Our First Weekend :D

Click HERE for Updated Photos!

So our first weekend here went by very fast but it was really fun!

Friday night after work I met Rach and some of her coworkers at a subway station near their work. Since my school isnt really by the subway, I was planning on taking a taxi the short distance to meet them, when a guy at my school asked if I wanted a ride there on his little mo-ped scooter bike thing. Now, from what I have seen of these motor bikes is that they are nuts. There are no rules, meaning they can go through traffic whenever they please and go between the sidewalk and huge busses. So of coures, I said I'd love to! It was a very interesting experience, since I have only traveled by bus or subway. He darted in between cars at stoplights, surpassed long lines of cars in traffic and that with the open air, tall buildings and hustle and bustle made me feel so alive! (Dont worry mom, I was wearing a helmet haha). Anyway, I kinda wish I had a little scooter now.

On Saturday afternoon we went to Itaewon (the place where a lot of foreigners hang out, has a lot of good diverse food from all over the world, etc) to get our cell phones because we heard it was a good place to get second-hand phones for a good price. We both ended up finding phones we really like for decently cheap so we were very excited!

Then later on Saturday we met up with Tyler Stokes who we both went to Eastview with to grab dinner and meet some of his Korean friends. It was SUCH a blast! It was so much fun to catch up with Tyler (he has been here a year and a half) and also be able to make friends with young Koreans. We ended up getting everyones phone numbers (partially because we were so excited we even HAD phones) and so that we could meet up with them again, practice English/Korean by texting etc. I haven't met a group of people that friendly in a long time. Then language barrier was minimal because they all spoke English decently well - but it was pretty entertaining trying to figure out how to communicate certain things with them. This is why Rach and I taught all the Koreans air quotes.

For all of you who don't know what I'm talking about, its when you make quotation marks with both of your hands in the air while saying something kinda sarcastic. The way Tyler explained it to the Koreans was that if you put a word you are saying in air quotes, the words meaning is put in the context of "kinda but not really." So ... I (Meghan) am a "teacher." Get it? Anyway, the Koreans had an absolute blast with it and so we used air quotes for pretty much everything for the rest of the night which was hilarious.

The Korean women also commented on how curly our eyelashes were. They were astonished when they asked me if I used an eyelash curler and I said no. Apparently most Koreans eyelashes go straight with no curl at all. This explains a super scary heavy duty looking eyelash curler Rach saw in a store the other day. Interesting.

After we ate dinner, we went to another place to have some rice wine and some more little snacks and to chat. That was a lot of fun and we were teaching the Koreans some English words and they were teaching us Korean words and just general questions about each other cultures. It was a really fascinating experience really that we hope to repeat in the near future!

After that some of us went to a place down the street to karaoke (nora-bong)! Rach and I decided to start easy with some Nsync, Bye Bye Bye. We pretty much rocked it. Then some of our new Korean friends sang songs in both English and Korean. The songs were (as you can imagine) pretty entertaining! The karaoke here is when you rent out a small room for you and a few friends, so its less intimidating than singing in front of an entire cafe or bar. And it gives you permission to just do ridiculous and funny things while singing (as you can see from our pictures hahahah). Tyler and I rocked a few duets and then it was time for the money-maker. Rach and I rapped Kanye "Stronger." I know you all wish you could have seen that, and we explained to the Koreans they were very lucky to witness such a spectacle of greatness (;

Rach and I have a new favorite food: rice cakes. They are not the quaker oat rice cakes you may be thinking of...they are almost like sugar covered styrophome cylinders. Anyway...they are pretty tasty and dirt cheap!

Today Rach's bed arrived! We met the driver in his blue truck at the subway station and then had to try to give him directions to our apartment (which we are not even super familiar with the area and we had to guide him there when he spoke no English and we don't even know simple words in Korean). We made it ok though and we got her bed, a vanity, a television, a ton of extra blankets and some hangers.

After that we went to the Coex mall to meet up with Tyler and John Hokkanen (Rach and I had his dad for 9th grade honors English) and two other guys Tyler knew. We went to the aquarium which was really really cool and took a long time to get through there was so much stuff!

Now we are making lesson plans and preparing for our first "real" day of school tomorrow. Wish us luck! I think I might know what I'm doing but I'm not too worried about it. Everything will fall into place so I'm not stressing myself out TOO much :P