little piece of home

I was walking around my area in Suwon and happened to come across this quaint, cute coffee shop in a back alley. I am so very excited to go there often and become a regular! By the end of this year I want to be able to walk in and have them know what exactly I want! I can't wait. Its a little piece of home, to sit in a coffee shop and do some homework or read a good book. I'm excited for this little place that I can become so familiar with!

NORAYBONG!

The people are quite addicted to noraybong! Translated = kareoking! It is a lot of fun but quite different. There are "noraybonging" places all over. You get a group of friends together, and pay about 5 bucks a person and you get a room to yourselves. Endless amount of songs and an hours worth of great kareoking. You get 2 microphones, and other random instruments. It is so much fun, and a great way to sing your heart out!

Yoido Full Gospel Church

LARGEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD!

Yoido Full Gospel Church, Yeouido, Seoul, South Korea

This church is the biggest churc in the world, (I'm pretty sure). It has more than 800,000 members and translates the services into 8 different languages. I was quite excited to go and see what the biggest church is like. This church was started as a home church and grew over the past 60 years into the largest church. There are 7 services on Sunday, each one packed to the brim. They are very involoved with missions and are very passionate about spreading the Gospel. I was very impressed with the choir. There were a lot of members; they were extremely talented and sung many hymns that I was familiar with. The pastor was also very good. He quoted many scriptures and was reading out of the Bible constantly during the sermon. It was a little hard to pay attention becuase it was a male pastor but I was listenting to a woman translating the service. It was quite interesting. It was a good experience and it is encouraing to see so many people worship the same God!

BUTTERFINGERS!

Butterfingers, about to be a ritual every Satuday morning for breakfast. It is a well-known pancake house in Bundang.

The best pancake ever: mozzarella and cream cheese pancake.. mmmmmmm, delicous!

And more differences!

Just a few different things that I have come across that have rocked my world, but am slowly becoming accustomed to them!

-people have specific shoes they wear in their houses, then specific shoes that they wear into the bathroom. the school I work at uses this exact tradition. I wear "slippers" while working and have to put on other "slippers" to go into the bathroom. yes different. i think so
-the Korean people value fair skin. so different than the western way of things. good thing I don't gotta keep workin on gettin tan!
-people do not smile or acknowledge you when you walk by them. when you make eye contact with someone you just stare at them until you dont see them anymore. there have been countless number of times that I have seen people stare at me and I make eye contact with them, and they keep staring. I am slowly getting used to staring right back at them, no shame!
-at my school, if students are late they have to kneel on their knees in the hallway holding a sign above their head in Korean (I unfortunately can't read it) but I'm pretty sure this punishment doesn't work, but thats their way of doing things so I cant say anything.....
-people do not say any form of "bye" on the phone, they just say yes yes yes mmmmmmmm. pretty interesting, i'm gunna start to do that too!

Rule: have to eat in 1 bite!

So my friend Charissa, who has been in South Korea for a year enlightened the rest of us that this specific meal that she took us to, you have to eat the 'roll' in ONE BITE!

the roll consists of:

pork
lettuce
rice
any sides you want

(needless to say, its one big bite)
so here we all are, attempting to eat it in one bite, and we all won victorously!

Yes, crazy things already!

I got to South Korea just in time to experience my best friend (Tayla's) 22nd birthday, and what better way than to hop in taxi cab and go to a local park and go bungee jumping! Yep, thats just we did. It took us a little bit to get there, for our Korean is not very good (or existant) so that hindered us, but we did finally make it. The park is called Yuldong Park. The park has a lot to offer, bungee jumping, walking, hiking, various parks, etc. One part of the park was called the English Book Park and it had a bunch of particular pieces of art that were connected with childrens books (or so that is what I got out of it)! But we had time to spare so we walked around and enjoyed some of the art, some of it was weird, but still was interesting to see. And when we saw the place that you go bungee jumping, we thought 'oh this is nothing', for it didn't look that high. It was 150 feet, still pretty high when you got to the top and think am I really going to jump off this willingly? So that is exaclty what each of us did.
5....4.....3.....2..... BUNGEE!