A New Hope... -_-*

Yeah, that title is a new low, even for me. Oh well!

This week has been awesome, I only taught one day. The reason why I only taught one day was because my kids had exams on Monday, Tuesday was the open class, and I taught Wednesday, left for the mandatory foreigners retreat on Thursday and stayed over until today. I had my last open class and received many positive comments. I have been gorging on some ridiculously delicious food.

It is amazing how much I got to learn about the Korean culture in the one day I spent in Chungju. The highlights of the trip has to be meeting some really cool foreigners that live in the same province, learning Taek Gyeon (Korean dancing martial arts), going to see a traditional Korean orchestra perform with some modern K-Pop/B-Boy flavor, and learning how to play the gayageum (a traditional 12 string instrument).

On this trip, I learned to throw my inhibitions away and just have fun in whatever activities we were doing. It was nice to not care about looking like a fool and just actively participate. To be honest, I thought I would not enjoy the martial arts or learning how to play the gayageum, but it was a great experience that I will never forget. I learned four ways of how to throw another foreigner down. I have a blister on the tip of my pointer finger from playing the instrument for an hour. By the end of the lesson, I was disappointed that we had to stop because it felt like I had only been playing for 20 minutes.

For being socially awkward, I made two friends that I could see myself keeping in contact with. One girl is so laid back and I had a blast. She invited me to come visit her any time in Cheongju and I will take her up on it. Her outlook on life was probably the most appealing thing to me. She lived two minutes from the beach in Cape Town, South Africa, but she uprooted herself to experience something new. She understands that this lifestyle will always be available to her in the future, if she wants it, but to live with the possible regret of not trying something new can never be erased. The other person lives in my city and he is beyond eccentric. I did not know if I would like his personality at first, but once we got into this banter, it was a neat connection. Normally, he is not the type of person I would be friends with, but I have learned that different is not always bad. In this instance, it made for one whacked out retreat.

I wished I took pictures of this trip, but sometimes it feels like you are missing out on life by trying to capture it all the time. Safe to say that I will continue to let others worry about recording memories while I live them.