I love people; "I want Alisha to come to Korea Again"

My favorite thing about studying abroad is meeting people. I have a few pen pals that I have kept in touch with, and I have met three while I've been here. Saturday I met Yulim for the first time, and had a blast. First we went to the Garak Market, a huge produce and fish market, to walk around. We weren't sure what to do, and it was already 1:30 so alot of the market was closed, but i was curious so we went. She thought it was entertaining when people stopped us and asked her where I was from and what I was doing. Since I wore long pants I got fish water up my legs but i survived. After that, we went to Konkuk university station for lunch, and had 보쌈 -- really good pork and rice for 2 people (21,000won). The we went to a coffee shop and ordered an exotic coffee and a hot choco and talked. Okay, it's an underestimate to say we talked, because we had a 6 hour conversation - 3:30-9:30pm. The coffee shop atmosphere was too good, the owner might have said. We discussed everything from how it felt to ask our parents for money, prostitution, church volunteering, and prejudices people hold about their neighboring countries, to what is considered "good" food in different countries, dating customs, and foreign language accent differences.
I could really impress you if I said that this whole conversation was in Korean, but Yulim's English was pretty good. She wanted me to meet her favorite cousin because he was home from the US, so we waited for his teaching job to finish. We met him and his three friends, all of whom were Koreans that went to college together in Pennsylvania. I believe a few of them were in Korea because they had to do their military service (In Korea, every man is required to serve in the army for two years.) We had dinner with them and spoke in lots of Konglish (a mess of Korean and English). Her cousin and friends didn't have accents, or rather had American accents, and spoke quickly so Yulim got shy about her English. Although it was hard to believe because we had just finished speaking together in English for six hours. No one could believe that we met on the Internet and this was the first time we've met in person, everyone thought we were best friends. At the coffee shop there were papers we could write our hopes and holiday wishes on to hang for Christmas decoration, and Yulim wrote "I want Alisha to come to Korea Again." Such a sweet friend. I love making connections with people.

Yulim was the third pen pal I've met in person, one in Pusan that took me to one of the best meals I've had, and the other is Kwangsoo. Kwangsoo is now affectionately called a "best friend." We chat about everything and he helps me find things around Seoul...hopefully he'll come visit the US so I can be as kind. We went to Gyeongbokgung Palace the last time we met.




Besides Pen pals I've met some great people just randomly. One day Pauline and I met a student at Seoul National University, that invited us to tour his school. Seoul National is the largest university in Korea, so it was worth seeing. He brought two friends to meet us, one of which could speak great English, and they showed us the campus. It was getting dark but we saw a good bit of things including the library and a few places couples go to hide out, haha. You can say it was an insider's view. he treated us to dinner in one of the dining rooms, that resembled a 3-star restuarant more than a college dining hall. After a great Korean dinner, we went to a coffee shop and headed home to celebrate a friends' birthday.

Other activities I've done with people I've met off-campus have included going to Lotte World amusement park, lots of dinners and coffee shop visits, batting cages, trips to the movie theater, and even one ridiculous random trip to a street-side fortune teller.

OH also recently I went to the DMZ, the border of North and South Korea. I could talk about the tour with the USO, how odd it felt traveling with 40 Americans, the feeling of being in a war zone and how much I learned, but I don't think I can do it justice in this setting. Here's a photo from Panmujeom, the UN building used for negotiations, that straddles the boarder...yes I crossed into North Korea for a few minutes. ^^