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| Inside MaGokSa Temple |
Over the weekend I contacted my culture professor thinking that it would be nice to have lunch together and catch up on life. Meanwhile a girl from my university in the States is doing the same exchange program, so I invited her to join us. I imagined that we would simply go to lunch somewhere in town and catch up and then go our separate ways, and perhaps me and the girl from my school would go shopping. However, my professor had other plans, and took us to the temple MaGokSa 마곡사 to have lunch at a traditional restaurant there. As we're eating and chatting, he asks me if I've been in touch with my language professor, and to that point I had not been. He asks if I want to meet up with my language prof and his wife later!
I was over the moon! I couldn't believe my small plan snowballed into an awesome day long trip. After we walked around Magoksa for a while and saw the scenery, talk about gorgeous, we hopped back in the car and headed off to an obscure art gallery to meet my language prof and his wife. Apparently my language prof's in-laws own the gallery and they were showing some international pieces this weekend. What are the odds of that? There was a small sitting area there, and we got to all sit around and chat together and tell funny stories from our missing year. It was really exciting to speak in mostly Korean with both of my professors because last year, I couldn't speak Korean at all. When they knew me, my Korean ability was minimal at best and now its almost conversational. Even though my grammar is often not quite right, I can make my ideas understood most of the time. Showing them my growth was really great for me, I still feel a loyalty to them for investing in me as a student and I still want to make them proud of their investment.
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| Culture Prof, American Friend, Me, Language Prof's Wife, Language Prof. |
My plan was to go to Daejeon and spend the night in the sauna there and it turns out my language professor's apartment is in Daejeon, so I didn't have to take the train to get there ^_^ My prof drove me to Daejeon and his wife found me a better sauna to stay in and on the way I got to meet her brother. He's still in high school and he was cute. His English was pretty decent considering his age.
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| See me right down front???? |
Also, I finally got to see the pictures from my prof's wedding and wouldn't you know the picture that I'm in the front row of, is in his specially wedding album book! I couldn't believe a year later I could see that picture!! So amazing. So amazing.
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| Can you see the bacon??! ^_^ |
After my excellent and refreshing night in the sauna, I met another friend of mine in Daejeon and we went to a tiny Korean restaurant, where I got to have my first American breakfast outside of an actual Fulbright event. French toast, plenty of syrup, some whipped cream, and most importantly--bacon. And that was 4 slices of bacon. Delicious, meaty, brown sugary bacon. I was quiet happy and satisfied. I had my first hot vanilla caffe latte there also, with my breakfast and the whole thing was a rolling success. After that I did some minor window shopping and hit the road back home. ^_^ I couldn't have asked for a better weekend trip!
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| My friend that lives in Daejeon now :) |
