Last Day of Hopkido

Okay, so my last day of Hopkido came and my instructor pulls out a camera. After the initial glares and unwanted attention, I am actually happy he took these. so here are some videos of me doing my awesome ninja stuff.

Did you miss me?

Well it has been a couple of weeks but I blame a beyond busy life and also the plain fact that I am a lazy person and when I get home at night all I want to do is watch movies or play games.

On that note, I have only one month left and it is incredibly full of adventures and also I have a huge Japan trip coming up. 

So I will try to add in my posts things I love or hate about Korea that I have not already added or left out from before.

 

This is my street going towards Dekori, an area full of restaurants and shops mainly geared toward the young college students who live in this area because of the close proximity of the college Kyungnam.

In this area you will find a small dingy shop hidden behind plastic drapes that has every art supply that you would ever need. It is super claustrophobic but it is one of my favorites. 

Story time:
Normally when I go to the grocery store, I am forced to buy things according to what picture they have on the cover. Normally this method is fairly successful and I naturally get what I bought. On the rare occasion they have a little English to go along with the pictures. I also try my hardest to only buy things that are on sale. Well lucky me one day I found some laundry detergent, detergent is special because they don't have that many pictures on them so you never know what you're going to get. So when I found this package I got excited because detergent is expensive, I read the detergent part of the package only, which was my downfall.  After using this stuff for about a month I finally looked at the packaging and saw the rest of the english on it. Dishwashing.... great. I was wondering why my cloths were coming out stiffer than normal.

Okay, so this last weekends adventure was that I went on a date with a guy I randomly met in the subway at Daegue. We went to a budhist temple called Haeins, this temple is known for its complete collection of the buddhist script carved in around 80,000 woodblocks. They weren't letting us take pictures of it, but I have a blackbelt and therefore a ninja, so like a ninja I took a couple of secret pictures. One of them is shown below. >:)

 It was a cool temple but the only interesting thing was the woodblocks. About the picture thing, they had large pictures that you can take a picture of which I thought a little ridiculous but I took a pic next to it so oh well.

 After we explored the temple grounds and got chased by the temple gaurds a little we went to a museum that showed the process of the wood block carving. Again, picture taking was prohibited, but I'm a ninja.... so here are a couple of pics >;)

It really was a cool process. And it was awesome to see all the cool ancient stuff.

 Well, I can just hear Melinda voice asking me to get to the details of the date and everything. So here you go. I guess I should start at the beginning, I met the guy with my friends in Daegu... we were asking for directions and we thought he lived there. Well somehow he got my number, I think it was to make sure we got to our destination and I was the only one with a phone out. Well, a couple days later he texts me telling me that we should hang out. I ignored it, plainly because umm..... creepy or something. Well I was telling my friend Jackie about the whole thing and she said that I will never get married if I kept reacting like that, so I texted him back and we set up the date.

So the date comes and I meet him and we go to the buddhist temple and the end......

Okay, if you want more you have to skype me :)

 

Say hello to the underground mall :)

Well on the way back something strange happened. On a normal day I would take the elevator and because my elevator is probably the slowest elevator in the world, mind turns off and I ride in a general stupor. Well getting on the elevator today I was met by dinner.

 

Still steaming hot and everything. It was strange and hilarious at the same time. I really wanted to help myself to everything but I didn't. The elevator wasn't called for even after I left it and yeah the poor dinner sat there lost and forgotten.

Okay this week, we are having the kids present something they prepared. This time around I was able to share in deciding what the kids were going to prepare. So for the youngest students I taught them the Popcorn popping song. YEAH, check it out, they're amazing :)

Black Belt... Boo Yaa!!!!

Well, I have less than two months left till I fly out of this country of Korealand. And all I can really say is 'it's about time'. I have enjoyed it up till now, but things are winding down now and I'm looking forward to the next adventure whatever that may be.

So one cool thing that happened is that, I received my blackbelt and it wasn't just a here is your belt given out of pity from my instructor. I had to be tested and judged by the grand old board of official Korean Black belt people. And I passed, woopie! Now I can take on any evil ninja that might plague me and my sister when we go to Japan :)

As for my adventures this last week..er two, I actually had more failed adventures rather than successful ones. They were still adventures though.

This last weekend I tried to go to the LDS temple for the last time, I say tried because it didn't happen, but not for the lack of trying. So I texted the missionaries to tell them to tell the Bishop that I was going and I guess even though they said they would, they probably didn't send the message along. Because come Saturday morning I found myself standing in front of the Post office at 5:30am and no one was around. All I can say is that I'm grateful for socks because it was a cold morning. When I finally gave up and went home I couldn't sleep so I spent the rest of the day in my room with a massive headache. Bad day right?

But I feel this day was balanced out by yesterday, Monday. I received my black belt certificate, and then I got to speak with my parents. After talking about my return flight they told me that they are flying out to Washington DC the same day that I flew in, that's when they thought to change their schedule a little so that I could go along with them. So I'm going to WA DC the day after I get home from Japan :) After I said goodbye to my parents, I got a call from my sister and we planned more of the Japan trip. I'm getting so excited for these trips that I didn't mind when all my students wouldn't shut up and do their work... or the fact that I had to teach 7 hours straight without a break. But on a good note we were randomly given a meal from Outback steakhouse for lunch, naturally I didn't have time to eat it but magically their was room in our tiny fridge at the school for me to save it in for later. Good things do happen occasionally :)

Okay, not much but there you go. More next week :)

Adventure is out there!

Happy New Year from Seoul

 You should never wait till last minute for anything; I should have written  this blog last week but now it is monday and I don't feel like writing much. So enjoy the pictures and captions :)

 

For New Years I decided to have a last trip up to Seoul, and I had only a few things in mind that I wanted to do while up there. Oh and it snowed while I was there as well. Crazy, but I love the snow, so great. 

One thing I wanted to do was go see Jump, which is a slap stick non-verbal martial arts play. The play was awesome and totally worth seeing. Even if I did have to leave church early to get there. (My bishop was all like 'why!' and all I could do was run... hehe)

 The other spot I wanted to hit was Gyeongbok Palace, it was huge and spread out. Very beautiful but as you can tell by the snow, it was very cold. I was smart though cause I bought a bunch of those hand warmers that skiers use and so that kept me toasty.

 The palace was huge and had a lot of awesome buildings, I took around a hundred pictures... not sure why, I was by myself so I guess it was a way to keep myself company, that and it would be awesome to write a comic where this place being my inspiration.

 I also bought this really cute hat that makes me look like I have ears :)

 It is a magical horse :) no I made that up

 Okay, so after my little adventure by myself I returned to my friends place for a new years party. There was a guy from Germany there and he had this cool tradition where you melted pieces of metal and dropped the melted metal in water and whatever shape the metal takes on will be your fortune for the year. When I dropped my piece in it turned out to look like an eye-patch. So my fortune is that I will be a pirate.

 

So, speaking of traditions, one tradition in Korea is that you wake up before the sunrise and watch the new day begin for the new year. Well we got up and when we arrived on the roof, we discovered that the sky was severly overcast and so you couldn't see the sun at all. Oh well we tried and I went back down and fell back to sleep on the couch. I love couches!

 So the first day of the new year we were given the gift of snow. I love snow but here in Korea, they had this incredibly bright idea to use marble as a paving stone for walkways. Marble is a deathtrap for the unwary pedestrian; and yeah that is one thing about Korea. They are more concerned that everything looks nice even though it could possibly be deadly. Lets just say they provided a complimentary ice-rink.... and there were still girls walking around in high heels. Insanity!

Okay, so one cool thing we did on the new year was do to a trick eye museum. It was a ton of fun running around playing with the pictures and rooms.

 Okay that was last weekend, this weekend I went to Busan with Jackie to see the lights before the city took them down.

 The lights were all over and yep it was still pretty cold but we had a good time getting lost near Nampo dong.

Then we went to a Korean buffet where we picked up the raw meat and cooked everything ourselves. I tried octopus and it really was tasty!

Then we climbed Busan tower and at the top landing we put a lock on the Lock Fence of Love. Apparently it is a way that couple promise each other to each other. I just thought the whole thing looked cool. The whole fence was cover by these locks and some were really old too.


That is all for this week, go have an adventure now :)