Time Flies

I cannot believe that this is my last weekend in Goesan!  We have the rest of this week, then Friday we leave for Seoul, we come back Monday, and then we have our Departure Day on Wednesday.  Pretty crazy but I am excited to get out and see what else this country has to offer beyond the quaint town of Goesan.

I was able to get a taste of it yesterday when about 20ish ETAs and I ventured into the city of Cheongju.  It seemed like an awesome city and has about 600,000 people in it.  I didn't really get to explore very much because we had our cooking class!  I took my first Korean cooking class and it was a ton of fun.  We made kimbap and a beef and vegetable dish that the name is escaping me right now but it was really good!  I am hoping to take a few more cooking classes as I go about my grant year.  Here are some photos from yesterday.

 Our Instructor

 Monica dominating at rolling kimbap.

My great group of Chef ETAs!

So yeah it was a great time!  Today I am just attempting to study up a storm in preparation for our last week of Korean classes.  We have to deliver a speech tomorrow, take our 4 hour final exam on Wednesday and finishing shooting/editing our final project for graduation next Monday.  The material is still really hard for me and many others.  I got my lowest grade so far on last week's quiz.  I'm feeling better about this speech though and we'll just have to see what the final looks like I suppose. 

We did get to take some time to relax with our teachers last week for a little picnic outside.  We were going to go out but we didn't really have access to a place that could accommodate all of us at once so we just order a bunch of pizza and other goodies and hung out at Jungwon.  We ate a ton of food and played some games and stuff and it was a pretty good time.

We are going to have the annual talent show here coming up in a few days.  I'll probably participate in a Limbo Contest/Act for my contribution and then just enjoy the rest of it from the audience.  The theme is Hunger Games (or the Kimchi Games in our case).  I never read the books but I watched the movie for the 1st time this past weekend.  It was actually better than I thought it would be.  A lot of people were a bit disturbed by it, but I just saw it more as a story and knew that it obviously wasn't true so it wasn't a huge deal to me.  But at least I will know what is going on now (hopefully).

Here is a photo that I stole from my ETA pal Katelyn that shows a map of where all of us ETAs will be:

Where am I you may be asking?  Well see that tiny red dot all by itself on the very southern-central tip of the country?  That is me.  I am a bit isolated, but the closest people are only an hour-ish away so I don't think it is as bad as it looks.  I am excited to finally get down there and see what it is I will be doing for the rest of the year.

Until next time.