everybody wants to be friends

...with a foreigner, and the good news is, this foreigner wants to be friends with you! :)

so this was the weekend of random meetings. those which have (and i hope will continue) to shape and color my experience here in korea.

then on saturday i decided to first meet up with a language exchange partner. once i first moved to seoul i joined a few websites to make friends and meet people. so one site i used was specifically for getting a language exchange partner they practice their english you learn korean. awesome. so i met lee who just graduated university and is working for verizon in seoul. he also lived a year in Melbourne, Australia! Go figure! He lived in South Yarra just doing maintenance work and you know what saddens me, I had no idea where I lived in Melbourne. I still even at this moment can not tell you where i was. Kingsley college...what the heck is the name of the town?!? am i getting old? am i getting stupid? i guess i need to go have another glass of ginseng tea....does that even help your memory? oh dear.....
anyways, the point of the story is that he is a very good teacher! so we sat in dunkin donuts and i worked on my korean alphabet, i worked on my pronunciation. he taught me phrases i wanted to learn for everyday life. he made me read korean. i felt like i was one of my students! hehe so great! so it was very helpful and i have to study and practice before we meet again next weekend!!!

so then later that evening another website i joined http://www.seoulstuff.com/ decided to have a group meeting just to give everyone the opportunity to meet one another. being amber i decided to invite along another girl Rachel whom i met from that other language exchange website. we had tried to meet before but had failed. so i figured hey im going to meet a bunch of people i dont know, i dont know you, so why dont you come along and this can all be awkward together! such a great idea! i was surprised because i thought the get together would be a lot of foreigners but it wasnt! i was pleasantly surprised. we went to hongdae which is like the cool young hang out area of seoul. all the universities are there and the clubs and all that jazz.

so at the meeting there was soon who is a korean who speaks english and is on his way to san francisco for grad school in december, yunju choi who studied in boston for a year, rayhee who is currently studying in boston but home on break, tristan - the organizer of the event and a southern brother from kentucky hes a cool kid, vincent who is korean studying english and actually studying at a british english academy so we spent alot of time comparing the accents of americans and britians - listen to a korean do that! its great! then there was his friend si-seun who doesnt speak a lot of english but is so nice and kind that it doesnt matter. your just kind of automatically friends anyways. then there was rachel who i brought who studied in toronto and in vancouver, skisk who is awesome wait till i get my camera she is just cool man. cool. and i think she draws japanese animation for her work. and she loves africa and swahili! hahaha! so i have to brush up so i can teach her the little i remember! there was also sraven who is from india and shaun from india both here working at a technology company. man we had an awesome time! we would hang out in one place and then move to the next and just talk about everything. soooooo muuuuuuch fuuuuuun. oh yes. oh yes.

one thing i found interesting is that most of the koreans said that they have trouble making foreigner girl friends. like other girls don't want to be friends with them. i dont understand why. so most of the korean girls i have met were really excited to meet a foreigner girl who wanted to be their friend. they also have trouble at times making friends with foreign guys because a lot...and i mean a lot.....of foreign guys just want to date them. not be friends. so there is sometimes a hard time to become friends with foreigners. interesting to me. (wow! can you tell that i am an english teacher! i told yanny the other day that she should teach the grammer and ill just teach the pronunciation. yikes! but this is how i start to talk when im talking with koreans. oy!)


then on sunday i went to church which again, i really enjoy. randomness! so we were walking to go get lunch after the service bc they serve lunch at the church (its huge) so we were walking up the stairs and im in a group of people talking and this guy stops me and starts talking to me. i believe he is iranian and he wanted to know if i could help him learn english. it was so weird. i was like, um, do you know me? the way he just came up to me and started talking to me i was slightly shocked, amused, befuddled. (ooo, hows that for an english word?) so i gave him my email address and said sure. hahaha...its scary though like so many people want to practice their english that i could probably spend a whole chunk of my life emailing and msn messaging with people so i am going to work hard to keep that all under control. but i have to admit that it is kind of nice to look in my inbox and find that about one third of my new emails are from koreans. is this part of the integration process? and i think the phone numbers in my cell phone doubled this weekend. hehe.

i also went and saw the movie the forbidden city with chris and another korean girl i have no idea who she is. can i just say jet li is amazing? yea, like the coolest.

this week will be somewhat busy as we have to do our evaluation forms for each of the kids. we just finished testing so we have to grade the tests and put them in their files. i think we will have the birthday party on thursday and sweet events like that. you know. oh yes and friday we have game time with the morning classes because monday is childrens day = NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY! whoot whoot! rock on kids! rock on!

so things are going well. life is interesting. and i hope it stays that way. but i think a big part of that is not always making big adventures where i am always trying to seek out new people and new things to do, but really seeking to make everyday life into an adventure. not allowing the schedule to ever become "the 9 to 5." reaching beyond that for the gift that each day is and truly enjoying it. that is my goal.

until next time!