경주 (Kyeongju) - Friday Oct. 19, 2007

Today I didn't have school. I had to head out to an ETA conference. I met up with Jeremy and Lauren at the bus station to take a 10:00AM bus to 경주 (Kyeongju). We randomly ran into Toby on the bus. He was coming back from 춘천 (Chuncheon) from visiting his girlfriend. The four of us talked and slept off and on for about 3 and 1/2 hours. We arrived in 경주 around 1:30PM and headed to the hotel where we were staying for the entire weekend. It's called the Commodore.

We checked into our rooms. I roomed with Jenna and Anna Cesa, but I was the first one to arrive. We had a BEAUTIFUL view from our hotel room!!^^ A few of us were going to go for a walk around the hotel, but ETAs kept pouring into the hotel and we wanted to see everyone. Soon, Jeremy, Allison, and I were able to walk around outside. We walked by the lake very near our hotel and took a few pictures. We had to start our workshop schedule at 3:00PM in a conference room in the basement.

We listened to a welcome speech from Mrs. Shim (the president of Korea Fulbright), listened to an overview of the weekend, and then started our presentations. The first presentation was by two extendees, Margaret and Noelle. They basically gave us advice about what we should take from the conference and offered us an idea of where they were at at the same time last year. The second presentation was Tom giving a really weird short presentation about friendships in Korea, the Jeju crew summing up their homestay experiences, and two more ETA extendees discussing good hiking spots in Korea. The Jeju Crew had some pretty entertaining stories about their homestays. Nikki talked about her random parking lot picnics during Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving). Hillary's host family's decided that she needs a curfew and consulted her American family for approval. Christine's home stay mom is only 8 years older than her, and demands to be called "host sister" instead of "mom" or "host mom." Her "host sister" takes her out drinking and noraebanging (kareoke-ing) randomly during weekdays and bosses her around like a big sister would instead of acting like a host mom. She is also surrounded by 7 little children on a daily basis who are little nieces and nephews. Tony's little host bro walked in on him while he was showering and wanted to take a shower with him. After Tony shooed his host bro out, his host bro tried to get back in. The door doesn't lock from the inside. It does, however, lock from the outside. So, of course, Tony was locked inside. Luckily, he had taken clothes in with him. He lives very rurally, so the "shower" is in the same room as the washing machine and drying rack. In that room, there is one window. Tony, climbed over the drying rack, out the window, and onto the roof. Why didn't he just jump down? Because there was broken glass on the ground. He managed to get back inside where he met his little host bro by picking him up, throwing him over his shoulder, and locking him in the bathroom. His host bro's English became impecible as Tony made him promise not to lock him in the bathroom again.^^ Drew discussed the importance of being flexible after he learned a rough lesson from his host dad about when is appropriate to make phone calls. Drew now schedules calls to the states and makes those phone calls at a PC Bang instead of in his home stay house.

We had a few more small presentations after that, and we were finally released for dinner around 6:30PM. For dinner, most of the group had 불고기 (Meat). The vegetarians sat segregated from everyone else which has become a running joke in our little vegetarian group. We like our small reunions. There are about 8 vegetarian ETAs and 2 vegetarian extendee ETAs. I'm super psyched, because the two extendees who are vegetarians are the two I am going to 궁앙산 (Kungangsan - sp?) I am traveling to North Korea next weekend with three extendee ETAs. It was set up about 3 weeks ago on a fairly random whim. Nika saw that I was interested in going, because I wrote something on Forest Estler's facebook wall. Next thing I know, she invited me to go with the three of them.

Anyway, we had the evening free. So, of course, what does the big group of ETAs do? We headed to GS25 to sit outside and drink. It's not quite a Family Mart replacement, but for most it was just fine. I didn't feel like sitting around and drinking, so Jen and I walked around taking pictures in some pretty odd places (I'll post pics soon). A small group of us headed back inside, because it was freezing outside. We sat in the lobby of the hotel for a while, until Tony convinced Jen and I to go downtown with a group going. It was kind of a pain in the butt to travel downtown; it was about a 12,000 Won taxi ride (~$12.00). When we got downtown, we wandered around for a while, like we do most of the time when we are in a big ETA group. We sat in a bar for a while to talk and then headed back to the hotel. I wasn't tired, so I sat in the hall with Jen and talked to her for a while. People kept joining us, and it reminded me of when I was in college just hanging out in the hall. At about 2:00AM, we headed into Ray's room to talk to him, Jason, and David; we finally went to bed around 3:00AM.