Random things in Gwangju

Well, it's Saturday again. The morning started with an excellent Korean lesson, that left me feeling like I might actually be learning this language a little. I can sound out Korean writing now, and as many have told me there's a lot of English in the Korean language. They call it Kongalish out here. Now I have a pretty functional arsenal of Korean words that make navigating day to day life fairly easy. Not to say I can have big conversations with anyone, but I was able to let them know that I don't eat Kogi today (that's beef and pork) at the restaurant we ate at this evening.

We continue to wander around the city looking for new things we haven't seen yet. For having been here for about a month, I feel like we have a pretty good grasp of the city. We can ride the buses to the two or three places we need to go, and we can get in a taxi and go where we want to go and make it home most of the time. I know several of the street name now and understand where they go and how the meet up with each other. Each week we find something new that we hadn't seen before.

Today we got to meet up with some of our new friends after our English class. We caught lunch at a great mandu place in down town, and wandered the streets after looking at different stores. I really need to take pictures of the shirts that we find out there, I didn't have the camera today or I would have. Some of them are pretty funny. One of my favorites today was the one that had the simple silhouette of the Mikey Mouse head above the pocket, and the words "Black Mouse" written right above it. It's what you call to the point. Or the ones that try to use random English phrases as a catch phrase. Sometimes... well, sometimes they don't really understand what they're writing. The F word apparently makes pretty regular appearances on the shirts. I'm told it sometimes shows up on the kids shirts at the school. Today we found one that gave the directions for washing the shirt. (You know the ones, on the tag of the shirt). That was what was decorating the front of the shirt. Wash in cold water and air dry, or something like that.

Steve and I went on a little bus adventure this afternoon as well. We jumped on a random bus and rode it to where it dead ended. That was pretty far from where we lived, but we managed to find our way home. I'm beginning to understand what the buses do and where they go. It's pretty exciting.

So anyways, we're doing pretty great out here in Gwangju. Hope everyone is having a great time in Texas.

Miranda