The Weekend

Saturday May 26th

I went with a friend to the opening ceremony for Cambodia since it was their national day. Every country gets a national day and on that day they have a ceremony at 10 am in Expo Hall consisting of a speech by the Expo Commissioner I believe, a speech by a dignitary from the country, and then an hour long cultural performance. Cambodia had some really interesting dances. One was about the king of the monkeys sending off its monkey minions to go save his queen or something. It was very Oz-like because the dancers actually acted like monkeys and so it reminded me of that scene with the monkeys flying around in the Wizard of Oz. Another dance was to promote good crop yields so part of the dance consisted of women acting like they were picking berries. But all in all it was pretty interesting.

After that we got lunch and then I had the afternoon shift for work. After work a group of us hung out at Brittany's apartments just chatting.

Sunday May 27th

I went out with Brittany for lunch to an origari restaurant. It served triangularly-shaped kimbap. I explained to one of the workers that I was vegetarian in order for her to recommend something to me from the menu. The first thing she recommended was Kimchi Tuna. Then she recommended something else and I tentatively said yes not knowing what it was. However I looked it up in a dictionary and she had recommended something with anchovies. So that go rejected. Finally, she recommended something else, but I had little faith by now in her suggestions, so I took a menu so I could translate it. It was pollack roe. Everything on the menu had some kind of meat in it so Brittany got her food to go and we went to another restaurant that I've been frequenting since the owners try really hard to always accommodate my vegetarianism. Brittany didn't want to eat there since she already had food, which didn't bother the owners. In fact, they gave her a free side soup with her other food because they said it was good for her health. They also gave us free tomato slices as dessert, which they've done several times. I always eat at least a couple slices out of obligation since I don't have the heart to explain to them that I don't like tomatoes.

The afternoon shift was probably the most hectic it has been all expo. The weekend has been kind of crazy because Monday is Buddha's Birthday and a national holiday. So people have 3 days off and decided to make day trips down here for the expo.

After the shift, Jenna, Brittany, and I went out to 노래방 (the karaoke room) and sang our hearts out.

Friday, May 25th

My last free day. More laundry. I feel like I do laundry all the time. I definitely am doing it way more often than when I was at college because here I often go through two outfits a day (uniform + other clothes), occasionally even three when the weather changes too much. Anyway, I went and got lunch with my roommate. I ordered 야채김밥 (vegetable kimbap) at a restaurant I'd been to before, so the owners knew I was vegetarian. Plus I ordered a vegetarian dish, but the dish still came with 오뎅 (fish cakes). After I asked them about it though, the owner apologized and offered to make me new ones, but I just pulled the fish out. It was weird though because it also had like the Japanese salad dressing in it along with a leafy vegetable that had a very unsettling texture. Lesson learned. I'll still definitely go back to that place because the owners are so nice, but I won't get 김밥 (kimbap) again.

An hour or so later I met up with people just getting off work. After losing track of time for a couple hours, we headed over to the Big O for the Big 5 Concert or whatever it was called. We got to the concert at 5 pm and waited an hour and a half for it to start at 6:30 pm. Even coming that early though wasn't soon enough. The seats we got were okay, but too far away. Next time we're planning on camping there from 3 pm on.  On the bright side, I got to see not only 2AM, but also SE7EN and MBLAQ, so it was great. After that I got some dinner and then went to the rave at the Big O. A middle-aged couple started dancing with me and my friends, so it was really funny. After that we went to the Argentina Pavilion for a party, where sadly everyone actually knew how to dance so I totally failed at that. But it's all good. Then everyone migrated to the cafeteria which turns into a "Vivid Beer Party" after 8 pm every day. It really just turns into the hangout for everyone since they serve food and you can be as loud as you want. They recently started cracking down on partying and loud noise at the apartments and so as a replacement, they've opened up the cafeteria as a new hangout joint since it's like 200 feet outside of Expo Town. That's totally going to do so much to reduce the noise level, but whatever. I randomly met a girl who was from Leawood and another girl currently living in Midtown, so that was weird. It's crazy how it can be such a small world, even if you're from Kansas. After I got back to my apartment, I immediately jumped in the shower and started yet another load of laundry because I reaked of smoke, one of the downsides to Korea. Not that Koreans or even Asians are the only smokers. Europeans are pretty bad offenders too. Luckily, the Expo when it's open is actually smoke-free, except for designated smoking rooms or my lungs would be dead. I thought KU had way too many smokers, but that's nothing like here.

Thursday, May 24th
I got lunch with two friends at a Chinese restaurant and then we went to the downtown shopping center. We wanted to go to the beach, but it was cloudy and so the beach got put aside for another day. On a side note, I had been super super excited to go to the beach since it is supposed to be a black sand beach. However, a friend who has already gone told me at most the sand was just a darker shade of brown. Disappointing. Hopefully it'll still be a good beach though. Anyway we killed two hours and then got some gelato, which was way cheaper than it was at the Italian Pavilion. Like 5 gigantic scoops was about 13,000 or 14,000 won. I will be heading back there. To clarify I knew there was gelato in Korea, but I didn't realize there was a Caffe Ti Amo nearby until I saw it there and about died from happiness.

My friends got off work so we went to go see Sheketak. I wanted to see the performance again and I wanted everyone else to see it since I thought they would like it.

After that, the people who had gotten off work were starving so we went and got dinner, but I didn't eat since I was still stuffed from eating all afternoon. After that we finally went to a 노래방 (karaoke room), where the four of us sang our (somewhat tone-deaf) hearts out. It was a lot of fun. We sang for like 2 hours and my voice was so dead by the end of it, but it totally didn't matter. Afterwards, we went back to Sarah's apartment and watched an episode of Once Upon a Time because Erin is obsessed with the show. We then started an episode of 보스를 지켜라 (Protect the Boss) in exchange in order to introduce her to Korean dramas. I left at the start of that though in order to meet Eric and Bjorn, who were planning on going to a party hosted by Australia. But while the Eric and I were waiting for Bjorn to get ready, we realized we were both starving. So instead we went out to get dinner and since all the indoor restaurants were closed by this point, we ate at a restaurant stall of sorts. The food was super spicy because as we'd discovered recently, Koreans had been watering down the spiciness simply because we're foreigners. We've been having to ask restaurants to make it spicy so they don't do that. But these ladies didn't even care. They just gave us spicy food. Mine was fine, but my friend's dish was even spicier than mine and he looked uncomfortable trying to eat it. We got 팟빙수 (pat bing su, red bean shaved ice) as dessert though to help cleanse our palates from the spiciness.

Group B Bonding

Wednesday, May 23rd
I had work in the morning. Yay. Then in the afternoon I went to Emart and got some more mango juice. I am drinking that stuff like no other. I think it's my substitute for milk since I can't find any good milk here. Not that I have tried all that many brands or kinds of milk. Chugging mango juice is just the easier option. Anyway, after that I went to the Blue House (I forget the Korean name), a 갈비 (galbi, beef) restaurant, for dinner.

 

Obviously I didn't eat the meat, but I stole some of the mushrooms and onions. I got a 된장 찌개 (bean sprout soup). Afterwards, I hung out with two friends and went to a cafe. I got some honey bread and it was absolutely delicious. Then on the way back there was this stand that had just been set up where they were selling 갓빵 (gat-bbang) fresh from the oven. It's like a roll filled with red bean and it's a local specialty. It was soo good and pretty cheap. I am so going back there.

When we were going back through Expo, the Big O Rave was happening so we joined in (and in case there's any confusion you should read rave as outdoor dance party for all ages). It was playing European house music because the DJ was Swedish, meaning I knew none of the songs, but it didn't really matter. People just pretty much jumped up and down regardless of the song.

Whole weekend of New

Friday, May 18th

Free day. I just did chores in the morning because they have to be done no matter where in the world you are. After that I met up with some friends and went with them to go find out where the bus terminal was. My friend and I went to see the Big O Show. Despite only showing up only 45 minutes early, we got really good seats. I need to record the full show at some point.

Saturday, May 19th
In the morning I went with two friends to 서시장 (West Market), an outdoor market in order to buy produce. The produce at Emart was super expensive so we were hoping to get some for better prices. The produce at the market was sooo cheap but they give it to you in massive quantities. It's still probably cheaper though to buy massive amounts and throw some away than buy produce at Emart, not that I'm suggesting that. I'm just going to go with friends every time and then split what we get. You can also buy fresh meat and seafood there, but even if I ate meat, I couldn't buy it. I think as an American I feel the need to make sure everything is oversanitized because I was definitely feeling some culture shock by the fact much of the meat was just sitting out unrefrigerated. I was also not a fan of the pig heads staring at me. The place also understandably didn't have the most fantastic smell either.

 

However the market had cheap, delicious 호떡 (Ho-tteok), which looks like pancakes, but tastes like cinnamon toast. It was sooo good. I'm going to have to buy more of them.

After that I made a veggie stir fry with all the veggies, aka I cut up a bunch of veggies and dumped them in a frying pan. Master chef right here. Then a friend and I wandered around the expo and got dinner at Turkey. Yum. The food there is really good.

Sunday, May 20th and Monday, May 21st - I had my two afternoon shifts, but I can't remember what I did besides that for the life of me.

Tuesday, May 22nd

I had my first morning shift, so I was really tired after work. But I am determined not to take naps and royally screw up my sleeping cycle, so I just wandered around the expo to stay awake. The good thing about it being in Yeosu is that like everyone is at the expo. I ran into someone I know and talked to him for like a half hour. Then I went to the Theme Pavilion because people had been asking us what was there and none of us knew. It was okay. Then I went to the Sheketak performance and it was absolutely fantastic. Sheketak is an Israeli percussionist dance group.

 

After that I hung out with friends I ran into at the performance. I got some 떡볶이 (tteok-bokk-i, spicy rice cakes) and felt like a champ since I could eat it all. When I was here two years ago, I couldn't even eat one because it was too spicy.

After that we went to the Big O Show. It really doesn't get old. That is except for the song they sing at the beginning.

Hey! Ho! Welcome to the show!
Hey! Ho! Welcome to the Big O!

Repeat for like 5 minutes to an impossibly upbeat tune and it becomes an affront to the English language.

After the show, they had an outdoor dance party on the stage in front of the Big O for like a half hour or hour. It was a lot of fun despite my inability to dance. Then I went and hung out at Red Wolf (a restaurant in our apartment complex) with a bunch of Danes. It's so cool how easy it is to interact with people from anywhere and everywhere here. It's definitely my favorite part of the Expo.

The massive blog posts begin...

I'm just going to do this all in one entry.

Tuesday, May 15th
One of my suitemates and I went to Emart to get groceries. We decided to be adventurous and take the bus, which took forever to come, but it didn't really matter. The route to the store was rather circuitous, but it was kind of like getting a free tour of the city. Fruit is so dang expensive at the store, so I'm hoping to hit up an outdoor market we saw during the ride soon. After getting groceries, we went to the Local Governments Pavilion. All the people there were so friendly. I think they were really bored and wanted to practice English. Anyway, we got several gifts just for being white I'm pretty sure. After that I headed to work for the afternoon shift.

Wednesday, May 16th
I had my first morning shift. I showed up there at 8 only to find out I was a half hour early, which meant I could have slept more. After my shift was over I hung out with my Thai friend and we went on a very serious hunt for pins (the underground currency of the Expo, remember?). Pretty much he did all the talking since he had these VIP tickets to his pavilion he would give in exchange for pins. Granted anyone with an Expo work pass can get in VIP in pretty much all pavilions, including both the Thailand and USA Pavilion, but hey it worked as a bargaining chip. I now have a bunch of pins, only one of which I bought (from the UN simply because it was the UN). After that we headed back to Expo Town then I rushed off to buy both him and my roommate birthday cakes since today was both of their birthdays. Then I hung around the apartment until my rommate returned home, upon which I surprised her with the cake and a bad rendition of the happy birthday song. I tried to get my Thai friend to come without letting him know it was his birthday, so that failed. But a group of us just chilled at our apartment talking and eating cake.

Thursday, May 17th

I had the morning shift again and this time I actually showed up at 8:30, which is when we were supposed to show up, meaning I got an extra wonderful hour of sleep. My shift went fine and I got off at 3 pm. After that we walked around to see some other pavilions. My friend from the Thailand Pavilion started his shift at 4:30 so we had him paged right before that and gave him his cake and sang happy birthday to him even though his birthday was yesterday. Oh well. After that we headed back to Expo Town and I chilled for a bit and then grabbed dinner with a friend. I ordered 된장찌개 (soy bean paste stew) and they told me there was no meat, but there was oysters. I just took them out, so it wasn't that big of a deal. As far as meat goes, oysters are some of the easiest things to pull out. After that I went back to my friend's apartment and chilled. Other people came back and I got to meet Koreans who spoke like fluent Spanish so that was really cool. Then we headed over to meet up with a lot of the people working at both the American and Norwegian pavilions. After that we went back to an American's apartment to hang out. A bunch of people showed up from several different pavilions so it was really cool to get to talk with everyone.

First Shift

I toured some more pavilions with my friend today. There's a contest in the American Pavilion to see who can go to all the other pavilions first and I am determined to win. Plus it was rainy all day, so there wasn't much else to do. We ate at the Turkish Pavilion for lunch and I don't even remember the name of the thing I had, but it tasted good. It was kind of looked like a stretched out pizza, but it tasted really good.

After that I toured some more pavilions and then I had my first shift. I was one of the people who provided breaks to other people, meaning my shift was pretty chill. In fact I got to go home an hour earlier than everyone else because I had nothing to do and I saved an hour's worth of breaks up. Currently we're closing at about 9 pm every night, but if the pavilion gets busier later in the summer, we're expected to work until 11 pm.

After the shift I was just dead. My legs were killing me from all the standing and my back was sore from all the bowing. It was like waitressing, but worse because we just stood around a lot instead of being able to move. But honestly, I really don't think our work situation is bad at all. I really enjoy it.

Free Day

Sunday, May 13th

I spent the morning going shopping at a shopping center I didn't know existed here. My friend needed a pair of pants for his uniform, so we went searching for those. The best way to describe the area would be an outdoor mall with a bunch of tiny tiny stores. At one point we went into a  Lotteria (McDonald's like Korean fast food chain). Those people acted like they'd never seen white people before. Soo many stares. I also went to the restroom there and the ceiling was like an inch lower than my head. It was weird. The shopping center is within walking distance, but it's really easy to get lost in with all the alleyways going every which way. By the end of it we had no idea where we were, so we just took a taxi back.

In the afternoon, we toured more pavilions. I just want to say it just blows my mind how well some Europeans speak English. They're always like pardon my poor English....Whatever. It's fluent. Insanely fluent. Both a Danish guide and Lithuanian guide gave us full tours of their respective pavilions. The only weird fluke I remember was the Lithuanian guy using the word tranquilize to mean calm down. He was talking about how they would give amber to their children because when the children bite it, it releases some chemical that tranquilizes them, but he definitely meant calming children down. But otherwise, it was just scary how well they both spoke English.

In the evening, we went to the restaurant in the Italian Pavilion to try Italian food. It was pretty expensive, but we decided to try it since it's not like any of us planned on going to Italy anytime soon. It was super embarrassing though because I couldn't understand half of what the Italian waiter said and at one point he asked what we wanted to drink. We all said water, but then he asked if we wanted sparkling water. I couldn't think of the word distilled and said and I quote, "No, like tap water." He looked at me funny and my friends were like she means distilled. It turns out he had said, "Do you all want sparkling or distilled water?" but I couldn't understand the last half, leading to that faux pas. All in all, we ended up paying 56,000 won for the meal, which included 3 entrees, a dessert, and an 8,000 won bottle of Italian distilled water. We don't plan on eating there again, but it was cool to at least eat there once because Italian food definitely doesn't taste like Italian food in the United States. I just had spaghetti and even that tasted so different.

Opening Craziness

Saturday, May 12

Today the expo opened to the public, meaning we all had to show up at the American Pavilion at 7:45 am. We hung around for about a half hour until Ambassador Kim (U.S. Ambassador to Korea) showed up. We waited some more. Then we all took an oath, which was a pretty silly oath at that. But it was really cool to meet the ambassador. He is incredibly friendly and good-natured. At 9 am, we opened the pavilion to the public. A middle-aged Korean woman gave me some snack to eat, which was nice of her. I also got to take a photo with an adorable little Korean girl. After a couple shows though I got to leave since it wasn't my shift. I killed two hours and then had lunch with Deputy Assistant Secretary Stout along with a group of some of the other American students. The food was pretty good and the luncheon was really informal. She let us ask her a lot of questions about her job and the State Dept. so it was really interesting. Then my friend and I went off to explore the pavilions. We technically went to the Peruvian Pavilion first, but it was really lame. So we decided it didn't count and that our first pavilion visit would be the one after we got our Expo passports. So off we went looking for those things. It took forever to find them. We kept having to ask all these Koreans and they kept saying it was by the ice cream shop, but there was no ice cream shop. Finally it turned out that they were being sold behind the little booth cafe...not sketchy at all. But they look super nice and only cost 5,000 won so I can't complain. Anyway, after that we went to the Swiss Pavilion and it was so cool! It was really modern. It started out in a black cave with writing on the wall about water and often phrased to the water:

 Some questions were a bit weird, like this one. Water is in bulgogi (Korean beef dish). I assume they were trying to engage Koreans with things like this. Not sure.

An example of a direct question to the water.








I would also like to say we got VIP access. We were walking to the main line, but we got pulled out and a Swiss guy took us through a side entrance to the front section. He also explained their pavilion and explained how they related Switzerland, a landlocked country, to the oceans, explaining that they have glacial water. I think they did a pretty good job spinning it. Anyway, we got VIP access because we're also expo workers, but it was still pretty cool.

After the cave, you entered into a circular room that had mirrors over all the walls, creating a really cool effect. In the center was a giant screen with water on the surface:

 
 


Then there was a room with a screen on one wall while the floor was jagged, making it feel like you were on a glacier. After that you entered a tiny room with ice in it that was really really old.

After that we came out to the last room. At the front they were giving out water purified by Swiss water purifiers in these cones, making it really hard to drink. Half my water ended up on the floor, meaning they had to call a lady to clean the spill. Embarrassing. I apologized and, on the bright side, we started talking to the Swiss lady and we had a pretty interesting conversation with her.

Anyway, after the Swiss Pavilion, we headed to the Uruguay Pavilion. It had some artifacts in it and a long, small screen showing ocean images. All in all though it wasn't that interesting. We talked to a Korean guy there who said he was American. I have no idea why he was working there though because he spoke no Spanish. A lot of pavilions just hired on Korean English-speakers since they need employees that can communicate with the vast majority of their entrants, i.e. Koreans.

The next one we hit up was Tunisia, which was a bit better. It at least had some interesting artwork. It was just one long hallway of art and artifacts. In the middle, it had an awkwardly empty square.

 

After that we hit up Sweden, which was also okay. It was a giant room. On one side it had a giant collage, which I liked.

It also had these little pods for listening to Swedish music:

That was about all there was to do there. So after that we went to the Angolan Pavilion. It had a pre-show:

 

And then a main show. The screen was curved which helped give the feeling of depth, but the video quality wasn't that great.

Then we exited into the last part of the pavilion. Little did I know what I was in for. There was a dance performance which I thought was really cool and I was taking photos. The next thing I know though, one of the Angolan workers is gesturing for me to come with him to go onstage. I immediately gesture that that is not happening. I don't dance and the last place I want to be is on that stage. But my friend like shoves me towards the guy and my resistance is pretty much futile. So on stage I am supposed to learn this dance...while they do it. My zero dance talent in combination with a skirt that doesn't allow much more than short steps forward equals disaster. I totally made a complete fool of myself. I even got outdanced by some middle aged Korean guy. Yeah absolutely mortifying. And there were giant cameras recording it, so that's fantastic. The guy I think eventually took pity on me because he let me kind of hid behind the people dancing for part of the show since I had absolutely no idea what on earth I was doing. My friend was laughing so hard because I was just that bad. They tried to be nice and were like oh you did so well...Yep definitely not true. It was soooooo bad. Oh well. I just hope that doesn't end up on video anywhere. My friend took a video, but luckily it was on my camera, so that's getting uploaded never.

After that, my friend left for work and I went back to the apartments to change and regain my self dignity. Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon touring other pavilions.

Spain Pavilion:

 

All the cylinders have something to do with some expedition Spain did. Not really sure. It looked really pretty, but I didn't get much out of it besides that.






Thailand Pavilion
 Preshow narrator, it was a bit weird

 


 Little kids definitely loved the preshow and main show


Main show used all the ceilings and walls as a screen

Qatar Pavilion

 This is what would be given as a dowry during old times.

I don't even care that the pavilion didn't seem to relate much at all to the oceans. Why? Because there's free henna.















The United Nations Pavilion

 

KPOP Letdown

Friday, May 11

We had the day off meaning that none of us did anything until like 1 pm, when we all finally left the apartments. We grabbed lunch at a new place and it was super delicious. I ordered 콩나물국밥 (bean sprout soup with rice) and it was delicious. The only problem was that there were tiny shrimp in the soup, but I tried to pick them all out. After that we went back to the apartments to get our stipends. Then a group decided to get cell phones and we tagged along, but we just chilled in Paris Baguette. That place has just been such a disappointment. Everything looks so delicious, but its taste is meh. We tried to take a picture with this cute little Korean boy, but he was scared of us, so that didn't happen. When we went back to meet our friends, we saw they were in the phone store still, so we decided to go to a fruit store. After crossing the street though, we looked back into the store and they had totally disappeared. Later we found that they had gone to some super sketch phone store where they got really cheap secondhand phones. Anyway, after heading back and chilling in our apartments for an hour we went to the Expo Site. They were having this huge concert with Kpop stars Big Bang and 2NE1, but tickets were only given to dignitaries and pavilion directors, meaning the only people going had no idea who any of those people were. So we met up with some Germans and just kept walking trying to get as close to the stage as possible. The farthest we could get though was by the performers tents and we knew that Kpop superstars wouldn't be in tents in the cold. So after hanging around for about a half hour, we left. On the way to find dinner, we ran into a whole group of Russian sailors who were 17 years old (one was 18). How the heck do you have 17 year olds in your military? And then let them wonder around a foreign country doing whatever? I was just really surprised. My friend spoke Russian so we stopped to talk to them, but they knew like 3 phrases in English (and knew no Korean). They're only here for a week though. Anyway we found a place to eat  and we watched the performance on a TV in the restaurant. The kpop performances weren't that great unsurprisingly because they were performing for diplomats, not rabid fans. Anyway, there was also a fireworks show, which was fun, but Americans def do better fireworks shows. They would just do a firework at a time and then as the finale release a bunch at once, but it just was boring for the most part. 

Service FTW

Thursday, May 10th

We met Deputy Assistant Secretary Stout during the morning. Then I quickly grabbed lunch because I volunteered to work the afternoon too. Italian media and Al-Jazeera came through so the Pavilion asked for a couple student ambassadors to stay behind and run the shows.In the evening a group of us went out to dinner. We walked past all the restaurants super close to the Expo so that we could try something new. The place we went to was okay. I'm not sure if they made their food less spicy because we were Americans or that's just how they do it, but their 고추장 (go-chu-jang, spicy red pepper paste) actually tasted sweet. It was weird. But the owners were super nice. They even gave us fruit as a free dessert. Then we stopped by the bakery next-door because delicious smells of cinnamon were wafting out. We spent like $3 in there total and they gave us a free packet of cookies.

We are too International

Wednesday, May 9th

Today was Media Day, so it was another soft opening, but this time specifically for the press. It really wasn't that crowded. I also luckily wasn't interviewed because all the interviewees had to respond in English and then translate their response to Korean and I didn't really want to be under that type of pressure because I would probably mess up.

That evening my friends and I watched Spiderman 3, yet another American action movie playing on TV. There are seriously so many American shows on TV. You can watch all the latest shows from the US here. Anyway, on the elevator down when we were headed back to our apartment we ran into one of the guys on our program who told us that a group of us from the American Pavilion were getting together with people from the Thailand Pavilion and Kazakhstan Pavilion. There was still several hours until the get together though, so three of us went out to explore the neighborhood. This is quickly becoming a nightly occurrence for us since there's really nothing else to do and we're hoping if we walk around enough, something will come to light. Once again though, nothing really did. Although we keep walking down the same road pretty much, so we shouldn't ever really be surprised by that fact.

Anyway, later that night we met up with people from the Thailand Pavilion at the front of Expo Town. The people from Kazakhstan didn't show and ironically neither did the guy who told us about it (It turns out he walked right by us multiple times and just failed to notice we were there), although we were later joined by an Italian and 2 Korean guys for a bit. The group of us ended up all just chilling and it was so much fun. There was a group of Korean girls near us who were playing some game and whoever lost each round had to do some dare. So our group just started daring each other to do stuff at random. I hugged a tree and yelled that I loved Thailand (clearly the Americans were outnumbered by Thai. There was like anywhere from 4-6 of us at any given time and  maybe 10 of them?). At some point some Korean Canadian kid showed up and was probably drunk and we suspect he was from Quebec because his English was bad and his Korean was even worse. He shook all of our hands and then kissed the top of our heads as a form of greeting; it was bloody bizarre. He said something about it being the best cultural way (his English was hard to follow), but I have no idea what culture he thought he was respecting and needless to say the whole group of us was glad when he left.

 

Big O Victory

Tuesday, May 8th

More training today. We got lunch at a new place today and for the first time, I didn't have kimbap or bibimbap for lunch. The waitress understood immediately when I told her I was a vegetarian and she told me I could eat 칼국수 (kalguksu - buckwheat noodle soup). I was a bit worried, but when they brought it out, there wasn't any meat so it was awesome.

The noodles were really good, but I wasn't a huge fan of the garnishes. It was nice though to eat something different though. Then more training. In the evening, my friend decided to cook. I don't think what he made though really qualified as cooking, but whatever. We all watched Iron Man, which has been on TV like every single day. I don't know if it's playing so much because of Avengers or Koreans just can't get their fill of that movie. Anyway, after the movie finished at like 9 pm we went out for dinner and were surprised to find every place was closing. We finally found a 야식 (night food) place that was still open and we got some 떡볶이 (ddeokbokki - spicy rice cakes) and tempura.

Even that place closed at 9:50 though. So it kind of dawned on us that Yeosu is definitely no Seoul. Not that any of us thought otherwise, but we were just so used to everything being open super late. After that my friend and I just wandered down the main street to see what was farther down. Everything here feels like it's just here for the Expo. The Expo is the life of this community. All there was were restaurants and convenience stores. Well and Korean high school students just getting out for the day, which sucked for them. I think it's going to be really hard to stay entertained here for 3 months though. I'm not complaining. It's just a statement that we're going to have to work at keeping this place interesting. The best part of the night was on our walk back to our apartments we saw that the moon was red and we decided we had to get a good photo of it. Well, that proved pretty much impossible because it just looked so small in the camera, but during our quest, we noticed that the Big O had started its show. We went to watch it, and even though we only saw a chunk, it was absolutely amazing. Just gorgeous. 

It's already Monday??

Monday, May 7th

More training today. We got done early, so I finally got to go to E-mart to get some groceries and other stuff. An interesting thing was that you have to pay for plastic bags, but you can box your own groceries for free. Koreans are like boxing champions. I think in the time it took me to make my one box of groceries, tape it all shut and stuff, like 3 Koreans boxed all their groceries. Whatever. The best part was during the trip, I had to get the attention of two of my friends and without thinking about it, I just called out to them and my voice came back. I mean I still sound sick and it fades in and out, but as long as long as I consume obscene amounts of liquid, I can talk, which is nice, especially since tomorrow is media day and I wasn't looking forward to having to charades out interviews.

Freeee day

Sunday, May 6th

We got the day off of work/training, so during the morning two of my suitemates and I headed over to Paris Baguette to get some pastries. On the way, we walked by some people and they were just like "hi!" because we were Americans. Even though I haven't been able to talk, I've tried to at least greet others so as to not seem rude. When I tried to say 'hi' back though, no sound came out of my mouth. I tried several times and nothing. It really freaked me out to not have the ability to speak at all. But after a minute, I just realized there was no reason to freak out about it and I should just stay quiet for the time being so as to not strain my voice. It was just a really weird experience though. In the afternoon a large group of us walked to Odong Island (오동도), which was really cool. The island can easily be seen from our dorms, so it didn't take that long to get to it. It was probably like a 20-30 minute walk. 

 

The island, besides being gorgeous, was also really entertaining because there were caterpillars everywhere. It was insane. They were hanging on strands from trees, waving in the wind, on the ground cinching across the path, on all the railings. You couldn't turn around without seeing one...or five. All in all between walking to, around, and back from the island, we were on our feet for four hours. We grabbed pizza as dinner back at Expo Town, which wasn't really like American pizza. It didn't have as many spices and tasted sweeter, although those two are probably related. Anyway, after that we went and saw Avengers, which was better than I had expected.