There is always so much to report! Last weekend, Dean and I were invited down to the Pusan International Film Festival by Jong-Man, one of the friends I made at TLBU. Jong-Man was part of the temporary camp staff and was the head camera man. He works at a film company in Daejon, which is about 45 minutes from Seoul, and we've kept in touch fairly well since camp ended. Since he goes down to Pusan (a port city in south-east Seoul, second largest city in Korea) for the festival every year, he wanted us to come along. So Dean and I took the KTX (a high-speed train) down to Pusan and spent the weekend there with Jong-Man and his fellow filmmakers. Pusan has a really different feel from Seoul--the subway system is a LOT smaller and the city feels less rushed and claustrophobic. But honestly, I was a bit relieved to come back to Seoul on Sunday evening. We've all become pretty Seoul-savvy in the past few months, so it was a great to know where we were going (Pusan is really, really spread out).
My students had their midterm exams Monday-Wednesday, so I had to come into work but I was allowed to leave at noon and I didn't teach anything! Basically, I just sat at my desk in the teacher's office and went on thefacebook or my gmail account. Very chill. One of my co-teachers, "Grace", went to Canada for a month to attend special English-teaching seminars and so I have a new one. Grace's desk is practically attached to mine, so I had a good relationship with her. But the substitute, Sunhee, or "Sunny", is fantastic! She's only two years older than me and she just graduated. Her English is great and it's just makes things a lot more fun and interesting having someone my age working with me.
Oh, I started Korean lessons! Aerim (part of temporary camp staff at TLBU, goes to university in Seoul) helped me find someone. She's a law student at Kongguk University and one of her fellow students offered to teach me for free. His name is Young-San and he speaks English quite well--he spent his obligatory two years of military service with the American GI's. He left the military a year ago and is a junior at Kongguk (but he's a year older than us). We have lessons only once a week this month because he has his midterms coming up. At our first meeting, we bought a textbook for me and I've been studying on my own. I can already read/write in Korean, so he was immensely relieved. Right now, we're just trying to build up my vocabulary and help me with some simple grammer and sentence forming. In the past two weeks, I've boosted my Korean vocabulary by about forty words, so that's encouraging! It's also just great to have Korean friends.
Here are some pictures from the past few weeks!
Me at Haeundae beach.
Dean and Jong-Man (on the phone--he was the coordinator for his group so his cell was ringing non-stop). We were high up by some tower and a really old bell??
During Chuseok holiday, a huge group of us from SMOE went to Lotte World, an amusement park in Seoul. Here's James (from Britain), Dean, me, and Rory (also from Britain) with some classy accessories.
Dean, Andrea, Liz, Kirsten, Erica, and I went to a big palace in downtown Seoul and took some great photos.
Aerim, me, and Liz out in Hongdae with a bunch of friends.
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