I am almost one week in. I just showed my Omma my blog and she was so happy! (even though she just looked at the pictures). I am really having a wonderful start to my year. Things haven't started to pick up but they will on Monday when I start school! There are (I think) 6 exchange students total going to my school and they are all very nice. Yesterday we all went to a little store around the corner from my school to try on and buy our school uniforms. They are soooo cute! (: The plus side? I won't have to pick out an outfit 5 days out of the week. My school is quite large with 4 building surrounding a big area for outside gym class, which is dirt. One building is for the middle schoolers and the one next to that has a gym on top and the lunch room underneath. The high school building sits on the other side of the gym/lunch room. Each grade has its own floor. I will be in 2nd year, equivalent to 11th grade because I am much older than everyone else, while the other exchange students will be 1st years. I am kind of disappointed that I will not be with them during school but it will give me an opportunity to get to know the other students at my school. I would most likely be placed in 3rd year but as seniors, they are preparing for a HUGE test at the end of the year so it would be super boring and I would probably just get in the way.Last night was the first Rotary orientation with all the exchange students in my district. Hopefully I will get to see all of them a lot through out the year. They all seem super nice and fun. Right before Orientation started we were all just hanging out talking and my Omma turns to me and asks "do you have a prepared introduction?". ?????? My stomach dropped. I didn't know we needed to have an intro prepared for all of these important people in Korean! I put it in the back of my head and told myself it would be fine, just say hi and my name. Well.... I had to go first. OF COURSE THIS WOULD HAPPEN TO ME. I got up there, stood there for a while and then realized I should probably say something. With a slight bow I said hello in korean. Just my name and thank you. Everyone laughed as I walked away form the front of the room. I ended up just laughing it off but I have a feeling this is going to turn into a joke at some point. The next person to go of course had a whole list of things to say in korean. It really made me feel so much better... OH WELL. (:
For the first few months all of us exchangers will leave school right after lunch. On mondays we will go to Tae Kwon Do and the rest of the week we will take korean lessons at a university. We went to the Tae Kwon Do place today to meet our teacher. We were measured for our "uniporms" and I was the lucky one that got to try it on for everyone. Pretty stylish huh?
There is still a lot of sitting around, watching tv with my Omma or host brother and watching Kdramas on my laptop. We have gone out to eat a few times and I think I am picking up how to pass out chopsticks, and poor water (with two hands). I have taken the bus and train system a few times and I know how to get to school but both of my host parents have cars so we drive if we are going anywhere together. Driving here is pretty similar to the US. Same road rules and signs accept for motorcycles seem to do what ever they want. I have seen a few dart through red lights avoiding the traffic coming from the side. SCARY. I have noticed that most cars here are new. There really aren't many older than a few years it seems like. It will be strange coming back home and driving my old manual Subaru.
I keep telling myself I should work on learning more Korean other than hello, delicious and thank you but I keep finding myself doing other things like watching tv with my Omma and eating... can't I just use osmosis to learn Korean? Hopefully I will start to pick up more of the language soon so I can communicate with my parents and other people more.
I guess that is all for now! I am sure I will have another update soon once school gets started. (:
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