west coast

sooo much has happened so far and the month is almost halfway over! can i start by saying that i can't believe it is already may! everyone in the states is getting ready for summer break and i can't even believe it because life goes on as usual, i feel like its still the beginning of school for me.

so yesterday i went to the west sea with one of my teachers, vivi. (she went to the folk village with me) once a month her and her 6 college friends - they are the 7 princesses - get together and go somewhere. this particular month marks 10 years since graduating from college. it was so cool to hang out with this group of friends who were so different in personality but each so nice and so welcoming! it was crazy to me, and actually trina mast told me before i left for south korea that it would be like that. i would feel like friends with them so fast! and so far that has been the case. i know that there are mean koreans here and i have no doubt they exist but at the same time i know there are mean americans. my point being that when i do meet a mean korean or have a bad experience i know that it happens no matter where you are. so just a random sidetrack for you.

so we stayed at a cute little guesthouse right on the west sea or the yellow sea - that which is between china and korea. we played around in the water and took tons of pictures! then we ate and talked and it was so nice! though vivi told me no one speaks english very well, that was not true. or at least i thought there english was fine. the way i determine if english is good or not, is what type of ideas are we able to share. i mean, last night we were talking about japan and korean relations, religion, friendships, relationships, pop culture - soo much! the fact that we can have conversations about important issues means that the english is fine! whether it is broken or not is not really important to me - if you have ever spoken to me in America, you know im not the best english speaker.

so this morning we went back out to the ocean and then we went to a small buddhist temple on a mountainside. this temple was much much smaller than the one in seoul and it was crazy because i was the only foreigner there. it was so interesting to see all these people celebrating buddhas bday in this beautiful location. quite majestic! then i slept most of the 4 hour ride home.

so i had a fantastic time!

here i will take a short interlude to talk about men in korea. ok, here is this get together for the 7 princesses but only 5 showed up. then one husband and 2 boyfriends. the guys cooked dinner, set up for dinner, cleaned up for dinner, took pictures the whole time we were there whether the girls asked or not....they treated them like queens! and from what i can tell this seems to be a reoccuring theme. (again i know this is not always true) actually vivi was telling me about her boyfriend Q who is from Pusan and he doesn't help clean or cook because thats not how he was raised. but in vivi's family her father always helped out. ...but i just thought it was amazing that these girls were free to just relax and have a good time and the guys just took care of everything around them. they didn't get mad when the girls drank too much or gave them crap for different issues. wow. hopefully i will get to hang out with them more in the future so i can see if this is always true. hahaha...soooo different than many of the men i have met in my lifetime. interesting. :) and there were 3 of them there! haha