First off, let me tell you all about my week before today. I made a friend, actually.. I made two! I don't know their names... I had issues remembering the names Ashley, Robert, and so on and so forth. But add three names that you have to remember.... I'm lost. But, one speaks English, and one attempts to speak English. The boy, for the first week, would see me eating lunch alone, wave at me, and then say Hi! But nothing else. It was pretty adorable, but caught me off guard. My other friend was so surprised that I had spent the last two weeks eating lunch alone, that she had volunteered herself to be my lunch buddy, I've been more than grateful. She's learning English, so she's really the only person I can talk to besides Denise at work. Denise is another volunteer from Germany, she's really nice and has been helping me out a lot. I'm extremely grateful to have a really nice person to work with.
The kids are also absolutely adorable. I've been able to sit in on the classes the last two days of work, I have Korean Baby fever. My maternal instinct is kicking in, hard. I have never seen cuter kids. Denise's class that she had at first has just moved into new classes, and some of her kids were in a class that we were sitting in on. One of the girls keeps grabbing our hands and jumping around, she's really cute. And then another girl I got into giving me fist bumps, and then she'd steal my hat and I'd make weird sounds at her, and she'd run around. AND, finally.... a bunch of the boys in the youngest class decided it would be a fun idea to throw toys down Denise's shirt... and on her head. Poor Denise. I just got a little girl who enjoyed bouncing on my knees. I cannot express enough how cute they are.
Yesterday (Friday), was a really low key night. I have been missing Dad a lot, I chose not to go out and instead Andy, Loren, and I watched Inglorious Bastards, ate lots of food, and then Loren and I had a sleep over. It's fun to have friends as roommates. We ate a jug of ice cream and little waffle crackers, did some of that good old fashioned girl pampering stuff like face masks and nails. Of course, we made Andy a victim and put make up on his face. We told him he could take it right off. We got most of it off, and then gave him a make up remover sheet to get the rest off, and instead he grabbed the nail polish remover... Poor guy.
This morning, Loren and I attempted to wake up early to get to the DMZ. We ended up leaving the house around 9:15am, after which I got us lost in Jongno..... ( where we used to live, so that's why it's ridiculous) where we tried to meet Hannah. Poor Hannah was waiting for 30 minutes, I felt ( and still do feel) so bad. After that, we decided I shouldn't be allowed to navigate us anywhere... Or at least for the next ten minutes. Hannah got us to our next bus stop, we went to Paris Baguette and got sandwiches as a lunch. First good bread I've had in Korea. I had a provolone-ham sandwich on walnut rye bread.. tasted like Mother's Cafe back home. After, we went on a lovely bus ride, honestly.. so great, to where we thought the DMZ would be. I told the others that I bet this is the last stop, which they responded with " nahhhh"... but sure enough, as soon as the bus stopped, everyone got off.... except for us. After a long awkward pause, the bus driver asked us where we were going... After an awkward pause and realizing that the Korean population doesn't know what the DMZ is ( well they know what it is, but they don't call it the DMZ), I had Hannah go tell him where we wanted to go, because Loren and I are horrible at Korean. We got kicked off the bus.
This stop ended up being a huge shopping mall. Three white English speaking girls get lost at an outlet mall... funny, right? I definitely thought so. We decided to check out this shopping mall, and we found churros. Hannah and I had to get our favorite sugary treat. Loren tried one for the first time. Afterwards we meandered over to the English Village. There was a bunch of British type things, like a castle, a telephone booth, and a replica of Stone Hedge. The UK girls were excited to have a piece of home. I was just happy to have clean air, see the sun, and see trees. Oh, I have missed clean air. The girls teased me and said that next time I'm ever unhappy, they are going to drag me out into the country side where I can just run around.
Our last stop of this adventure was going to Paju Book City. This city is known because of scholars and of course, books. We wandered around, saw a traditional house, found a really important tree ( apparently it's really important, I didn't really understand why), and we explored a huge building where we went into a book store a we each bought a bunch of really cheap Korean kid's books. My hope is to try to read it and MAYBE get better at Korean. It was really cheap. I had a great time outside of Seoul, and even though we didn't go to our original planned destination, we had an amazing time.
Afterwards, we went to Myeongdong, went to Italian food, and wrapped up our long adventure with good laughs, good food, and even better company. I'm doing better the longer I'm in Korea. Getting out of the city was amazing, for me. I should make it a goal to do so more often. Tomorrow I'm going to check out an adult museum... so I won't post about that. I have loved hearing from family and friends via email and various other apps that allow me to talk to people. I miss you all, oh so much. I keep having to explain my jokes and then tell them to laugh, that I'm funny. It's a bummer, at least I amuse myself. I guess we can't always win, can we?
Cheers!
I'm so glad you had a fun adventure! I knew it would get easier with time. And it's great that you figured out that some time away from the city is what you need to be rejuvenated. I love you!
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