then rose went and changed in the guys bathroom! it was all in korean so how were we suppose to know!? when we left i left my damn sunblock there. that was 10$ sunblock, i'm mad about that.

me and rose got married to the twins, at the chapel across from the bus stop. i wish i had pictures!! julian was the minister. rose married yeil and i married yeamin. haha they're so fun. crazy christian boys! no worries back home though, ;)

we took the bus back to seocheon for some pizza! yumm! i ididnt have a clean shirt (mine got completely covered in the mud war) and i felt really akward in just a bikini top (since most girls dont even wear shirts as skimpy as a tank top.) emilio lent me his shirt, since he had 2. it was really big on me, i felt like a toddler again :) the pizza was so good. its the pizza place right down the road from my apartment. then me and emilio got into a huge waterfight, made me miss waterfights with jack, lol! :) good times.

next door to the pizza place is a karaoke place. i'm really amazed at how common those are. it had a good selection of music, and me and rose sang to 2 :) you can just imagine how that sounded! :O haha but it was fun though. we stayed for about 2 hours. girls and guys sang! everyone was planning on going back tonight, but i guess things fell through.

today when we went to bring ji-eun to spanish lessons i convinced oma (host mom) to stop at the guitar place i had seen a few days ago. i selected a black guitar and they accepted my cash card, yay!! and the man their tuned it for me. its a family business, and we had some troubles with the language barrier, so they called their daughter over, who can speak english really well. shes only in elementary too! it was 180,000 won, about 160$ its a cort (?)electric guitar. but its a pretty nice guitar, i like it :) and oma got into a long conversation with the family which ended up in the girl talking me out for ice cream. i love it. then we sat down and had a long conversation. the girl is palnning on going to the us some time to study english. they asked me all about where i live and if i needed to call home i could use their phone cuz its free, which is soo awesome since i just bought an international fone card and they're extremely expensive. like 13$ for an hour! the whole family was really nice, and their daughter is going to come visit some time in seocheon!

we went back to emart today to get my film, cuz they only gave me 5 pictures from the last time and that really pissed me off so i made them reprint them, and i got them back today to find that there we're any that were so bad they had to be deleted. so that guy is full of shit and i wont take my film there ever again!!

finally i am done, its about 9:45 i'm gonna play some guitar before bed. school tomorrow!!! i'm excited. i even get to wear a lil uniform :) i have to get up at 7 in the morning though. in the us i use to get up at 6, so HAH!! :)

-lori-

food for the seoul
Mood:  a-ok
on the 20, friday, my teacher called and said i had to have the money for the trip to the school today. i couldn't get into my bank account because it is for bank of america's only and there aren't really any of those here. duh. we tried several banks, and my host mom set up a new account for me but we couldnt transfer any of the money until i got to seoul, which we had already planned on doing. i was kind of worried, but i ddin't let it bother me for the rest of the day.

for lunch me and my host sister went out to eat with julian and his host brothers and host mom. she is really nice. the camera men who are doing the film on the exchange students were there too, and video taped us practically the whole time. i get so freakin camera shy, and i hate being watched when i'm eating so i didn't enjoy the meal as msuch as i could have. i did have fun though, they tried teaching me some new korean words. i remember, pabo, stupid but in a teasing way. julian taught me that. haha. :)

the camera people brought us back to my house, and julian and his host brother, ji-eun 1 and 2, and me all stayed there. we mostly just talked, ji-eun 2, my host sister, is obsessed with julian! haha its sooo cute. she has a ton of pictures of him on her camera phone. sooo sweet. i talked to julian a lot while he was here and i like him more now that i had the chance to get to know him. i dont know where rose and emilio where, they didn't come to lunch. the camera people taped us talking and stuff. i think its going to be a boring video, but we'll see. maybe some sort of drama will happen and they'll get it on tape, i can kinda see that happening with ji-eun and julian ;)

i went to ji-euns flute lessons, her and ji-eun 1 take flute lessons together. there are piano lessons goin on in the same room so it gets a little loud. they are envious of me because i could learn flute in school at no cost to me if i wanted to, but here they have to pay to learn an instrument. i never thought i'd appreciate having a band class at mt view. well i still don't, but at least they do! i didn't stay there the whole time, the instructors daughter came. her mom told her i was there so she got out of school to come see me!! her name is hara, or hala. (their L's and R's are mixed into the same letter. so my name comes out sounding kinda like rori or lodi) she speaks excellent english. She is my age (17 korean years) but she is already in a highschool. she says it goes on for 13 HOURS!!! OMG i feelso bad for her. she said it use to be only 5 like most highschools but they they changed it. if i were her i'd switch highschools. 13 hours!! holy shit!! it really makes me appreciate the school system in america more too. she was really nice, we talked a lot. its refreshing to talk to someone in english and have them understand you. we went out to eat at a fast food restaurant and there was an upstairs. i guess there are usually upstairs to fast food restaurants cuz of the lack of floor space. they just build up. you could write anything you want on the walls, so i wrote a lil messege too :) it was practically covered in writing, on the ceiling chairs tables everything. people should be able to do thatd in america too.

on the 21, that was yesterday, me and my family went to seoul to do some shopping. we left at 11:30 and went by train. it took 4 hours to get there. i thought we were closer than that. i didn't bring anything to do so i was pretty bored. i looked out the window and napped a lot. 4 hours is a lot of time to not be doing anything. when we finally arrived there we hopped on a subway for a lil bit. i don't know the name of where we went, but it was right near where jung lives. first we went out to eat at mcdonalds!!!! it was so good!! i miss fast food . then we tried finding a bank that would accept my card, since i had had so much touble with it in seochung. finally we found a bank that accepted my card, and it let me take out a little bit. i tried withdrawing everything to put it into a different account but it won't let me. it was sooo agrivating i almost wanted to cry, i can't get to any of my money when im in seochun and in seoul it wouldnt let me take more that 100$ out. my whole money situation is so fucked up. but i took what i could get and we went shopping! there's a pretty expensive department store called. who ever said buying clothes in korea would be cheap was wrong.i bought 2 pairs of shorts, 2 shirts, and a new bag. it wasn't all that great of a shopping experience, and i love to shop, but no one spoke english and my host mom just nodded and smiled when i asked her a question. so i had to just go with the flow of things. in the dressing rooms, like in houses, there's a lil place to take your shoes off, and then there are shelves, with tissues and hand lotions and things on them. but there werent' any mirrors! you left the dressing room and the mirror was on the other side of the door. i spent 990,000 won, that's a little less than 90$. jung met us at the subway station near her home. she lives in seoul so i don't understand why she goes to dong-gang middle school. it has to be several hours away, she must stay at someones house or something, but arent there middle schools in seoul?? hmm. me ji-eun and jung went out to eat at a place called new york hotdog. seoul is such a wanna be new york. lol this place even had pictures of the twin towers on the wall. 3 of them actually. it was kind of cool, but like...what about the eifel tower, or something, haha and they sell a lot of clothing that says new york, or has american major league baseball teamnames on it. i'm not big into that, even in the US. it's even weirder here. i enjoyed the american style food though. it was about 8 when we left and the train ride back wasnt so bad, cuz i slept the whole way.

so thats about everything, if you read it this far, i pity you, :P but thanks for checking it out anyways!! -later-

lori!

i like to watch the sun rise... in a strangers arms and this is home, this is home this is hoooome
Mood:  special
Now Playing: olympic games on tv
its probably just about noon in the states, but my day is already ending. it's so weird. I just called mom, i had called her when i got off the plane too. i was told not to call home too oftenwhen i first arrive cuz it interferes with getting adaped, but i had to tell her about my new address and such.


the plane ride was loooong and boring. i sat next to a black boy who was going into the service in korea. we were probably the only non asian people on the entire plane, and we got a lot of strange looks. people literaly turned all the way around in their seats to look at us. kind of akward....


when i got there i stayed with chongs family for the night. they gave me flowers and things it was so nice. her family is really kind and generous. she is the only one who speaks english in her family, and it was a little difficult some times. at like 11 they took me out karyoking, it was so much fun. i was nervous to at first but they had a lot of american songs i knew. i didnt have to stand up in front of everyone to sing, it was just like a little room with tv screens and everyone goes in there. we went karyoking the second night of the tour too. aparently it is a popular past time here. i love it. guys in america would never do something like that it was awesome that everyone could get together like that and have fun. the teachers went too. the girls sang a lot then some of the guys sang too. ye-il danced, he dances like michael jackson, it was soo hilarious i wish i had brought my camera. yea-min dances like that too but he is the shy one. i couldnt understand what they were singing but the music was good. it was stuff you can dance to, and everyone was dancing and singing along it was a sight. julian, the belgium exchange student dances like a mad man, literally, but he's only trying to make a fool of himself, and make people laugh, its the way people use to dance in the 50's or something, but it's crazy. we stayed up really late singing, and had to get up so early the next morning. it was a long day. all the days seem so long and i get all mixed up, whathappened which days, but i had a blast anyways. we stayed at youth hostels n there werent' any beds, but the floor was a soft kind of material made special for the purpose of sleeping on. we had blankets and pillows. since it was just me yea-lim and chong the on the 3rd night i heaped all the remaining blankets together and its like a bed and lee and chong took pictures of me while i was sleeping. how embarressing... lol


I'm not staying with yea-lim like i was suppose to. there isnt enough room in their house. Ye-il and Yea-min, (twins) were going to go to america but they didnt' get their visas in time so now they are planning to go to india, so they will learn english. good luck with that. everyone here is trying to learn english. It seems like me and rose, the other exchange student from the us are the only ones who know how to speak it correcly. so we are instantly popular. I love it. the trip i went on for four days was an 'english camp" but when they werent talking to me orthe teachers theysusally talked in korean anyways. yeah-lim went to the us for a year so her engish is alright. she still has some troubles on the pronunciation of some words, buti help her with those. restaurant is difficult for her. han-young's is also very good, considering he's only 14. In Korea people are a year older than they are in american years. I am 17 here. so he is really 15, in korean years. i get so confused. yea-lim is 17 too, and the twins are...16 i think...in korean years. they don't speak english too well, and they are reallly shy. Korean guys are sooo shy, and the girls are the braver ones. the girls are really loud, and it is normal.


I think korean girls are really pretty. but to them pale skin and blue eyes and light colored hair is really pretty. they tell me all the time that they think i am beautiful. when i went to buy an ice cream today the lady said to yea-lim, who i like my translater, "the american girl, she is pretty. she looks like a doll " i thought that was really cool. i get a lot of funny looks too. light skinned people are rare here. at a temples me and yea-lim were yelling ahnyoung-haseyo to the people and they were so surprised. they dont expect to hear american people speaking their language.


the temples we went to were really pretty. the cealings were painted in really cool designs, and the wood working was amazing. on day 3 we woke up at the ass crack of 6 to go see a budhist temple. it had a large statue of buddah and he had a gold circle on his forhead that catches the sun in the morning and reflects the light beautifully. unfortunatley there was no sun that day. it was raining really bad for most of the time we were tourng. it rains a lot in korea during the summer time. they bring umbrellas everywhere incase it is raining or if the sun is shining too. the sun is so intense here. i burn easy as it is, but here, the sun was only out for a few minutes and i got burned good on my shoulders. yea-lim let me borrow her hat and my face isnt burned that much, its a lil pink. that temple we went to was high up on a hill and it was downpourng to bad i was afraid there would be floods, but no one else seemed to be worried. my shoes got soaked, which made walking difficult because my feet hurt. yea-lim convinced han-young to carry me, and the korean girls thought it was SOOO FUNNY... they are entertainment deprived i think. they watch a lot of soap operas and go crazy when someone on their soap kisses someone. its really funny to see their reactions. sometimes they act kind of immature, in my opinion but it is because they arent use to being exposed tothe same amount of r or x rated material americans are exposed to.


on day 2 we went to a folk vollage. it was really neat to see how they use to do things, and there was a lot to look at. yea-lim is like my guide around and she tells me what people are saying when they describe things in korean. the other exchange students pretty much stay to themselves, actaully, they stick together. the girls are all wow'd over julian becuase he has pale skin. emilio who is from mexico, doesnt get quite as much attention, but neither of them know any korean either. rose has been here for 2 weeks and knows a little more about it than the rest of us.

in the united states we are getting an exchange student from mexico and belgium and that is where the exchange students from here are from. those countries must have sent out a lot of people. Chong is going to belgium on the 25. tracy leaves tomorrow to go down to portland and she will catch her plain saturday. they are going to the same location, so tracy will probably meet chong. i showed chong what tracy looks like, but im sure they ill meet. how ironic is that!?

on day 3 we went to a tomb site, and had a chinese guy for our guide, he tried speaking english but his accent was so strong he couldnt make himself clear, so i really didnt understand andything about the tombs, just that its wehre they buried the kind with all his gold and riches. yea-lim was really interested in that, and the bell we went to see. i dont knwo what it was called, ic an't remember any of the names of these places, they all have really long names. but we took a lot of pictures at each place.


everybody appreciated the buddhist temples even though they arent buddhist, i dont think. i dont know what religion my family is, but they won't make me go to church every sunday, so i am thankful for that. i'd like to go a few times to see what it is like here, maybe. if anything i'd like to learn more about the buddhist religion. i was interested in that before i came to korea, and i thought that korea had a lot of buddhists, but now they are mostly christians.


things are a lot different now that i'm not being compared to tracy, or with her, its like being an only child. its really cool, i always watned to know what it would be like, and now i tell people i havea twin and they are amazed, like woah there are really 2 of you??? so she must be really pretty too then??? lol they think american anything is beautiful. i love that. and asian fashion is funky too which is cool,i cant wait to go shopping for new clothes. i think i brought enough to last me ayear, but i have whole different style from them and i want to get the full "asian experience" and thatmeans shopping for new clothes!!!

well thta all now everyone else has gone to bed!! good night ahnung! sarang-aeyou!