Days 4 & 5: Funeral & Subway Challenge

The past two days have been really great! Yesterday I met my Mission Mentor for the first time! A Mission Mentor is someone who volunteers with the Christian study abroad program I am a part of. We (me, the Mission Mentor, and the other girl who is part of the Christian program named Kate) are going to meet once a week to have a Bible study and just talk about life. Bora is also going to help Kate and I get involved in a church here in Korea where we can hopefully help out in the Youth as well as helping us get connected with service projects. It's a really neat opportunity to have someone like Bora to help us out! Bora is also very nice, kind, and beautiful. She's not that much older than us (her late 20's I think) so she is really easy to connect with. I'm excited to get to know her better!

After meeting with Bora, I had a really unique opportunity to go to a Korean funeral. Heather, one of my best friends from High School (she actually lived with me and my family during our senior year of high school) is Korean but goes to college in the US. Her grandfather unfortunately passed away and she was in Korea for a few days for the funeral. Since I was here too, she invited me and our other friend from high school, Hanna, to come. Hanna and I were kinda nervous to go, but we decided to go to see Heather. And Korean funerals are a lot different than American funerals, although you are still supposed to wear black. They're three days long, and one of the days is open to family and friends to come pay their respects and chat with the family. That's when Hanna and I went. Heather met us outside the funeral place and explained to us what we were supposed to do. When we entered the room, we needed to take off our shoes and approach the shrine of sorts set up for her grandpa. We took a flower from the pot on the floor and placed it above the picture of her grandpa.  Then we said a prayer for him before exiting to the next room. That room had tables and waiters would bring food and it was just a place to hang out and talk. She Heather, Hanna, and I spent the next four hours just catching up on what was new since high school! It was so fun getting to be with them both again.

After that, Hanna and I rode the subway back to my University and she helped me buy some food and return a wireless router I had bought and decided I didn't need. Then I went to sleep.

Today started off on the right foot with a skype call with my man! It's been really hard being apart from him and my family and friends. But this is a wonderful adventure! And luckily I've been able to skype Chris and my parents a few times already. I love you all and miss you!

After my skype call, my study abroad group went for the "subway challenge!" Basically, our study abroad leader emailed us a list of places we had to find and take pictures at, all of which required using the subway. If we found them all, the reward was free tickets to a baseball game! It was a lot of fun and we got some really cute pictures! We went to Seoul City Hall, Deoksugung Palace, Sungnyemun Gate, Namdaemun Market, and the Seoul Train Station. I know I just met the people in my group a few days ago, but we have all bonded really well! We all feel very comfortable around each other and they're all a ton of fun!

Once we got back, some boring things happened that I won't talk too much about. I took a nap. I went to an orientation. Blah blah blah. But after orientation Kate, Chris, and I went to find out where all our classes are for next week. Campus is so big! I know I'm going to get lost. But we managed to find all our classes somehow so that's good. And as a reward for finding our classes, our study abroad program gave us movie tickets! woohoo!

My whole group met up again after that to go out to dinner. We walked around Seoul for a while, just looking for somewhere to eat. The problem isn't that there's a lack of food places, the problem is that there's too many food places! It's hard to pick just one. But finally we found this really cheap, really good restaurant! I got an entire dinner meal for 3,000 won, which is about $3 in American money. And the good thing about going out in a group is that everyone can get a different dish and we all just share and try each other's! It's a ton of fun. We also went out for dessert, which was this really good shaved ice dessert. It's basically just plain shaved ice with a little milk mixed in and topped with things. We got two to all share. One was topped with peanut butter and like graham cracker crumble. The other was topped with fruit! They were both so good.

Now the last thing on my agenda is just looking out my window. I can see all the city lights of Seoul every single night since I'm on the 5th floor overlooking the city! And tonight is extra special because there's a lightening storm right now! I am so incredibly blessed to be in this beautiful city.