Cheonan City

So, Friday was our first full day here, and we had an open period from 12 until about 5. Lauren and I ran into Anthony and Violet at breakfast (friends of mine from Lubbock times), and they told us they were using that time to go into town to the mall because Violet's hair straightener wasn't working. Neither was either one of ours (my hair was a mess!).

We caught a cab into town, me, Lauren and Crystal (she's super cool, and Australian!) in one cab, Anthony & Violet in the second. The cab only cost like 2,000 won, which is like $2-awesome! Turned out the mall wasn't actually a mall but a department store, The Galleria. But it was huuuuge, like 5 floors. Plus they had hair dryers and straighteners, so all was well with the world. In addition to the fact that there was a MAC counter, as I said before, which filled my heart with butterflies and I was able to get some more powder, hooray!

Then we went to lunch at this little dumpling place, which was...interesting. I finally tried kimchi. It was...spicy. And not delicious. But hopefully I'll be able to force myself to try it enough times so that I'll begin to like it, like little kids. I also had some dumpling soup. The broth was really good at least! It was like egg drop soup, but with these strange dumplings in it. I wasn't a fan of the dumplings, but everyone else loved them so, go figure, it was just me.

Getting back to the campus was ridiculous, we tried 3 different times to catch a cab back and each time the driver would look at the address we were trying to get to and say "No, no," and kick us out of the cab. It was so frustrating because we had no way of knowing why they wouldn't take us back! Finally we got on the bus for a few blocks, then got out and climbed a mountain. Seriously, it's so hilly here, I really do appreciate flat Lubbock after that trek. If I had been in a proper jacket and sneakers or something, it probably wouldn't have been so bad. Oh well, we made it!

Then we had opening ceremony that night, which basically was just like, here's all the rules. Then we had our welcome dinner! Thankfully, I brought PowerBars!!! It's just going to take some time for me to adjust to all the strange foods...

I almost cried (tears of joy!) Sunday morning though because for breakfast there was PEANUT BUTTER! And APPLES! I had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and apples, it was glorious!

After breakfast, we went on a field trip to a Korean Folk Village, which is actually an amusement park kind of place, but the buildings were actually from a Korean Folk Village so it was legit. This was where my Second Meal I Actually Enjoyed was had-plain rice and pork skewers! Um, I could probably have eaten like 5 more skewers, they were delicious.

More about the village next time!