July 4,5, and 6

Wow it seems like it has been weeks since I last posted a blog but yet it has only been a few days. Between 12 hours of classes, shopping, studying, and hiking it has been a busy 3 days. Thursday was filled mostly with classes and studying as it was the first day that we really got started in our classes. We celebrated Independence Day with a wonderful dinner of Burgers, fries and a soda but the party plans got canceled-at least for me-due to a torrential downpour that began at 5 and refused to let up all evening. Friday began much the same way with class again until 4. However, we met as a group at 7 with current ONU students as well as our exchange students for this coming year to enjoy a meal of Korean BBQ with a little Soju and Korean beer-neither of which I would really recommend. From there we moved on to Korean karaoke which is a little different than in America. In Korea, each group pays for the rental of a room which is set up much like a sound booth and they sing just to their friends for an hour or two. At this point we decided to jump on the subway and head across town to a night market only open from 10:30 pm to 5:00 am. We aren't sure if we ever made it to the actual night market but the stores we looked around in were very interesting and shopping so late at night was just a new experience for all of us. We finally made it back to the dorms around 2 am and quickly headed off to bed since we were planning on going hiking the next morning. At 10 am we set off for Mt. Yongmasan for a hike to the top and a view of the waterfall. After seeing the waterfall which had no water running down it, we decided to hike to the top. After a few minutes on the trail we were faced with two different paths. One that went straight up a pile of almost vertical rocks or one that seemed to be a very long path to the top. At this point our group split into two and I found myself in the group heading straight up. After about an hour or hour and a half of intensive climbing and a lot of sweating, we finally reached the top and took in the beautiful site and enjoyed some ice cream pops being sold at the top. Of course once up we found a very easy and short path that we took down that only took us 20 minutes. We came back to campus for a few hours of relaxation and then headed out once more to an electronics market, a dinner of street food, and a trip to emart to begin my collection of Korean foods and snacks to bring back to the states. We met a group at the subway station on their way out to a bar and some of the group decided to join them but it is time to crash for this very tired American so good night!