Aron's Adventures in Korea

Wow what a weekend

2009-06-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

Well this weekend was a pretty good one for me, and in my usual fashion here lately, I'm blogging on Sunday about the past days.

So this weekend was promising to be neat at worst. I had plans to go and spend the weekend with a friend of mine in Ulsan. Ulsan is a smallish city in Korea, with a main Hyundai car manufacturing facility as well as an SK refinery and several several other heavy industrial businesses. In other words, there are plenty of stuffs going on there in Ulsan (factory wise, anyways).

So on Friday we headed out to the house. I was INCREDIBLY nervous about meeting the parents because of the whole politeness thing and my Korean ability, and if we could communicate, and if they would even like me, and about ten other reason why their dad would just throw me out of the window of their really nice 21st floor house (and believe me, if I had scrubs-esque fantasy powers with this blog, you would have got a hilarious version of that thought). Seriously, I wasn't even nervous, I was downright scared.

We arrived at the house, and I met my friend's siblings, but the parents were nowhere to be found. Turns out they were down in a restaurant having chicken and beer (I love Korea). They were soon in coming, though.

I definitely met them, but I was so nervous my Korean was terrible and I could barely say anything really. My friend's mom was really a nice woman, and her father largely silent (which was awesome, since his voice was deep and I couldn't understand a lot anyways).

We all got past the whole awkwardness of meeting, and then they asked what we were going to do. When we said we kind of wanted to go out for food and drink, they first asked if we wanted watermelon (I love Korea). We declined, and then they asked if they wanted some chicken and beer and watermelon (I really really love Korea). There isn't many things in the world which really make everything better, but I've gotta say those three things combined could drive away any unhappiness ever. Not saying I'm some kind of alcoholic or anything, but only every once in a while I let myself experience the treat of some beverages.

So we went out and had a good time (with some old Korean people asking me to babysit/teach english to a group of possibly 25 little kids. Unfortunately (ha!) I didn't get to do that. We came back and I went to sleep. I had a bed and the dad and mom had a bed, but all 3 kids stayed in the living room on the floor. I felt really bad, but they wouldn't have anything but me having the really nice bed. Before bed, all the family got together and really enjoyed each other's time.

Which brings me to my next couple of points: money and Korean.

Firstly, Money. During this trip, no matter how I protested, they wouldn't let me pay for anything. It was pretty different I must say. Coming from my southern upbringing, I couldn't imagine being the man and having an older lady pay for me. It happened, though, and several times over. We had nice meals, went places, enjoyed Ulsan, all on their tab. I felt really burdensome. It really goes to show what hospitality means in Korea, though. As a guest in their house I was definitely given super preferential treatment. It felt kind of uncomfortable sometimes, but it's part of the culture that the guests are treated. I know that if my friend or her family ever comes to Murray I will definitely treat them to everything I can.

Secondly, Korean. WTF. Here I was thinking that I was really progressing in my studies and really doing good at the whole learning a second language thing. False.

Before I got here to Korea, I studied Korean independently. I used the Rosetta stone, and it was great. I felt like I was doing so good. I was listening to native speakers and everything and answering questions. Then I came to Korea. I couldn't understand anyone. It dragged me down for the better part of 2 months to know that for all intents and purposes, I had social ability of a 3 year old (mind you, I'm a little taller and slightly more coordinated). Things got better though, and since the Murray kids came to campus, it was like a door was opened for me in Korean and I just kind of started using it and being able to understand it, and impressing people. With the knowledge of my soon departure I felt pretty frustrated that I had to leave just as I was getting a grasp of the language. Grasp might've been too strong of a word, though.

I sat there in the house this weekend trying to make sense of the communication I was hearing. Explaining just how different Korean can be between people is hard to do. In english, we have some polite words and semantics with which we can flatter someone and show them respect, but is really simple in comparison to Korean. In this language, you have several different verb conjugations, different nouns, different verbs, and even different voice stressing if addressing someone in a polite way. Not only that, but there are varying levels of politeness. In my class, I'm learning a pretty moderate level politeness system. In the house this weekend, since my friend and her family are very close (obviously I know) they don't have to use the polite style of speech.

That being said, the Korean I heard in the house was COMPLETELY different than what I hear in class. I was dumbfounded, and kind of sad that I couldn't understand even the most basic of sentence. All weekend I did my best to understand what was going on, but when I listened to a sentence and was then asked to tell what the person said, I consistently got the meaning of the speech wrong. Every time. It's really humbling to have all of your suppositions about yourself crushed in a day. While the actual experience of being a speechless child in the house really wasn't that fun, it really made me realize something. I'm not going to be fluent in 6 months, much less 4. I can't convince myself I am getting the language if I couldn't understand anything this weekend. Why should I be upset to leave now when I have so much farther to go. If I had 9 more months and hung out with Korean people the majority of my time, I feel like I could definitely become fluent. However, I don't have the time. Because of that realization, I feel like I've come to peace much more with leaving than I was before.

Well, on Saturday we had a lot of stuff planned. First, we went to the sports complex for some exercise. It was fun, especially since Korean exercise equipment is pretty interesting. Anyways, after the exercise we had breakfast. It was a full meal with plenty of Kimchi and related type foods. It was really god, even if it wasn't what I was used to. There were a lot of sour foods and there wasn't anything which I could say I had for breakfast before (just kidding, we had rice). After the breakfast, we headed out to a park by the sea. The park was GORGEOUS. I had never seen the ocean like that, and I will never forget it. There were giant rocks with waves crashing over them, and along with that, people were perched precariously on rocks, trying to catch the night's dinner or the day's wages.

After the park we visited a duck restaurant for my friend's cousin's birthday. She was only like 13 and it was funny to see her and her brother interact with the older kids in my friend's family. That night we took the birthday girl out to eat some japanese food and take a ride in the tallest ferris wheel in Korea. It seemed like she had a really good time.

Also, we played some arcade type sports games that night. We hit in a batting cage and shot some hoops. It felt so good to hit a baseball again. I know how to hit a baseball. I don't have to worry about picking up that skill, or wondering what to do in a certain situation. It's definitely nice to just get to enjoy an activity I'm actually really good at.

We came back home and went to sleep, again with me in the bed and no other kid had one.

Sunday same and we had breakfast again. It was the same thing, and all the sour tastes definitely grow on you after the first time. It made me feel healthy to be eating it for breakfast, and I definitely wasn't bogged down afterwards. Breakfast was finished, and then it was off to take me to the bus terminal. I met one of the student assistants from last year's Discover Korea program for about half an hour before my bus left and then came back to campus. It was a really nice, full weekend.

For now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

myungkyung trip!

2009-06-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

this one is a little short.

It's been a while... again.

2009-06-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't blogged in a long time, and that's ok this time, because nothing has happened to warrant an entry. Basically, all I have been doing is studying and working in the lab here at school. I have made some progress with that, but nothing special really.

It's really hard for me to find motivation to blog now that I know I'm leaving in like 2 weeks. I will do my best to start the blog up again when I get back this weekend. I am going to stay with a family for the weekend in a small town about an hour away. Wish me luck!

I posted today!

2009-05-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

I actually posted again!

Today I basically wasted time until about 1 o clock when I went to the main gate I was supposed to meet a bunch of my Korean/foreigner friends and go to a movie after being interviewed by KBS, the main Korean broadcasting station.

However, to my chagrin, there wasn't going to be a movie, and I couldn't bring my Korean friend. I was so embarrassed because I asked him to go with me. I didn't know he couldn't go. He told me it was ok, but I was still really embarrassed.

So about the whole KBS thing. We were never told where we were going or anything, but luckily it was really fun. We made kimchi (for reals), which was delicious, and we had lunch and spent time with nice Korean old people. I gotta say, actually understanding stuff and being able to communicate in korean is so much fun.

This might be the dangerous part about study abroad. I kind of think as the whole experience of learning a new language as a mountain. At the bottom is the student who is newly arrived in the mysterious country which he/she is studying in. As the student progresses in his journey up the mountain (which can sometime be very steep), he/she is met with little townships along the way. Each township gives the student a sense of accomplishment and makes the surrounding time kind of nice. The harder a student studies and converses in the new language, the faster their progression up the mountain. Furthermore, as you go up this gargantuan mountainside, the townships get bigger and bigger, until eventually they turn into villages, and then to cities, metropoli and so on. At the very top is a shining eutopia, in which the student has successfully conquered the previously unassailable mountain.

Right now, I'm sitting in a pretty big village. I honestly feel like I could stay here and just study until I reach that eutopic summit. I have real friends here. As funny as it sounds to say, I am definitely going to miss this place, and I don't think I want to go back home. Here, people are pretty much always happy to see me. I can go places, and people want to talk to me. People I don't know say hi to me randomly. I can actually communicate how I feel. I can make complex grammatical sentences. It really kind of makes me sad that right as I'm reaching the place I wanted to be in the first place, I have to leave.

Also, and here's the crazier thing: I'm pretty sure if something did happen with N. Korea and the country was thrown into war, I (while being worried and hopeful that the South would win) would be happier than going back home right now. While that may sound radical, I'm pretty sure noone will actually read this entry anyways. I'm pretty much surprised anytime I hear from anyone back home, so that probably contributes to my feelings about going back.

Besides the trip, I just hung out with my friends and came back home. here's hoping I blog tomorrow.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

I just need to get motivated

2009-05-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I didn't blog AGAIN for the last two days. When I got home from ping pong stuff I just basically had no motivation because I was so tired.

That's what my Friday was, basically. I went to class, and then went to Ping pong that night. between the two I cleaned my room and got a bunch of stuff packed up. I am packing just because I want to have my stuff on the way home.

Also, I know that there is pretty much no real danger of this, but I'm also getting everything ready in case something should come of the N. Korea threats. Historically, those threats are made quite often. South Koreans aren't even really worried about it, so I know I shouldn't be. I would definitely rather be safe than sorry.

Saturday

on Saturday I literally spent all day on the other side of Daegu, at a school called Keimyung University. The university is statistically better than daegu university, but not by much. Not like I could attest to how good the school is, because I spent 12 hours in the gym.

So yesterday I was really excited because I had been working on playing a different style, which was really frustrating for everyone playing me because while it doesn't take much effort for me to perform the movements, it takes an incredible amount of energy for my opponent. Unfortunately, like something out of a movie, I won my first game and was very happy going into my second when I notice that my racquet feels funny when I use it. Inspecting it further, I notice the rubber is actually pretty messed up. I try to use it further, but it ends up costing me, and my team, a game. I had a backup racquet, but being as I hadn't played with that one for a long long time, I was pretty useless. Even though I won a game and almost won another, yesterday was the most frustrated I've ever been with table tennis. I know nothing comes easy, but with the time I've put into table tennis there shouldn't be a reason why I get dominated by someone that hard.

Anyways, when all of my team had lost we went home and I went to sleep.

I am going to blog tomorrow. I will.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

P.S. this week I should have more videos up

Ugh....

2009-05-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

Ok ok ok ok I know it's definitely been a week and two days since I last blogged. This entry might be the toughest one to write of them all. It's going to be tough because it's going to be a long post, but because I have to acknowledge now that for the duration of the trip, it's going to be me and myself. I mean, I have korean friends too, and a few that speak pretty good english, but this is going to be the test for me, I think.

So yeah, instead of trying to play catch up forever, I'm just going to start anew with all this blogging business. I just have to accept that in twenty years (if this is still up I guess) I will just have lost that week. It's ok though, because basically I was just helping the Murray peeps around.

Today I had my second Korean language class. It went ok. The grammar is definitely harder, though. It's going to take some serious work to make this grade turn out like my last grade.

Well, I don't want to stretch a good thing (I actually posted) and I'm tired so I had better leave a little early.

Also, I apologize for the whole no post/small post thing. I will be ok now that this one is out of the way (I hope).

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

It's that time again.... gotta catch up on the blogging

2009-05-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

It should really be easy to just post every day, but unfortunately it hasn't worked out that way. I always get sidetracked or get downright lay when it comes to posting, and it's not really excusable. After all, if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't have class all this week I wouldn't even be posting now, considering that on mornings I have class I'm usually already gone.

Thursday

Anyways, I believe that my last post was on Wednesday, so I guess I will pick up on Thursday. On Thursday, I was busy studying for my final on Friday, so I didn't really do much of anything except for prepare myself for the test as well as table tennis. The good news is that on Thursday I found out about another championship I can participate in with my club at a university here in Korea. The guys invited me to play with them and so now I'm in training again ha ha.

Friday

Friday started off good, with me waking up early and doing some last minute preparatory studies for the final. I was definitely surprised by the test's difficulty when I got in and looked at it. I expected the listening part to be difficult, so that's not really a big deal, but the writing part was much harder than the teacher told us it would be. She said there wouldn't be a need for extensive and obscure vocab knowledge, but indeed there was. I missed a few short answer questions merely because they were the only words I didn't know. Them's the brakes I guess. I'm honestly not worried about it, though, because I feel confident I knew the majority of the questions.

After the test, we went out to Mie's for some comfort food, and then to Daegu with the Murray group. It was the first time they would meet their student aides, so I was hopeful they would enjoy the time with them, just like my group enjoyed our time. Seeing these student aides in action definitely made me miss the friends I made last summer. Just as the aides are really nice this year, our aides were great last year too. I was assigned to an aide that wasn't really familiar with Daegu, since he was from a city near Pusan. The group was Jennifer, Vicki, me, and the student aide. We saw a lot of downtown, and it was a great time, but I definitely felt like I wasn't doing a great job of helping show them around. There is just so much to see downtown, I wanted to invent a time machine so that I could have the luxury of stopping time and they could see all the really neat things I have seen. Maybe I'm supposed to feel like that, but it's definitely not a fun feeling.

Anyways, the Daegu trip went pretty well, I think. It didn't rain, and everyone got home safe.

Saturday

On Saturday, we were scheduled to go to Spa Valley, which is an amusement park in Daegu that offers a full indoor spa facility as well as an outdoor water park. It was going to be a great trip, especially since all the days leading up to Saturday were almost unseasonably hot. Just like in the movies, though, I woke up for a morning run on Saturday only to find out that the weather turned from nice and warm to not warm at all (almost cold in fact), as well as an unpleasant dreary gray color. Since it had also rained the night before, I couldn't go on my run. I went back to sleep, hoping that the weather would make a turn for the better.

It didn't. We went to spa valley, and it was definitely very cool now. When we arrived, the Murray people really wanted to participate in the Dr. Fish experience, like I had in Seoul. Spa valley's Dr. Fish was considerably different than the one I took part in, though. In Spa Valley, the Dr. Fish area was pretty much just a wading pool full of the tiny little carnivorous fish. If you were still long enough, they would swim right up to you and begin feasting on all the nasty dead skin you had to offer.

I was kind of hoping that this time it wouldn't tickle so much, because last time I laughed for twenty minutes straight. My hopes were quelled, quickly, however, because the fish were definitely just as ticklish as before. There was a new twist in my experience this time, though, in that my last trip to the public bath had left a smallish sore on my foot about the size of a pin head. It wasn't a big deal and was healing up as it should have been. However, I completely forgot about what it is the fish did, exactly (that is, I forgot the fish loved the taste of flesh). So, as I was getting my fish therapy, I started noticing that some of the bites were tickling so much as just aggravating me via slight pain. when I looked down, I found that the fish had smartened up and had nibbled my little sore to double its size or so. I couldn't blame them, really. Given the option of prime rib or sirloin, I would definitely pick the sirloin, so for those cute little fishies, given the option of plain-jane dead skin or real bloody flesh, it's understandable they wanted the real thing. I was wise to their plan, though, and then avoided the fishy prescription for the rest of the allotted time. After all, it was just as much fun to watch the others get nibbled on.

We finished our foot treatment, and all headed out to our own destination within Spa Valley. The place offered a public bath, several steam rooms, a couple of indoor pool rooms, outside hot tubs, and a large water park. The water park was cancelled out by everyone very early, because of the rain and the cold, so everyone wanted to try the spa type activities. Unfortunately for the Murray group, much of the spa activities were in the public bath, which meant that everyone had to be naked. I definitely can't blame anyone for not wanting to get naked in front of tens of strangers. As Americans, we're programmed to be afraid and ashamed of our bodies, especially in the eyes of those we share a common gender with.

I was proud of the group, though, especially since quite a lot of them participated in some of the "naked" activities offered. I think 4 girls got massages, and a couple of guys went into the public bath area. That was way better than what I thought it would be like. It's such a leap of faith for an American to do something like that.

As for me, I was familiar with the public bath "scene", if you will, and the novelty had definitely worn off. Instead of being ashamed and really nervous, now I mainly assessed the public baths on what they had to offer. Unfortunately, the one at Spa Valley didn't really impress me, so I didn't stay there long (mainly long enough to try the milk bath), except to get my shower.

The rest of the time at Spa Valley for me was spent enjoying the water park with one of the workers in the international office, Anna. Usually, Anna has been nice to me, but I had a feeling that she didn't really enjoy my company. I know it's a silly feeling to have, but clues come from the comments a person makes, and their body language towards you, their demeanor, and so forth.

I was definitely proven wrong in that regard, though, as she was actually really friendly towards me, and it seemed like all the non-verbal cues were completely changed for the opposite. I was wondering if maybe she had been a victim of the body snatchers, actually, because the change was so dramatic. All of that doesn't really matter, in the scheme of things, because I only care that I made another good friend here. We spent the rest of the day trying to take advantage of the water park's slides as they opened. Since the weather was rainy, the waterpark only kept enough employees to run one slide at a time, on an alternating schedule. So, I devoted the rest of the time to slide hopping, so that I could get a really fun time out of it. I did pretty much everything to do in the park, even though it was almost downright cold.

The park had an outdoor hot tub, so I used that to warm myself up again after splashing into the cold catch-pools of the slides. There were twisty slides and straight slides, long (and tall) slides, and short slides. We didn't make it to one, but with that as the only exception, I did them all (even the incredibly giant one that every water park has).

Along with the slide, I also did some other things, like rope walking, gymnastics on said rope over a wave pool, and even some high diving. It was all in great fun, except that on the high dive I definitely did something to my ear, whether it be busting my ear drum, or some variation of swimmer's ear. Anyways, it pretty much incapacitated me for a while. We were about to eave, and my ear was bothering me, so I decide dI would have a beer, to try and take my mind off the pain. Other pain goes away with a little alcohol, why should ear pain be any different?

Unfortunately, that hypothesis was definitely proved wrong. Amazingly, within just a few seconds, the pain I experienced was amplified greatly. I didn't understand it, and tried to just get through it. We went to Outback, and I got my food order in (Baby back ribs...it was heaven) but the pain just kept increasing. I broke down finally, and Anna helped me find a pharmacy. When we explained what happened, and how much pain I was in, the pharmacist just smiled and asked if I had any alcohol. Turns out, that if someone is suffering from an ear problem, alcohol is pretty much the worst thing they can do for themselves. It's one of the only pains which is actually increased with alcohol consumption.

So I managed to eat and make it through dinner, and just as quickly as the alcohol had increased the pain, the naproxen (aleve) that the pharmacist prescribed, took it away. Not only that, but the ear medicine was definitely working (let it be known that only two days later, I am completely pain free, and can hear again.

There's definitely something good to be said about the way in which Koreans handle medicine and prescriptions. many medicines (most, actually) are available over the counter, and the pharmacists usually know a good doctor to refer to if one is needed. The pharmacist is very skilled in knowing exactly what the patient needs, and it helps to cut down on the waiting time for treatment if the patient can get the medicine straight from the pharmacist. I, for one, was very happy with the care given to me, and the lady knew exactly what she was doing. While it may not be the best system, I believe there are certainly good things to be taken from the Korean way of dealing with medicine and patient care, in general. Maybe one day the U.S. will start taking notes (hopefully from everywhere, not just Korea).

Sunday

Sunday's activities involved going to Gyungju, a very famous and historical city about an hour and a half away from the University. The reason for going to Gyungu was to see the neat historical things it had to offer, like burial mounds of old Silla kings, buddhist museums, and other historical goodness.

In its heyday, Gyungju was the seat of the most powerful city in Korea. With almost 1 million inhabitants, it can be compared to the size and the influence of Rome. It should be noted that even though the city was huge, and the kingdom...not-so-much, Korea has always had to deal with its powerful neighbors, China and Japan. Those foreign factors definitely kept the Silla kingdom from being recognized as one of the richest and most powerful civilizations to exist.

Anyways, we definitely saw some incredibly interesting place there in Gyungju. We go to explore the inside of a burial mound, as well as go to a traditional Korean restaurant and enjoy the "Full meal" as it's called. We toured some famous palace grounds, as well as one of the most famous buddhist temples in all of Korea. The place was absolutely beautiful, and there were some neat famous stories to go with them, including, but not limited to: a giant bell which only rings because of the blood of an innocent baby, as well as a Romeo and Juliet-esque story behind the construction of a pagoda. It seemed like the Murray people had a lot of time seeing all the stuff there was to see, there. I know I enjoyed it (I had never been there before).

Monday

Monday went by pretty quickly. I got to sleep in, and I even did some table tennis training. the guys in the building that I trained in were pretty helpful, and I got good practice in at the same time they were improving due to our playing time together. It's so much fun to play with the Korean people, here, because it's such an easy way to build friendships and talk with them on a 1 on 1 basis.

I went to culture class, and had a good time learning about Korean pop culture. We learned about some famous songs, movies, an other unique cultural contributions to the world that Korea has made. After class, it was time to teach my Korean students about America. When I arrived, I was informed that it would be our last class together, and that were sad we couldn't meet again. Even though it was sad that we couldn't meet again, at least in a class setting, I at least had a good idea for a fun game. The Murray people were upstairs enjoying the bounty of a successful cooking class, and I knew my students needed to see just what kind of English they could expect to hear when they came to America. They get some of that from me, too, obviously, but the more speakers they can hear, I feel like the better equipped they will be. So, I set up a little verbal scavenger hunt for them to take part in. Their task was to as assigned questions to the Murray people and find out who fit the assigned little statements I had given them to look for.

The scavenger hunt portion ranged from "Who is a professional cook?" to "Who just had a baby?". Along with the scavenger hunt portion of the game, there were also some "freebies" I gave them, which were questions they could ask anyone. The questions were like "I'm planning on studying in the U.S., what is the most important thing I should know?", and "What is your favorite thing about the U.S.?".

All in all, it was a great activity for them, I think. They mingled in with the Murray people, and all three of them get the majority of the questions answered. Another good side effect of the activity was that Murray really got to see a better example of "average" Korean english skills. The students I have on Monday have good english, but definitely not the caliber of english spoken by the student aides.

What makes that special is that they haven't learned yet what translates well, and what native speakers are more likely to understand. Therefore, the english they speak is many times just directly translated from what they would say in Korean. It really gives a look into the act of "in head" translation, as well as how Koreans would react to situations (observing this one isn't as hard, but in order to know what they're saying and thinking, having the direct translation definitely helps). The Murray people seemed to like it, and that's really all I could ask for.

After the little activity, I said goodbye to the group and headed off to Hayang with the Murray gang. Hayang is a little town outside of the university which can basically be compared with the town of Murray itself. It might actually be a little bigger, but it's basically the same thing. There's not much there, in terms of just fun things to do, but there is shopping, and supermarkets, and houses and whatnot. In Hayang, I went with Helen, Rachel, and Caroline, and we kind of aimlessly walked around, searching for nothing in particular. We did happen to find a couple of Koreans who were really enthusiastic to talk to us, and even wanted to follow us so that they could continue asking questions. We managed to break away from them, though, as they were talking our ears off, and headed back home. It was a good day, and hopefully tomorrow will be the same.

Also, let's hope I can blog tomorrow, so that I don't have to spend two hours in front of my computer catching up.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

How can I not just blog every day?

2009-05-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

Today's Wednesday! You know what that means: I forgot to blog yesterday!

It's alright though because yesterday was boring and I just kind of floated through the day until 3 o clock for my class.

The teacher for that class is truly a unique person. He makes the whole course worthwhile. Not because he is a literary genius or because I want to be like him, but because of what we talk about (granted, he's a nice guy and not a bad person to be though).

My teacher is definitely of the mindset that everything is coming together in a very unfortunate way for everyone in the world, especially America. He doesn't like Obama (not saying that's crazy), and he thinks we have no freedom. While I don't directly just ignore him, I have to admit that it's tough to swallow some of the things he says in class. I think it would be kind of cool for there to be a big rich guy roundtable where they want to completely control the world with their money. Why not? It's the stuff of movies, really. I honestly go out of my way to try and see his points and understand him, because if there's anything this country has taught me, it's to never just disregard anyone. I believe that, to be a productive person, you Must MUst MUSt MUST find something good in everyone and find something to admire. I don't believe that you can go around life just hating people or just casting people aside.

I try so hard to see his points, his logic, and while I can appreciate his point of view, and him as a person, I don't know if I'm able to acknowledge that as a good lifestyle. Sure, there may be a diverse and complicated network of businessmen, bankers, and other rich men who only want power and will take over the world. sure, everything may be happening to put everyone into slavery. I can see how someone can make that inference. I'm not altogether too sure i want to believe that though. For one thing, who am I to be able to stop someone with billions of dollars. For another thing, what does that do for my life, to believe that it's all going to come crashing down just because of some rich selfish guy? Who wants that to cloud their mind all day? I can't control anything about that situation. that's basically just becoming a suicide cult member I think, because you have basically already committed your life to dying and unhappiness. I'm just too happy for that. I want to reiterate though, I can understand how someone would come to that conclusion, and am glad they think in such a high state. The world needs people to question everything, that's how we progress, I just couldn't do it to that extent.

After class, we met with our SAPP groups and we went to celebrate Kayla's departure of Korea. We went out and had a great time.

Today

Today was good I guess. I didn't go to class, so that I could actually study. Since our test isn't going to be speaking, I know that I just need a working knowledge of the grammar rules, an ability to read, and some listening skills for the listening part of the test. So today I stayed home. It felt so nice. It's going to be tough going to the four hour class tomorrow, but I am going to go. After all, we have the aforementioned final on Friday.

After class today, or I guess I should say after the self guided study program I laid out for myself, I went to the chemistry lab. My professor was busy at first, but after a couple of hours of studying in the library, he was free.

We spent some time talking about why our reaction wasn't working. Basically, I have a week to come up with a satisfactory method for synthesizing our product. I am just a little bit off, I know it. I'm just missing one little detail, and I can't figure it out right now. I know it's right there, reaching out to me, it's just right out my sight for now. Hopefully before Wednesday I figure it out, because that's when we settle on the final approach to solving the problem. It will work, and I know I will get my head around it-I just hope it happens after the final so that I can spend time thinking about the final instead of my research.

I went out for a nice afternoon run, and it turns out that for one reason or another my performance suffered today. I don't know if it was because I forgot my allergy medicine this morning, had milk this morning with breakfast, the air quality was bad, or what was going on, but there had to be some reason why I was just exhausted while running. It was quite frustrating, really. I had been doing so well as far as running is concerned, but then today it's all downhill (figuratively, unfortunately). I am going to stick to my story that something messed with my performance, so that it has nothing to do with my actual performance. I'm pretty confident that I only have to keep running to improve, though, so I'm not worried.

I also met the students from Murray tonight as well. They are a really nice group of students. Really fun to be around, and I feel like they are my own cultural babies. Just like I was (and still am) a cultural baby. I didn't know anything about Korea, I didn't know why they seemed so weird, they just were. I had never done any Korean activities. I had never done much. It's really exciting. While there might be a better analogy for it, I'm sticking with the baby one.

Something kind of related, though, and pretty selfish, though, is a subject I have been thinking about for a while now. A month or so ago I met this guy in a presbyterian church, who had been out of the country for a while. He was nice and all, but he seemed so strange, so un-American. Not that he wasn't patriotic, because I only knew him for a few hours, but I mean, it was like he never got accustomed to our culture at all. It was like he was truly a foreigner, albeit one who had spent his life in America. So the reason for bringing him up is really quite valid when the reason I bring him up is brought to life.

Am I that guy? Are they going to sleep now thinking about how strange I am? I imagine they think something along those lines around me (I'm not saying in any way that I imagine people think about me when I'm around), because even the people at home say that about me. Outside of the acceptable strange, though, am I just an alien? Am I one of those guys who talks about how he's American, but has been in another country for so long he's basically a mix of America and whatever country they are in? Am I still fun? Do I sound funny? How many faux pas do I commit every hour? I honestly have no idea why I think these things, but I think it has to do with my need to have a home. When I feel at home, it's an awesome feeling. I love for my home to reside in America though. I like my country. Am I some cultural hybrid now? I imagine that I am, but it's still kind of hard to swallow.

Anyways, that's where tonight took me, along with my studies, so I guess I'm off to bed for my few hours of sleep. Nighty night.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Only a few days left till the final for this section of the program

2009-05-11T05:17:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately... I have a final exam Friday. So, my life is consumed with attempting to make myself study. I have been trying as hard as I can to make myself study. It's just as hard to do here as it was back home.

In other news, though, here is a cool little link I found today:

http://matadorabroad.com/10-korean-customs-to-know-before-you-visit-korea/

Today has been ok. I did some exercise, and I also went to class. Class was good too, it wasn't so bad as far as mental taxation goes.

Well, I don't know what else to talk about really. Nothing else is really going on and I'm just trying to get through the rest of this week.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Blinding Realization

2009-05-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

As I sit in front of the computer for the umpteenth hour today, listening to the classic Otis Redding hit "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay," I think I may have had a blinding realization.

Personally, in order to feel normal and to even maintain a respectable level of motivation I must must must must must must exercise regularly. That's the thing which has been bogging me down. The days which I exercise, in turn letting off steam and letting in the wonderful endorphins, I am able to function like I was back at home. Eating things which aren't healthy aren't as big of a deal, and I feel less bogged down. So, the conclusion for this little bit is that if you enjoy exercising, it's a great idea not to stop when you travel abroad. I hope I remember that for the next trip I take.

However, this principle definitely extends past just physical activity as well. It's the simple things which keep you sane that are the most important to keep doing when you're abroad. Whether it's partying, whether it's playing an instrument, sports, drawing, whatever it is, on a long trip (and especially where you're out of your element) it's incredibly important and even more rewarding than one might think.

Getting past all of that, I must apologize for not blogging for a few days. Nothing has really been going on, to tell the truth. It's true that on Friday we took a trip to a cool provincial park where a tea festival was going on, but besides that, my weekend has been less than spectacular. Mainly it's just revolved around studying and getting schoolwork done. I finished a paper I'm actually proud to have written and I am understanding more and more Korean as time goes by.

To be honest, sometimes I feel like I'm not even on a study abroad anymore. I don't know if this is a normal feeling, or if this is the stage directly following the terrible culture shock stage, but I really feel as if I just live here now and that nothing is really even a big deal. I easily can deal with all the crazy things going on around me, and everything is getting much easier to bear. I know it seems like kind of a funny thing to write down like this, but to go from a state of mind where I hated everything, including my own situation mind you, to a state where basically nothing can touch me is personally astounding. Sure, I can't ignore the fact that I may have bad days still or that I am going to be missing home way more now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but for now, this feeling is just about all I can ask for.

Deep inside myself I hope that this feeling isn't just a product of the aforementioned happiness at this journey being almost complete. I would love nothing more than for these feelings to be based only on the fact that I have actually come to terms with life here, that I've come to a place about as different as possible while still being in an industrialized country and still carved out a nice little spot for myself. I really hope that maybe I have conquered Korea, at least, the barrier keeping me from being happy in a place this different. I'm not complaining about being happy, I promise, but I would be very disappointed with myself if this happiness was only because I'm leaning on the idea of leaving.

Today I went to church again. I go to mass sometimes with Kayla, mainly because I am kind of afraid of being alone here with just myself. I know it will be that way in ten days, but till then I will take advantage of being able to tag along with friends. I'm not a very religious person at this stage in my life, but going to mass has been nice. I can go there and just kind of let myself get lifted up by the encouraging message being taught there. I'm not sure if I will choose Catholicism if I do become religious, but I enjoy the shared happiness emanating from the room. It's a pretty nice feeling in a foreign country. But I digress.

We went to church today. The church is mainly for english speaking migrant workers (it also functions as an easy way for Koreans to improve their english), and is also home to the catholic workers' center. What I never realized, even in my time as a landscaper, and all the time before today, how hard it must be to be a migrant worker.

Life is tough, that's nothing new. Imagine going to a mentally taxing yet maybe physically mundane job every day. Life is tougher. Imagine being the only source of income for your family, which is in your home country, but you're thousands of miles away from them. Life is even tougher. To be a migrant worker, even an english teacher, must be one of the hardest things a human being can put themselves through. As a student, I'm still relatively independent. Sure I have a better half, a family, and a good life back home, but I'm in that awkward stage where my only real responsibility is to learn and carve out a place in life. I can gain personal satisfaction at least through my own personal growth and the process of learning.

Migrant workers, though, their job is to produce funds for someone else. They aren't independent in the least. They are bound on all sides by familial obligation, maybe debt and the pursuit of alleviation, a real job, and maintaining a sense of satisfaction. I couldn't imagine being in that position, and I honestly respect each and every migrant worker who is providing for a family thousands of miles away.

Church let out and it was time to look for interesting things in Daegu. Unfortunately, today, as well as being Mother's Day (Happy Mother's Day!!!!!), is also International Forget-Everything-You-Previously-Learned-About-Directions Day. It's sparsely celebrated in the states, but I hear is big in Europe. I managed to get disoriented several times somehow, and I think maybe it's due to the fact that basically Daegu looks like a tiny version of Seoul. The layout streetwise is the same, with the same subway time system for crossing streets, and the same style layout of its downtown. I was basically useless when it came to directions today.

Thankfully, though, it was nice out and all the walking we did wasn't in the brutal cold or blistering heat. It was nice, and we managed to make good use of our feet as we walked to stores and shops.

We made it back in good shape, I finished my paper for culture class (finally), and I went for a run. This is the whole exercise thing I spoke of before, and tonight was an amazing night for a run. It was cool so it was basically like being air-conditioned in transit. If I had the wind I would have been content with just running for hours on end tonight, but there was studying to do.

Somehow, the more lost I think I am in Korean, the more I seem to just kind of fall into it. Maybe that's how the east-Asian languages have to be learned. Somehow, the english speaking part of our brains must be turned off, and we just kind of have to let the grammar rule (so to speak), even though it seems against everything we know. It's kind of like finding one's happy place really. Until you let everything go holding you back, and just let it happen, this language isn't going to come to you. I don't really know how to explain it other than that. I tried hard to equate everything, but everything about this language just won't let that happen.

You turn the many words of english into few words in Korean. An eight word sentence in English may turn out to be 4 or 5 words in Korean. Dealing with that isn't as easy as just assigning multiple words in English to one Korean word. While that may work at first, that severely deprives one of finding the neat little complexities those strange verbs and conjugations hold. They just don't equate.

Tomorrow it's looking like I'll be busy, but I think I may be able to publish another video, about the trip on Friday. We'll see how it goes.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

The day back to classes

2009-05-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

Today has been, well, to say the least, very very long. Actually, way over 40 hours to be exact. For some reason unbeknownst to me I couldn't sleep last night at all. It's not like I didn't try, I just couldn't.

Needless to say, my class experience today was less than optimal. Basically it was me fighting a really sick feeling and also being dead tired for four hours, and then me going home to try and feel better. Somehow though, like a magic switch, I went from being exhausted to not at all. I'm not exactly sure why, but I am just now getting tired.

I talked to my mom tonight and it was fantastic. I really miss home a lot. I miss being there to help out at home and just be the big brother. It's going to be great coming back. I hope I can get a job lined up.

so today has been mainly wasted, really. Since I couldn't sleep last night I have been completely worthless. There's always tomorrow.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba

Video #2 of the Seoul trip

2009-05-06T00:32:00.001-07:00

Video #1 of the Seoul trip

2009-05-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

reflections on a 5 day weekend

2009-05-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try and document everything that happened in Seoul this weekend, but there's no telling how much stuff I'm going to leave out.

We left Friday afternoon, and boarded the KTX without any trouble. The KTX itself was a beautiful work of engineering, sleek and powerful looking. During the trip to Seoul we reached speeds of 260km/h, which is over 170 mph. Needless to say, we made it to Seoul in under two hours. The atmosphere inside the train was really nice, and our seats were family style seating, which means that two of us (Kayla and Philip) rode in the forward facing direction and the other two (me and Adam) in the rearwards facing direction. It was on the KTX that I started to make some videos, and for the first time, I had working microphones. They work really well, and help to cancel out a lot of the noise in the environment.

We got to Seoul at around 4 and headed out to the hostel. It would have been much easier to find if I hadn't forgot to write down the directions. I fully intended on it, I just forgot. Anyways, basically just finding the hotel turned into a hilarious hodge podge of looking for a PC room so that I could look up the directions, then not getting good enough directions apparently, then having to find yet another PC room and getting on the right track. Seoul is such a massively giant city, every street looks the same because of all the restaurants, clothes stores, and other shoppy whatnot.

The hostel was called The Windflower Guest House, and was actually pretty nice. The guys working the desk spoke Korean, but didn't look like your average Korean person. They also spoke a little English, which made everything easier. The room itself was nice, and was an 8 room suite thing which we shared with a varying group of people (Germans, Turkish, Americans, etc.). The hostel was just what we wanted, a nice secure place to sleep at night and leave your stuff during the day. I would definitely recommend The Windflower Guest House to anyone staying in Seoul.

Anyways, the first night we were looking for stuff to do so we headed out to Insadong and to dinner. Insadong is a market which specializes in uniquely Korean stuff. Lots of souvenirs and lots of Korean treasures. The street itself is really nice, and while we were there the riot police were definitely there in force. I don't know exactly what they were doing there, but apparently there was the risk of protest all around the city, so the riot police were just making an appearance and looking strong basically.

We looked around and enjoyed the atmosphere awhile, and then went to dinner. We ate in this rally nice traditional restaurant which offered delicious and very Korean cuisine. Along with dinner we had the privilege of enjoying Korean wines as well. We had plum (delicious) and raspberry (also delicious) wines, which were well worth it. After leaving, I decided to take everyone to city hall and the area I was familiar with from the trip last year, especially since we had to be there at 8 the next morning for the DMZ tour. We ended up finding the place really easily (via taxi) and also went to an old stomping ground called Texas which had a fantastic selection of beverages. We stayed there a little while and left, so that we could get some rest.

Saturday started out slow, but we easily got where we needed to be and headed out to the DMZ via our reserved tour. On the tour there were some people from Thailand, America and Brazil. the American was a girl and the Brazilian a man and were both from China. The gentleman was evidently a diplomat and the lady worked for an environmental advocacy company, both in Beijing. This meeting with other foreigners definitely went along well with my past experiences, as the two were definitely quirky and unique. The Brazilian guy always questioned every statement made, like when our guide was explaining where the DMZ actually was, he continually restated the statement in the form of a question. Like this:

Guide: This is the start of the DMZ, where (specific number) of people died.

Guy: THIS is the DMZ?

Guide: Yes, this is the area where the armistice stated (blahblahblah)

Guy: THIS is the area (blahblahblah)

It was repetitive and still kind of funny every time it happened. It was also kind of dumbfounding, though, too, because this guy was a diplomat. Granted, he wasn't necessarily a full fledged ambassador or anything, but I definitely wasn't impressed with his manner or his intellect. I know how that might sound, but this guy is a diplomat from an up and coming country (Brazil) to one of the most powerful nations in the world (China).

The girl was pretty unique too, in that it seemed as if she had a lot more going for her than the guy did. She explained what she was doing, and it sounded like she was a kind of lobbyist. She worked on getting environmental measures through to China, and knew enough for me to kind of believe her story about coming from Beijing. It doesn't really matter, I guess, I just really read a lot into what people tell me when I'm overseas because a lot of foreigners are a little different than they originally present themselves to be. I'm going to stop with the whole foreigner deal, though, because it's not really a big deal.

The DMZ went pretty well, though, and seeing it again for the second time was neat. I definitely got more out of it, and the tunnel seemed much less back breaking this time. It was actually a lot of fun going again, because I got to see a lot of different things than what I did last time.

After the DMZ, we were pretty tired. We were looking for a way to relax, so we decided to go to the Korean cultural staple, the Sauna (pronounced Sah-OOh-Nah).

Many, many Americans have probably never been to (much less heard about) a sauna, nor would many of them ever fathom of going. A ton of things contribute to the opinion I have that saunas are basically a collection of facets which American culture tells us isn't correct or is scary.

Going into the building, there were 3 guys and Kayla, the only girl. We all paid our money (only like 3 bucks for unlimited time) and headed to the locker room. We put our shoes up and grabbed the key to our locker.

The first thing about a sauna which is very different than what, as Americans, we are used to, you MUST be naked to go into the entrance. Before I continue, I feel like I should mention that guys and girls are completely separate and no co-nakedness is had. Anyways, you MUST be naked to enter the actual sauna, and it can be quite a shock at first to walk into a room with a bunch of naked people in it.

Surprisingly though, walking into a room full of naked people when you're already naked isn't nearly as bad as walking in when you're clothed (odd, right?). I was Incredibly nervous about going into the actual sauna, because everything I have ever been taught about my body as an American has only been about shame and about not being naked in front of lots of other people. Luckily, I didn't have a panic attack or anything like that and made it into the actual sauna with no real problems.

How did I willingly walk into a room with 40-50 naked men and actually enjoy the experience? Well, as soon as I walked in to the room that had all the showers, hot tubs and steam room entrances I had two options. Either I could freak out, be awkward and weird about my body in front of the group of men ranging in age from 8-80, or I could just enter a state of mind where I became comfortable in my own vulnerability and just look without seeing really anything. I can basically liken the experience to just imagining the people as just entities, and not bodies or people. I noticed there were other people there, but I tuned them out and just focused on relaxing.

After about an hour and a half of going from hot tub to cold tub to steam room to hot tub I finished my sauna time, and I was INCREDIBLY relaxed. It was really nice, actually. Afterwards, we wanted to find a Korean oddity we had heard about, called Dr. Fish.

Dr. Fish is a neat service some coffee shop places in Seoul offer, where you can get your feet "treated" by lots and lots of tiny little fishes. We were so excited about finding this place, we headed off in its direction immediately after leaving the sauna. However, just like finding the hostel, we didn't have concrete directions, so whenever we got to the area we knew the cafe was located in, Gangnam, we had to find a PC room.

We got directions, but most to our sadness, couldn't find the place for a long, long time. The time walking on the tough Korean streets was footbreaking, and by the time we got to the cafe we were wore out physically and emotionally.

This is a good time to just reiterate how funny Seoul is. It's a giant, sprawling, multilevel metropolis with a myriad upon myriad of things to do, but, the incredible amount of enterprise there makes it incredibly difficult to find most things. There are signs EVERYWHERE, and people pretty much always crowd the streets, to boot. During dinner time every single restaurant is busy, all the fun ideas are already thought a hundred times over, and to top it all off, Seoul is a very hilly city. So, as a friendly public service announcement, I suggest getting detailed directions to the front doorstep of anywhere you want to go in Seoul.

Anyways, we eventually made it to Dr. Fish cafe place and had some coffee and bread while we waited on a spot with the fish to open up. We got the ok, and made our way up to the fish tank. I don't really know how to explain the feeling of these little fish gnawing at you, but I'm going to do my best.

Personally, I am the most ticklish person in the universe, especially when it comes to my feet. Every single nip by the fish was possibly the most tickling sensation I can ever think of going through, and there were definitely dozens of little nips going on every second. I was basically trapped in a never ending tickling torturous nightmare for 20 minutes. I don't think I have ever laughed that much, that loud, or for that long, especially in a public place. I definitely made a scene in that place, and probably proved every loud American stereotype every even thought of. It's not like I could help it, though, because in my mind, I was literally being tickled to death by dozens of tiny fish. Our time expired eventually and I took my feet out of the tank.

The feeling which followed is something I will never forget. I have never, ever, felt so good in my life. I think the feet might by the center of all happiness, because it was really like I had gotten a thousand massages and was definitely willing to run a couple marathons at least. I feel like if long distance runners would get the Fishy treatment every day they would be refreshed and ready for a harder run the next day. I'm not even exaggerating. My feet have never felt so good.

After Dr. Fish and the Sauna we were definitely in a great state of mind, so we decided to go back to Texas. There we met a big group of Air Force guys who were on vacation. They were good one night friends and it was definitely an experience seeing how soldiers from foreign deployments felt first hand.

They seemed like they didn't enjoy their given job very much at all, and basically used the little vacation given to them by the weekend to let off a LOT of steam. They ranged from 20-23 and all kind of wondered how they ended up in the air force and in Korea. They were loud and basically your average college crowd, but I have to say it was fun just hanging out again with American type people. This weekend has been especially what I needed, especially as all the classes kick into gear and as all the required things I have start to run together.

Afterwards, we left for the hostel and day three.

On day three (Sunday) we lost a traveling companion, Adam. He went back to Daegu, and then there were three. On sunday we decided to go to Itaewon. It's basically where all the foreigners go for shopping and other stuff, which is only exacerbated by its close proximity to the largest armed forces base in Korea. We had a light lunch and then made our way to the Olympic park. I have to say, I really, thoroughly enjoyed the park, but was pretty disappointed as to how they kept up the facilities. The only arena I could tell was kept up well at all was the tennis stadium, which was more or less immaculate.

The park itself was incredibly beautiful, though, and was full of people enjoying themselves, as well as beautiful sculptures and landscapes. The world peace gat especially was incredible, and the street leading to it beautiful as well. It was exactly what I wish an olympic park was, basically, and am looking forward to taking advantage of visiting other olympic parks as I find them.

The most disappointing part of the park was the fact that one of the gymnastics arenas had been made into a cheap clothing market. I was expecting to go and see an arena with state of the art equipment and young athletes participating in training, but instead was greeted with cheaply made clothes and shoes. Not that that stuff isn't nice and all, it's just that I would really like to be inspired by world class athletes instead of by low low prices of brand name textiles.

But I digress.

The olympic park was very close to another very korean attraction, Lotte Department store and Lotte World. Lotte World is basically an indoor parody of Disney World. Not saying that the Koreans for sure copied them (they may be owned by them) but they definitely had two cartoon characters as their "mascots" who were very similar to the Disney Mice, their logo was VERY similar to the Disney logo, and I'm pretty sure I heard a Korean version of "It's a Small World" as well. The park was nice, though, and was definitely interesting.

Who couldn't have fun riding a roller coaster called The French Revolution? We rode balloons all around the park, rode a fun egypt themed adventure ride, and experienced very fun Korean theme park activities. I thought it was very fitting that the park was indoors, because Koreans, as far as I can tell, are all about convenience. The chance of a park being rained out is daunting, but move the park inside of a very popular department store, which is pretty much comparable to the mall of America in variety of activities, and you have something very enticing to Koreans. We saw a light show there, rode all the rides we could, and tried to ice skate in the rink there, but it was too expensive for the half hour we could have skated. I plan on going back to ice skate, and I hope it works out.

Later that night we tried to go back to Texas again, but there was no other fun people there and we were very tired, so we left for the Hostel again.

The next day Phillip left for Daegu, so we were short another traveler again. However, we still managed to have a lot of fun. We started our day off by going to Insadong and getting some fun looking around and shopping done.

We got done with that in enough time to head up to Seoul Tower and see the city turn from daytime to night. The trek up the mountain was a ton of fun, and definitely tough. On the way up we found all manners of little parks, and even an archery range.

At the archery range we got a lesson from a Korean traditional archer, who showed me the fundamentals to shooting a Korean recurve bow. I even got to pull it back and feel the tension of an important historical weapon. I wanted to try and shoot at the range, but the guy told me it would take at least two months of daily training to become familiar enough with the sport to at least not be dangerous to other people. It was fun while it lasted, though, and the men firing the arrows seemed absolutely mechanical about their accurate work.

After the range work we witnessed, we headed the rest of the way up to the tower. It was a long, arduous trek, but fun nonetheless. We got to the top of the tower, about 900 or more feet about Seoul, and prepared ourselves to watch the sun go down over the skyline. The observation deck was incredibly loud, and its evident on the video as well. The sun went down within the hour, and we got to see all the lights come on in the city.

Soon thereafter it was decided that we try and go to Dongdaemun, which is a very traditional market here in Korea that's supposed to be the best at night. We made it all the way there, via taxi, only to find that it was in fact closed. Sad face. Wasn't really a big deal though, considering we were pretty tired anyways. We decided to see if we could meet any foreigners in Texas, only to find it devoid of any western life. So we left, naturally.

What occurred afterwards is pretty frustrating and pretty funny really. I don't know how this all happened exactly, but somehow we became blacklisted by every single regular taxi in Seoul. We tried to hail at least 10 empty taxis, only to be simultaneously rejected by all of them. Some sped by and others slowed down only to speed away once they got a good look at who we were.

We walked for what seemed like forever somehow got into a premium taxi. They cost over four times a regular taxi, but the subways and buses stopped running, as far as I know, and we had no other option, considering the other taxis were not picking us up. Upon arriving back at the hostel, we collapsed onto our respective lodgings, and thankfully didn't catch whatever illness it was one of the other guests had (I was really hoping it wasn't swine flu).

Today we woke up super late, thank goodness, and headed back home. It's literally consumed all of my day today to get caught back up again with everything and to post pictures, do this blog, and get the process of getting videos up started. I guess tomorrow I am going to do my homework, because it's definitely midnight already and I'm just now at equilibrium with the stuff I need to do and the stuff I have gotten done.

How did I get this written?

Until next time,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Getting ready for Seoul!

2009-04-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

On friday I go to Seoul, and I really don't feel like posting until I get back rally. Maybe Seoul will help me shake the rain cloud over my head.

Until next Wednesday,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Gearing up while Gearing down

2009-04-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

Today was a myriad of tiny successes and failures all wrapped up into one.

The main failure came from class today when we continued going over more fun grammar, that I still haven't completely grasped. Oh well though, the space parthenon wasn't built in a day I guess.

After Korean class, I called the DMZ tour people and got my tour all booked up for Saturday in Seoul. I don't really know how much it's going to cost, because doing a whole shpiel about the DMZ is going to be great. The best part about booking the tour was that the guy on the phone spoke Korean, and I was able to actually do something in Korean.

My midterm for culture class was shortly after, and of course I spaced on a couple of easy things. That's kind of what I do. Anyways, the test went ok and I grabbed a quick dinner before going back to my room for studying and whatnot.

Now it's bedtime, though, so until next time,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

P.S. I realize this is pretty much the shortest post ever but I've been feeling really under the weather lately and, today especially, have found it hard to find anything worth writing about.

Sunday is Korean for relaxation?

2009-04-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

As the title suggests, today I devoted mainly to the fine art of keeping my sanity. While some studying was involved, I mainly reveled in the fact I had nothing really pertinent to do all day. For one glorious day, I allowed myself just to be tired, to just watch my favorite tv shows, and just laugh and laugh and laugh. It was nice.

Besides the self help time I had, I also went to mass. It was ok. I would probably get much more out of it if I were really of the church going persuasion. I know what you're thinking, I haven't tried, or given it a fair shot, but that can't be farther from the truth. Maybe that's the whole gist of it I really can't get. Maybe it's one of those things in life you shouldn't have to try for. Anyways, I guess I will keep going to church, and maybe things will go from there. I think it might be nice to have something to believe in. All I can do is keep trying, even if it's the wrong way to go about it.

So yeah, besides the whole church thing, I haven't really done much of anything. For dinner, me, Kayla and Phillip all went to the Meat Buffet place I found before and it was pretty good. It's always a good time to cook your own dinner with friends around I think.

Well, I think I might try and sleep some more. I find I'm much more pleasant to be around and can have way more fun if I just get some sleep. Sound advice for any international adventurer I think.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Saturday (Wow look at what I did)

2009-04-25T05:32:00.000-07:00

I got way more and also way less done than I thought I would today.

I basically just did homework and read the book my professor gave me until it was time to go to my seminar. At the seminar, everything went pretty well. I was able to understand the basic concepts behind everything the guys were saying, even though I couldn't understand what they were actually saying.

After the seminar, we all went to lunch (everyone in the lab + Dr. Chang's wife). It was hilariously like my family's meals. We all sat at the table, and basically watched the tv the whole time. All the younger people finished before the older people, and were waiting on them with an air of impatience. It was a fun meal, though, because it just cements, to me, how working relationships in academia can be a lot like family here in Korea.

Lunch came and went, and then it was time for a little baseball. Our baseball time consisted of all the lab guys and Dr. Chang outside on a strip of land littered with trees, and bordered on all sides by buildings with lots of windows. It was pretty much everything I had nightmares/great dreams about when I was little. Don't think the day passed without windows almost being damaged either. Thanks to yours truly, several upon several windows were put in danger with just a bat and ball.

I was tired of living out every shortcoming of my baseball career in a span of an hour so I left for the dorm. However, I couldn't really study, so I decided to try and get some exercise. My exercise of choice? Table Tennis. Luckily, and for no reason at all really, some of the guys from the table tennis club were in the room, and we played for a good four hours.

Since then I've basically just been getting my homework done, got unsweaty, and getting all my stuff straightened out in my room (not).

Even though it's not even 10 yet, I feel like I need to try and catch up on the sleep I don't normally get, so that's what I'm going to do.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Start of a new weekend, and a busy week

2009-04-24T04:10:00.001-07:00

This weekend is one of both relaxation and studying.

Today's class was pretty good. We went over some tough grammatical concepts but I ended up getting it at the end, so all in all it was a good day.

I didn't go to the lab today, because I wanted to at least have a good chunk of that book Dr. Chang gave me read before I see him again. It's a good thing I did because I have gotten some of it read and it's really interesting. It's all about microwave assisted organic synthesis.

Instead of going to the lab, I went with Kayla to downtown Daegu. As usual, I didn't get anything, and basically it was fun just walking around. I'm getting pretty used to the whole downtown area, but then again, the downtown I'm talking about is only the mainstream downtown. We got off on a different side of the block today and I didn't even realize where we were until we made a giant circle. One day I just want to walk all around the daegu area, just to see it. It's really a nice city I think.

That's basically all I did today. I really wanted to go to Pusan this weekend, but I have two tests in my english classes next week and lots of Korean I need to study. It looks like tomorrow will be devoted to academia. Hooray.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Two days in a row! I'm on a roll!

2009-04-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

I would just like to remark, first off, how happy I am that I convinced myself to get on here and blog again (and for the 2nd day in a row!). I like the whole journal thing, just putting out a good effort takes like an hour and it's always at the end of my day and....(see complaints section for the rest of this paragraph).

Anyways, class was pretty good. Considering I woke up as the most tired person in the world today, I got through. We have learned lots of stuff, and I'm pretty sure (if I can remember what the words actually sound like) I can have a pretty good conversation.

I can say things like:

I'm sorry but I can't come to class today, due to the unbearable stomach pains I'm having right now.

However, if you go to the beach later, I would love to go with you.

No, I don't have my homework. I was too busy watching American sports at 3 in the morning.

The streets sure are crowded today. Let's take the subway instead, it's way faster anyways.

So yeah, my Korean is coming along swimmingly I think. Those above sentences are really all you need anyways, right?

After class, we had lunch and I headed out to the lab. The lab always makes me walk away with a new feeling every day. Today, it was a mixture of frustration and amazement. Frustration because I can't really talk to the guys in the lab well enough to ask questions about why stuff is happening, and also because the reaction seems to not be working so well. Amazement, though, because with just a few words, my professor has given me a little hope and made me want to come back, yet again, tomorrow, and test my skill at chemistry.

When my professor told me at first he wanted to be a real father figure in my life, it was a little off putting. I got past that point, though, when I learned in culture class that in Korea, when you develop a good relationship with a teacher they really become like another parent. It's the whole Confucian thing again I think.

Now, though, it seems like (and as I imagine a father would often do) he can just come into the lab, say five words, and give me hope again. As ridiculous as it sounds, he has the best one line sayings ever (even better than David Caruso [<---The 'lead man' on CSI Miami who always gets to say the cool lines, like, "You don't spend a thousand dollars on clothes.... that you're never going to wear." see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sarYH0z948]). Take for example, today.

He came in and I told him what was going on. He looked at my reaction stuff, looked at me, and said, "Chemistry is like making bread. Sometimes you follow the recipe and it tastes great. Sometimes, though, you follow the recipe and it comes out burnt on one side or doesn't taste good. We'll succeed, just give it time."

How do you argue with that? You basically have no choice but to have hope. The motivational speech had everything you could have asked for: dramatic pause at the beginning, parallel story you can relate to (I really enjoy bread, by the way), and a pick-me-up line thrown in at the end.

I came back to the room because it was time for none other than table tennis! Unfortunately for me, when I got there, I found out my club was once again not meeting due to midterm tests. It was all pretty good, though, because I basically got to kill two birds with one stone (and that's like 4 birds altogether, as long as two in the hand really are worth two in the bush) because I got to play with some professor type guys (on a university campus in Korea, you pretty much have to assume they're professors if they're old guys) ad I got to practice my new playing style. It's way more fun for me, so I am willing to put time into it.

Afterwards, I came back to my room and had to come to terms with a terrible realization. It can be summed up in 7 short words: Eating plus not working out equals fat.

Yep, so, being as I am in a good mood it didn't bother me that much to figure it out. I am definitely going to make more of an effort to both eat less and work out more, because that's the formula to get rid of the fatness.

Homework done,

Table tennis played,

I could be wrong,

but I think I've had a good day.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Dongwhasa video!

2009-04-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

Somehow I got motivated and posted today...yay!

2009-04-22T07:43:00.001-07:00

Today I'm pretty sure I had a good time.

Class went ok. I had enough coffee and whatnot so I was able to be in a good mood. Tomorrow is thursday so only one more day until friday! The class is good and all, but once again, for the millionth time, it's four hours.

After class I had lunch with Kayla and Philip, and we strategized about travel and about how to better inform the people coming here in the future. More on that soon.

Afterwards I went to the lab, ran an NMR on my product, and found out that I didn't actually get any product, which is kind of amazing I think. I redid the reaction... only to get the same exact looking (and wrong color) solution. There is a graduate student who wants to do everything for me, so I guess this work is what it is. I really don't know how to feel about it.

I also went and booked the train for Seoul next weekend. I'm really excited about that trip. I emailed a travel agent about a full DMZ tour for us on that saturday.

During the lab, I took my vitamin, because I forgot to earlier this morning, but by the time I got around to taking it I had been without food for a couple of hours. I totally forgot, at least subconsciously, why they tell you to have them with food. Not to be overly dramatic or anything, but I thought something really bad was going to come of the whole vitamin ordeal. I thought maybe that was it, because of my extremely altered existence for about half an hour.

On that note, may I suggest that future students on any semester trip have daily vitamins, because sometimes nutrition is difficult to get.

Well after that, basically I have just been trying to get stuff done. I'm pretty confident that I will have the next video ready tomorrow morning. Sorry again for putting the Table Tennis video up, it was just a fun thing.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Table Tennis Tournament Stuff

2009-04-21T16:22:00.001-07:00

Yea yea I know it's not a big deal, and that no one probably cares, but it's a popular Korean sport, so here is my experience.

I have GOT to start blogging daily again.

2009-04-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while (5 days? :( ) but I am going to do my best to start blogging daily again.

Saturday

Saturday was pretty fun. Basically, the plan was to visit Daegu and do a little perusing of the local wares. We did really well in that regard. There were plenty of clothing stores to be found, and we walked pretty much the whole downtown. It was really a great Saturday afternoon. It wasn't too hot, or too cool, it was just perfect for a nice day of relaxation.

We went into the traditional market for a little traditional shopping, but basically found the exact same stuff over and over again. I found some tailors, but didn't get anything. At the start of this trip, I thought getting new clothes would be a cool thing. I came to my senses, though, and thankfully so, because where would I even put a suit?

The market was pretty neat, because there were vendors everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. There was only room to go through one at a time, and there were still scooters going through, which gave the shopping an interesting air of danger, as if you knew while looking at a shirt you had the chance of being brutally ran down by a scooter. Well, maybe that's a little dramatic, but seriously the scooters go everywhere. I will get a picture of them being crazy.

One of the neater things about the market was that there was a vast network of indoor vendors as well, which specialized in textiles and traditional clothing. This part of the market was where the tailors were, and they actually had some pretty nice material. I would be pretty afraid of getting a suit tailored I think, because they would probably make it in the Korean style: very tight and shiny.

We came back from downtown and had dinner with the english teachers and watched celebrity apprentice. It was a really good time. The english teachers here are so nice, and are definitely interesting. They are good friends to have, and anyone coming to Daegu will be able to utilize them in staving off homesickness.

Sunday

On Sunday I had an incredibly fun trip (which is also the subject of my next video blog, hopefully up soon). I met with my teacher and a couple of Japanese exchange students in Daegu and we went on a one day temple stay.

I woke up early so I could be awake for the travels, and attempted to get the Japanese guys and go to meet our teacher. They didn't answer their door, though, so I had to go it alone for that part. I didn't know where we were meeting (at first), but my teacher had given me the name of the place, so when I got on the appropriate bus I gave the information to the bus driver. He agreed to tell me when we got there, so I floated off into a daydream.

An hour and a half later, when I come to from my day dreams, the bus drier is telling me to get off because I've arrived. Turns out the place I was meeting my teacher was a park I was really familiar with, I just didn't know what the official name of it was. I could have been there easily half an hour before, by taking the subway and whatnot, but instead, I had to rely on the bus and was a half hour late.

I met my everyone, and we were off. Turns out my knocking really did wake up the Japanese guys, and they freaked out when they realized they overslept. They, however, knew the official name for the park, and therefore were able to get there before me, even though they left way after me.

We got on this bus, called the Rapid Bus, but it should have actually been called the So-Crowded-It's-Probably-A-Safety-Hazard. This bus could probably have seated 40 people easy. Too bad 75 people were actually on board the whole way. Believe it or not, it made the trip much more interesting. What was usually a leisurely drive up a mountain road turned into an epic battle of diesel horsepower vs. gravity and physics.

We made it in good time (I think) and started making our way to the temple. I had a lot of fun walking to the temple itself. Hiking up a mountain is so neat, at least to me, and if you joy it as much as I do, Korea is a great place. The temple itself was smaller than I expected, but the stay itself was top notch.

At first, they welcomed us to the temple and we all introduced ourselves. All in all there must have been 25 people there, kids included. As soon as the clock struck twelve, we headed down to the food building for lunch, which was delicious. The temple had a vegetarian diet, and the food was neat. It was all very traditional, even the kimchi (sour from age). Also, there was traditional Korean bread, called Duck. It was really good, but it was the thickest bread type food I have ever had.

Lunch was finished and we headed out to our first activity: the famed Korean tea ceremony. I always enjoy doing the ceremony, because I feel like it helps me remove myself from the world, and really helps appreciate the act of taking in nature's bounty. I didn't really mean for that to sound so spiritual, but I guess it kind of just did. Anyways, we went through it two times, and the lesson was focused mainly on the steps, not the movements and things like that.

When we sat down for the tea ceremony I was pretty surprised. I have heard that temples usually have their stay participants do actual work while there, but the one we were at only wanted us to have fun and see the lighter side of traditional korean life, which was also fine by me.

After the tea ceremony, we all relaxed for a few minutes, while the next activity was prepared: Lotus flower lantern craft time. In honor of Buddha's approaching birthday, we were taught how to make beautiful little lotus flower lanterns. It was so simple, and the product was so pretty, I was so surprised.

At this time of year (Buddha's birthday), Korea is infiltrated by the likes of hundreds upon thousands of paper lanterns. They are in the monasteries and the temples and even in the schools and the big cities. It's not the biggest holiday in Korea, but it is definitely big enough. One of the neatest thing I learned on Sunday was that every lantern in the temple was made by the monks themselves. Every lantern probably took half an hour to make, at least, and there must have been nearly a hundred. While it may not seem like a lot, the monks had supplies to last for at least three times that many lanterns.

When we had all created our lanterns, we headed to the food place again for dinner. Dinner consisted of another very traditional meal. It consisted of flattened and ripped apart rice cakes along with green onions, potatoes, and...something else that was delicious as well. The making of the rice cake parts was a lot of fun, because I basically made it just like pizzas are thrown. The whole scene was pretty comical, because all the nationalities of the people participating in the stay (including, but not limited to, chinese, vietnamese, thai, russian, japanese, korean, and american) were flattening the dough in a very stereotypical way.

Dinner was delicious, but when it was over, we had one last activity. We played a very traditional game, called Yoot-Nori. It's basically a very old version of sorry. The rules are very similar, and instead of dice, you use 4 sticks, one side flat and one side round. Spaces moved are determined by how many sticks are turned flat side up.

The game was so much fun. I could see immediately why it was a traditional game. They split up the group into two factions, and it wasn't long before we were all cheering for our side.

We had to leave when the game finished, though, and made it back to the school easily. I, in turn, made it safely to sleep not soon afterwards, mainly because I needed to make up for the sleep I had lost the previous week.

Monday

Monday was not nearly as fun as Sunday, but it was ok. Class was relatively good, and I got all my homework done. I even got to write a whole page in Korean, which is great practice. The pages always get ripped to shreds by my teacher's pen, but it helps me learn a lot.

The only bad thing about Monday was that I sat in the lab waiting for my professor for a total of 4 hours without him being there. At first I was kind of annoyed, but was definitely humbled when he showed up.

Turns out, he had a car wreck this weekend and has had to be at the hospital for an hour a day for rehab. Here I was thinking he just didn't care, when he had actually been involved in an accident which wasn't his fault. Basically, the moral of the day was to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, a valuable lesson I have definitely been getting away from while I've been here.

The lab stuff was the last thing I did on Monday, though.

Tuesday(Today)

Today has been a pretty good day too. Class was ok (still FOUR hours) but all in all I'm getting it. After class, I had a delicious lunch and went to the travel agent. Why the travel agent? Turns out that next weekend we have a five day weekend. I wanted to go to Jeju island, which is THE place to go in warm weather. It's off the southern coast of Korea, has a nice beach or two, and is very traditional.

I said wanted because when I learned the price of the plane ticket to the island, I had to rethink the price. Basically, it was a lot. I think everyone in Korea will be going somewhere nice (the entire country has the 5 day weekend) so all the prices are inflated. I decided then that maybe it would be fun to go to another country for the holiday, like China, or Thailand or Australia, Fiji, anywhere really. The answer, price-wise, for all of those, was no, no, no, NO, and no. ALL the prices of air travel are inflated that weekend. Instead, we have decided to spend the five days in Seoul, take the nicest DMZ tour we can find, and do everything we possibly can.

With the travel plans settled, I headed off to table tennis, but for the second time in a row, the club isn't there. Last time it was because there was a tournament they didn't tell me about, but this time it was because this week is mid term week for everyone. Can't blame them for studying.

After leaving there, I came back to the room and did my homework. So ends my day.

For Now and Hopefully Only Until Tomorrow

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

randomness video

2009-04-16T01:29:00.000-07:00

This is all the stuff I had no other place for!

What do you know?! I have time...

2009-04-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

So this is a momentous occasion for this week. I have time!! I can't believe it, honestly. I haven't really had any time to really even sleep or eat, but this weekend will be good for me.

Honestly, I don't even remember which day it was I had to stop blogging on because of my lack of time. I believe it was Monday, since today is Thursday.

So Monday was good. I got my research project and started my first reaction. So far, it has been slow going. I'm unfamiliar with the subtleties of what I'm doing, and the lab is unfamiliar, which is a little stressful. The good news is that I'm getting to work with a good group of graduate students who know exactly what they're doing, and also what I should be doing. I'm learning a lot in this lab, because the procedures are so different than what we do at home. Maybe it's just that it's a lab in a foreign country, or maybe it's just the system my professor likes. Who knows?

It's also kind of weird, too, in that my professor, at least, from what he's told me, really sees himself as a kind of father for me along with being a professor. This also might be a common thing, but I'm not sure. I guess mentors are also kind of like father figures too, and we have them in America, but I've never had someone come out and say that they want to be like a dad to me. It's kind of nice, even though I'm not used to that kind of thing. I really have no inkling as to why the father figure thing is important here. It could be just the whole Confucian society thing coming out, but I'm not sure. Either way, Professor Chang is a nice man.

Like I said before, the lab work is slow going, and that, in itself is kind of frustrating for me. I am very determined when my mind is set to doing something, and since I have class so much and other obligatory commitments, my hours are very strange, which cuts down on the time Professor Chang is in the lab with me.

This project is going to go very well, I think.

Also, on Monday, my day was brightened so much by a PACKAGE I received from the states. I can't say enough how eternally grateful I am to Dr. Ratliff for sending me things. It makes life here so much easier. This package had tons of coffee and even a coffee maker! I fired it up almost immediately! I was getting ready to enjoy some true coffee, but started smelling burning plastic. I investigated the source of the smell, only to discover that my power converter was smoking at an alarming rate. I immediately unplugged everything and just stood there, half expecting my power converter to explode in a fiery torment of electrical rage. However, and thankfully so, my converter is fine. I had no cue as to why this happened, so I called the good people at Mr. Coffee. Turns out that American coffee makers don't work overseas, because they require the 10 amps which is offered by the American electric system and which Korea doesn't have. You can't fix the problem, because amps are intrinsic with the electricity and can't be converted.

In light of the sad news, though, I would really like to extend my full thanks to Dr. Ratliff. It was so nice of a gesture. I can't say that enough. Even though the coffee maker can't work, I will send it back to the states. I have also obtained a simple coffee maker which definitely will suffice. Again, and I can't say enough, thank you to Dr. Ratliff (By the way, the coffee is Fantastic.).

I didn't go to table tennis on Tuesday, but for good reason. I went to dinner at my professor's house, instead, along with all the other lab workers for Dr. Chang. The dinner itself was really good. Homemade Korean food is very very good. Way better than restaurant food, I think. We had a ton of food, and it was all so good. Afterwards, we had tea and orange slices and just talked for a while. Something really exciting about all of this, is that I actually understood about 10% of what was being said. That was a much better improvement compared to my previous abilities of about.....2%.

Also, Dr. Chang's house wasn't a "house" as we would call it in the states at all, instead, it resembled more of a penthouse type of thing. His apartment/penthouse thing was located on the ninth floor of an apartment building which was in a group of about twenty apartment buildings. Pretty much the overwhelming majority of Koreans live in these apartment buildings, and are actually pretty eco-friendly I think. Anyways, when I heard that most Koreans live in apartments I imagined American style apartments, where it's nice, but not a house. Dr. Chang's apartment was most definitely just like a really nice one story house. I was thoroughly impressed.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I thought was going to be SO busy, but it turned out to not be so bad. Lots of lab work, and class. Can't forget that I also went to Hayang, and also ate more chinese food. I got my coffee maker thing from Wayne on Wednesday, too, and that's exciting.

As far as class goes, things are progressing very quickly, and while I feel I am catching WAY more of the material, spelling still isn't so much fun because one mistake ruins the whole question. However, I really am learning a whole lot, which is exciting, because I'm starting to be able to talk to someone without them giving me that look like "huh?"

Today has also been pretty decent, mainly because class is now over and I have had a little time to relax and just get stuff done. Nothing really of much excitement has happened, though, just a good, relaxing time.

I am going to go and get some movie making done.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

The end of a nice weekend

2009-04-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

I realize it's been close to four days since I blogged last... the fact of the matter is, that when you're exhausted, blogging really only exacerbates the whole shpiel. I feel I'm justified in just posting now.

As the title say, it's been a pretty good weekend.

Thursday was highlighted by ping pong but that's not all. I had a delicious lunch at Mie's after playing a fun Korean game to learn numbers in a park on campus. There wasn't much more to the day besides those two activities. There lies the problem of not blogging for a few days, though, as now it doesn't seem like much happened, but I'm sure some stuff did happen.

On friday I had a really good time. The midterm turned out to be really easy, so that was a relief. All I have to do is hope that I didn't actually bomb it when I get my grade back tomorrow.

Either way, I was so incredibly surprised that the midterm seemed so easy, I was on autopilot for the rest of the day. Almost immediately afterwards, me, Phillip, and an English teacher, Adam, all went with Kayla to drop her off at the train station. We had lunch and got her to her train, then made a day of downtown Daegu. We found a place that served delicious drinks and had those as we walked around. I bought a hat from Le Coq Sportif, and a long sleeve shirt from Who.A.U. (basically a cheap abercrombie). I actually amazed myself because I haven't bought clothes for myself in like a year or two, and before that, I think it was a couple of years also.

We had dinner at this delicious little hole-in-the-wall restaurant later on. I'm pretty sure the owner was in there eating with us, and was one of the best sources of entertainment for our meal. Every few minutes he would look over to us and slur a Korean sentence which was supposed to be something along the lines of, "You guys ok?" or, "You guys need something? Water? More food? Is it good?" Like I said, though, this was heavily slurred so even Adam, who knows more Korean than either me or Phillip, had a hard time understanding exactly what he was getting at.

That's one of the best parts about being here in Korea. Pretty much every restaurant is going to be delicious. There isn't really any size requirement for the foodshops. I have been in places with literally two tables, and they have been awesome. It's sort of like that at home, too, but not to the extent it is here. I can Always look forward to eating out here, and never have to worry if it will be good.

We made it home about 9 o clock I think, and I got all of my stuff together before passing out, all ready to get up at 5 the next day for the table tennis tournament.

I ended up getting up on time, and made it out to Gumi with the table tennis club. Those guys are a lot of fun to hang out with. I could just imagine what being around them would be like if I could understand anything they said. I understand context and can basically 'dub' conversations in my head (in other words, I can guess what they're talking about), which makes them equally hilarious. Sometimes when I'm bored, I like to dub conversations all around me with much more hilarious context. It's really fun, because it makes me at least look like I can follow, even if I have NO idea what's going on, with the added bonus of giving me a real laugh to go along with everyone else's, because even though I didn't get the intended humor, I've fabricated my own equally/greater fun.

So anyways, me and my friends all arrive at the tournament, and I'm so excited/nervous i can't really even comprehend anything. Thinking back, I didn't feel all that nervous, but I'm pretty sure I was performing my best impersonation of an Egyptian, because I was definitely in denial. The tournament started, and I was so nervous, I couldn't do anything. I'm not used to getting so nervous, and have only ever gotten that way before once. In baseball, we call the loss of performance "pressing," and pressing usually translates to a lack of performance. I want to go ahead and use lack of performance because it sounds so much nicer to write down than does complete and utter chokefest. Hindsight 20/20 I played the best I could, especially being so nervous.

I have deliberately left out any real concrete record of how I played because I'm not proud of it. Table tennis' rules are very similar to that of regular tennis. Matches are divided into sets, and sets are determined by the player who wins the most games out of 3, 5 or 7. The format of this tournament was at first to separate all 64 players into pools of 4. From those pools, the top two go on to the real bracket of the tournament.

I elected to play first, and it was against a tall heavy set Korean guy. I won the first game, and was up in the second game 6 to 3. However, what I failed to notice at that point was that my self-destruct button had gotten pushed somehow, and I lost handily in three straight games.

Match 1 over.

I was still pretty nervous, and on top of that I was a little worried because I had lost, so after keeping score for the next game, I played a thin Korean guy. I was beat without much real challenge to him 3 games to 1.

Match 2 over.

At this point I knew I had no chance of making the tournament, so the nervousness was pretty well replaced by disappointment. However, disappointment is really no help to a player whose game is based on precise movement and quick reaction time. I was beaten again, this time 3-0.

Match 3 over. Singles hopes over.

My singles bid was hushed before it even started, but I was told I would get a chance to help the B team (the kind of JV team, which, after how I played in singles, I don't blame them at all for placing me in) in the team matches. Unfortunately, the team competition didn't start for a good 4 or 5 hours after my singles matches were done, so I was merely a spectator at that time.

When it came time for the team matches, I was actually able to be a source of positive outcome, though, as I won my singles match and helped win the doubles match, to propel our team to a 3-2 victory. I was so excited.

Since we won, we went on to play another team, but I lost again, less handily this time, in my singles match 3-1. Since I lost, my team lost 3-1, and that was the least fun part of the whole deal.

Doubles Over, tournament over.

On the way home, we stopped at a meat buffet. This restaurant was remarkably similar to the place we went to in Jinhae, except this one was nicer. I ate meat until I thought for sure my body ran completely on cholesterol. It was so good. Needless to say, when we rolled into the room at around 11, I was ready for bed.

Today, Sunday, was good too.

I went to church with my professor, to the Church of Blooming Love. Sweet name, I know. I think it was a Presbyterian church, but I'm not really sure, especially since the service wasn't like anything I was used to back at home for Easter.

Being in church was really nice though. I couldn't really understand what the preacher was saying, but I was able to figure out what he was saying by the words I could pick out, and the reading. Instead of reading the same scriptures about jesus rising again, this time we read a different part of the same book. It was kind of refreshing. I really wish I had the ability to understand the pastor guy, though, maybe I could have appreciated the sermon much more.

Something really funny actually happened in the church too. It was one of those moments where you're just kind of frozen, unable to really do much of anything, because you're just so shocked. As we were leaving the big hall, my professor and his wife left got up very quickly, but I was still getting my stuff together. When I looked up, the person next in the line to leave was this tiny old lady with white hair who beckoned me to go in front of her. I thought it was really nice, especially since there were 345235 people behind her. After saying thank you, I took my spot in front of her. The line was barely moving, though, so I was just kind of standing there in front of the old woman waiting on the line to move. I soon discovered the peril of standing in front of old ladies, though. For a good five minutes, while the line was barely moving, I stood there, with an old lady's hands sitting on my butt. No kidding. While she was a nice old lady and all, I don't think she was nice enough for that kind of friendship.

I wanted to say something, but realized I couldn't say anything she would understand. When I realized I knew nothing she would understand, I wanted to move, but there were a couple of problems with that theory:

1. What if this was just one of the little perks old ladies get when they get older (in Korean culture, older women basically run amok, as a sort of amends for them having a rough life up to that point)? If this was true, I would be committing a really rude cultural offense, and thought it would be best to wait the couple of minutes, however uncomfortable they may be.

2. What if she couldn't stand otherwise? For all I knew she could have been jogging before church, or cleaning her house, or some other very healthy and normal task which requires the use of normal walking skills, but I couldn't remember seeing her standing on her own. I hadn't remembered actually seeing her before this episode, so there was no telling if she needed help remaining upright or not, and I certainly had no desire to be the cause of a broken hip, much less a Korean broken hip. I resolved by this thought process I should wait out the two or three minutes, no matter how uncomfortable they may be.

So I stood there. For what seemed like forever. Finally, the line started to move and I was freed.

Besides the self entitlement old ladies think they have while in churches, I find going to church is really kind of nice here. The people are super kind, and lunch is even served for free. Sure, you might have to stand around with a couple of old hands on your butt, but boy was that food good.

After church, my professor brought me home, and I caught up on some reading and had dinner at my favorite chinese restaurant here. Phillip went with me, as did Rita, a student I met last summer (although I didn't remember straightaway until she told me). The dinner was really good, and to my surprise, Rita's english had improved dramatically.

Basically that's the end of my weekend. Long post, but it was worth it I think.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Number of days till the midterm: still 2

2009-04-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

So today I have had lots of time to study and get my head round some of the more difficult things. It's not overly incredibly hard, the system is just much different than that of english, it's hard to get the instinctive grasp of what I'm doing.

I also found out today that my grade will be sent via a numerical grade. I am willing to take the GPA hit though. I'm not worried about it, because I'm fully aware of how I'm already here and I can only do so much. Learning a language isn't as simple as rote studying I think. I will persevere no matter what.

Class was better today. I learned more I think today, but the grammar is difficult, as is the vocabulary. I don't know why those words aren't sticking better.

I didn't have class today, since the drop thing with the philosophy class has gone through, at least as far as I know. So in that time I studied and also took the time to have some fun as well. Me and Kayla had a couple of Korean friends over, and enjoyed some great andong jjimdak. Jjimdak is a delicious dish consisting of chicken, glass noodles, and lots of veggies. It's incredibly delicious.

Also, I learned that there is a right and wrong way to use chopsticks as well. Apparently, as told to me by Hee-sung, my Korean friend, it's impolite to use chopsticks the right way. I don't really know how to explain the right way to use chopsticks, but I will try and do some research on the subject.

Afterwards we had S.A.P.P. and we held a one hour class, seeing as how we have midterm on Friday. It went really well, with questions being answered well, I think.

The rest of the night has been devoted to curling and studying, but not in that order.

With much more studying to do, and maybe a video to post, I sign off.

For Now

Aron Huckaba

Number of days till the midterm: 2

2009-04-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

As the title suggests, time till the midterm is dwindling quickly. I thought I was ready, but this test is over 14 chapters. It's going to be murder on me.

Today has been ok. I just got in before midnight due to table tennis, but it seems like, as usual, my information, or lack thereof didn't prepare me for this week. I thought we would be training all week long, but apparently that's very wrong, since we actually won't be practicing any extra at all. It's so very weird to me. Korea's nickname should be changed to the Land of the Information You were Given so you Thought it was Correct, but it Turned Out to be Incorrect. The proposed name IS a little longer, but I'm pretty sure it works too.

Class today was ok, it was just a whole lot of new stuff again. The upper grammar and all of the quantifier words and all the honorific verb endings are so confusing. I'm usually pretty good at not confusing information, but not this stuff. I don't really understand why, it just happens that way. It's so interesting to me that learning a new language can be SO difficult. This is easily the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. When I was little, I could be told a word and another word and another word, and just absorb them. Now, I can absorb as long as someone repeats the word about...1000 times. I can honestly only learn like 3 or 4 words a day. How weird is that?

So, I read a synopsis about the Murray State tuition increases whole shpiel, and (I'm not going to talk about this long, for obvious reasons) I'm not very happy paying the extra money. I don't feel it's kosher to say much more than that, I'm just cheap I guess.

Back to the class, I have ben thinking about my grade all week, and it's dreadful in every meaning of the word. I literally get a feeling of dread when I think about the transcript that's going to be sent there. No matter how I study, I haven't passed a quiz yet. They are 10% of the grade. the midterm on friday is 30%, and homework is 10%. I have also not passed many homeworks. I wonder what kind of hit my GPA would take if I got a C in a twelve hour class? Actually, I'm going to calculate that now. I would have a 3.59 if that happened. boo. I will just have to hope I can study enough.

After class, I went to literature. The class is ok, but I don't particularly enjoy it right now.

Table tennis was also ok, but i find that i just can't get into it very well anymore. I'm not sure why. One of the guys in the club told me I would be sleeping in his room on Friday, to make sure I got to everything ok. It's going to be fun I think.

It's too bad that it's so late. I wanted to write, but I'm just too tired.

For now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Training Week's Eve

2009-04-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

My attitude today can best be described as that of a child on christmas eve, well, maybe on the eve of halloween or easter.

Tomorrow, I start training in earnest, every day until Saturday, for the big tournament in Gumi. I'm getting my game face on early. It's important to me, especially since I performed so poorly at the tournament held by the club before.

I attempted to wake up early, but it wasn't happening, so I woke up at a decent time, and was off to class. Today we had a large review session of the last three lessons. It was definitely needed, that's for sure. It seems like we have just been blazing through our current book, and it's certainly difficult to keep up some times.

A good thing I'm able to take out of the whole deal, is, though, that I'm able to find out exactly what I need to study, each and every night.

Something interesting happened to me in class, today, as well. One of my classmates, and desk neighbor, Ning, gave me a book today. Ning is from Thailand, and is a buddhist. She's 36 and has a ten year old child. She is a marketing manager for a medical distribution company which is owned by koreans and has establishments in her home country, but I digress. Ning asked me in one of the early classes if I had a religion, because I took an interest in what she believed. When I told her I was undecided but open to any and all philosophies at this point, she told me she had a book for me.

Last week, Ning went back to Bangkok to take care of some things at her workplace. Evidently she also picked up the book for me, and now I have a book called Dharma Moments. It has an introduction written by the Dalai Lama himself, so how could I not give it an honest chance? I have been reading it, and the things in it are very interesting to me.

Yet another thing I never thought would happen to me here in Korea has already transpired, as I am truly able to explore my own set of beliefs by getting to know much better the ideologies of the eastern world. The most beautiful thing about it is that I wouldn't have gotten the chance if I hadn't come to Korea.

After class, I walked out of the building to grab lunch and realized that I was enveloped by a massive yellow cloud. It smelled really strangely, and reminded me of fog in many ways. I thought initially that it was yellow sand, and even bought myself a protective mask just for the sole purpose of not inhaling large amounts of it. Mr. Travers, my culture teacher and resource man in the international affairs office, explained to me that the crazy yellow monstrosity that was floating through campus aimlessly was actually just pollution (what a relief) which came as a result of farmers burning their fields in order to replant them. Something that was incredibly neat, though, was that the cloud rendered the sun, at this point close to its highest point in the sky, a brilliant red ball, which was neither bright nor dim. It was, however, aptly described as eerily fluorescently red.

I ended up obtaining some Jjimdak (a spicy chicken dish with glass noodles and rice), and then headed off to meet Dr. Chang. Unfortunately, I had class an hour later and couldn't start work today, but I at least found out what I would be doing. I'm going to be working with porphyrin, and will be attempting to both institute some functionality into the compound, as well as attempting to give it ionophoric properties. I'm really excited to start work, and it will be sunday when I can finally get to the wonderful discipline that is chemistry research.

Afterwards, we had culture class, which is always fun. We discussed Korean foodstuffs today, which included teas, food, alcohol, and table manners. It was really very fascinating, especially the tea ceremony. I think it would be so fun to take a tea set up into the mountains, brew up some boiling water, and perform the tea ceremony.

After the last class of the day (learning anyways), I moved onto my first and last class of the day that I teach. I righted a lot of nonfactual information, mainly that Americans are difficult to make friends with, and definitely helped them understand family life in America much better. Only one of them decided not to complete their homework, and one student didn't show up again, so three out of four participants and 2 of 3 homeworks was pretty good I think. They seem interested in what I'm trying to teach them, at least, and, as I have said before, really seem to be nice people. They are so enthusiastic about developing themselves and helping me understand Korea.

We ate dinner together, and I headed back to the dorm. I really meant to do the homework, but couldn't do it. I will definitely be a studyholic though whenever I can, especially since my midterm exam is this friday. Honestly, I am a little afraid, because everything I write in Korean is so grammatically wrong. In my homework I try and push the limits of what I can do, linguistically, but they are always, at best, completely wrong. I'm not discouraged at all, as I have a pretty good grasp on the things we have been explicitly taught so far. It's just a matter of studying, of speaking more often in Korean (outside of class), and of writing more often and learning through failure. I'm confident in myself.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Pom Sunday!

2009-04-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

Today was actually pretty darn good, believe it or not. It was filled with tons of fun and excitement, as well as a nice dinner.

I started off my day by reading professor Chang's papers and making sure I understood them. They were only synthesis papers so they were pretty straightforward. I had a couple of cups of coffee and readied myself to attempt to go to church.

In case you weren't aware, today was palm sunday. Today is the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem (I think?) and there was much pomp and circumstance. Anyways, Kayla really wanted to go to mass today, for obvious reasons (the start of holy week), so we got mass times and I asked around until I found the bus that took us into jinlyang, the city closest to us.

We boarded the 840 bus and somehow made it into Jinlyang. That was the first step in the serious of steps that got us into the church, though. Unfortunately, the on.y thing I was sure of when we got off the bus was that we were in Jinlyang. I knew that the church was indeed in the city, but never having been there before, I had to revert to my question asking ability to find more info.

We climbed the hill to another church and I asked a friendly looking lady if the church I was standing at was in fact the catholic church (I knew the church was actually a presbyterian church, but I thought just asking if it was the catholic church would leave less room for error). It wasn't, and instead of giving us directions, the lady motioned over to a van, and yelled something at the driver. He nodded his head and motioned for us to get in.

Normally, I would be wary of this situation, and have some terrible fantastical exchange in my head that I was about 2 minutes away from being able to say, "and that was how I ended up a slave in North Korea...", however, I was pretty sure that we were being taken care of.

I love it when I'm right. They took us straight on to the church, and didn't even ask us to give them any money. I love people here.

Needless to say, I experienced my first catholic mass. In Korean. it was neat, I can say that much. I sat next to this sweet old lady who shared her hymn book with me. I was actually able to read along and sing the songs in time! Then, the reading of the gospel was done, and I attempted to follow along in my parallel Korean/English bible with what the guy was saying.

It might or might not sound ridiculous to say that something could make you feel like you're on the verge of aneurism, but I really felt like I had pushed the limit of my brain capacity. It was neat because I was able to understand stuff, but it was the toughest thing I've ever tried to do in Korean. It would be neat to get an audiobook and try that very same thing I think.

Anyways, my first catholic mass passed (which, in all actuality, I probably wouldn't have really understood if it was in English anyways, so it being in Korean may have been ok). We left the church, and somehow made it back to the school. We also met a ton of nice people at the church. They were all saying hi to us and attempted to talk to us. I say attempted to talk because I would say something and their reply would prompt the: no-clue-what-you're-saying,-but-I-want-to-be-polite-about- it look. They got the hint, and tried to simplify it down. Didn't work. Older folks use much different words than we're taught. It's so funny. I never thought a language could be so different, but then again my native tongue has no concept of ingrained caste rules and am intrinsic honor system. Well, kinda, with please, and thank you, and all that stuff, but I think thee, thou, and thy would be the better example of what the closest thing we have is.

Anyways, while I waited for my dinner date with my professor and his family to roll around, I read over his papers again. The time approached our meeting, so I headed down early. That was actually a good decision, because even though he was late, I was able to get some great picture opportunities. I love taking pictures. And video. The video is much tougher to get good material for, though, so I have much less of that. I don't think any of the work I do in pictures and film is any good, though, so I guess that's a redundant statement.

Spring here is so beautiful. Everything bursts into life with vivid colors, and the sound of bees humming the work week away fills the air around any flowering bush/tree. The air smells good, yellow sand or not, and the weather is really pleasant. It's as if Spring here is truly as it was meant to be. Or maybe Murray and the greater Paris area just needs more fruit bearing trees and flowers.

My professor arrived shortly after everyone disappeared and I ran out of picture ideas, and we were off to dinner. Before he came to pick me up, I was thinking how I had broken a streak of eating a certain type of chinese food once a week since I had been here. Oh well, I thought. Not a big deal, it's just food after all.

Turns out we went to a different chinese restaurant, but ate the exact meal which I thought I was missing out on. I thought the irony was the most delicious part of the meal, just ahead of the cinnamon-ed sweet and sour pork. We had a really good conversation, and the food was delicious. Overall, it was a fantastic meal.

Did I mention we had a conversation? I wish I could say it was in Korean. Unfortunately (and secretly, fortunately too), the whole family spoke english. Being a professor, Dr. Chang was able to do work in America, and allowed his children to go with him. Maybe his wife too, but they never said. It's common for Koreans to only take a child or two abroad and not the other parent, so there's no telling.

Either way, I made a really good friend in the good Dr.'s son. He is basically just the Korean version of me, if you can believe it. Every time one of us would talk about a hobby or interest, the other shared it. It was as if, upon birth, I was rebirthed to a surrogate caucasian mother, put up for adoption, and then swept away to the states, never to know that I shared a twin over here. I really wish you could meet the guy, though. He's a good friend. He goes to school in Seoul, though, so we had to drop him off at the train station before I could go back to the dorm.

His parents seemed unbothered by him leaving, but I found out their oldest son is studying in America (Indiana State) and they miss the older son a whole lot. Just in case that sentence sounded funny, I feel I should explain that in the Korean family, the strongest feelings parents have for their children are given to the eldest son, since he is the one who carries on the family census. The family census, in a related story, is basically the complete genealogy of the family, and usually goes back 3 or 4 generations. We don't have an equivalent in the States, or I would compare it.

Something else cool, though, was that the Prof.'s son wanted to be just like his dad. I love to see that. I could tell that he loved Dr. Chang and wanted to make him proud. Every time Dr. Chang talked about his son, he got this Korean-man glow about him as he talked, and I could tell the pride he held for his son was incredible. The familial/filial love in the room was practically tangible. I really wish I could hang out more with complete Korean families. They seem incredibly nice to be a part of.

They drove me back to the dorm, asking questions the whole way, and dropped me off. I really enjoyed the time I spent with them. They are so nice, and the Prof. is a really accessible guy. He even called me smart, which is pretty nice to hear from him.

Tomorrow at 2 I'm going to get my project! Like I said before, it appears that it will be in synthesis, so I'm super excited about it.

Oh yeah, and I got all of my homework done.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Weekend of fun and adventure, etc.

2009-04-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

Weekends here are usually not so good, but thankfully this one turned out to be the opposite. it was pretty good (at least so far).

Yesterday we had lunch at a chabu chabu place, which is basically Korean fondu. I made some pretty neat discoveries about food while I was at the restaurant.

Cooking things in a hot spicy soup pretty much makes everything delicious

I really enjoy squid. Especially the head parts(I forgot the word for it, but isn't it something like a wintry clothing item)

rice, eggs, and onion all cooked together on a hot iron bowl is possibly the closest thing to broccoli rice casserole. It's also just as good, incase anyone was wondering.

Anyways, all of the exchange students were there eating, and we had a good time. I sat at the table with Mr. Kang and someone else who works in the office with him. The guy was really nice and did his best to explain things and help when he could. I really had a fun time at our table. Mr. Kang is definitely a character and I'm very glad to have him on my side of the information.

We had mondu there in the restaurant, as well, and I know what mond is, but it definitely warrants some introduction. Mondu is basically like a delicious egg roll, but instead of the fried exterior, imagine that it was a nicely colored (any color basically) and nice and soft. So soft in fact that it can be easily pierced with only the superpowers afforded by one/two chopsticks. Mondu, though, is much better than egg rolls, in that the emphasis is shifted away from the cabbage and other unnecessary ruffage present in the steretypical treat from china. The (other chinese treat, less known, however) deliciousness of the mondu comes from the fact that it has a fair amount of meat and spices which basically cause it to taste more like a meaty spring roll. Circular description or not, I hope you come across mondu at some point. Oh, and its cheap too.

We left the restaurant and ended up going to Kmart for groceries and a new clothes drying rack (I forgot how physics worked and accidentally broke the last one). Kmart was pretty neat, but it wasn't the same as our Kmart at home. I didn't expet to be, just figured it was a good point to make. It was however, just what I was hoping for. There was fresh produce, fresh fruit, fresh kimchi, meats, a fresh (and may I say, tantalizingly, torturingly, beautifully tempting to the nose, especially if the nose is attached to a face which is already hungry) bakery, and all kinds of foodstuffs imaginable.

I didn't spend very much, when I think about how it can all space out. It's easily a week of breakfast, and healthy snacks (and some not so much healthy), so I'm happy about my gettings. Oh, and peppermint tea. I can't forget how I snagged peppermint tea, and pancake mix. Eli offered to let us cook at her place sometime, so I think the first thing I want is pancakes (I know, I know, a rash decision, but I thought it was a good prelude to next week's patty melt).

I forgot also that I went to the library too. I met a Korean librarian who speaks english really well, and she showed me how to access the chemistry journal. They are so gifted here with the amount of journals they get. Basically, they have all the ACS publications. It's amazing, really. Anyways, I am getting to read some really cool stuff, and I like it a lot.

Let's move on to today, shall we?

Today was actually a lot of fun. It was meant to be a relaxing day that just kind of brought me back down a stress level or two, and it definitely reached its purpose.

It started off by waking up at my own pace, at 9 o clock, and a big cup of coffee. To go with said cup of delicious coffee goodness was some bready breakfast item and a tangerine. I knew I was going to lunch at twelve, so I wanted to watch my girlish figure for breakfast. After my little breakfast, I read a journal article, genuinely learned something really interesting, and attempted to find another article, to no avail.

At twelve, me and Kayla went to Isaacs toast. I think I have eaten there a whole lot, but only on the weekend, because basically nothing else on campus is open. It's so good though, and is the only western food I have here really, and it keeps my head up when it comes to missing the food from back home.

After my three hot ham and cheese with eggs (and a really delicious sweet sauce), it was time for a picture taking excursion. I posted pretty much all of the pictures (with the exceptions of identical pictures just with different filters) are on facebook now. I took some good ones I think, but I can never tell if they are actually any good or not. I took almost 170 pictures, though, and it was a great time. We basically meandered through and around the campus, finding neat places, and actually a bunch of places I had never ever seen before.

This campus continuously amazes me. There is everything you could want from a campus here. There is incredible facilities and equipment, beautiful aesthetics, plenty of teachers, helpful staff, research opportunities, and now, as I have just recently found out, an entire system of trails which go through woods and up and down hills, and end in a beautiful little park. I'm so excited that I found all the neat little spots today.

After the fun picture taking adventure, it was time for seminar meeting with my (new) research group. I was so excited! I love research! So we all assembled (all 4 of us) and I got to listen to a couple of presentations about their contact making system and also about a project they will start working on, which will deal with chemo sensors. I actually had to give a presentation as well. I thought I did very well, because I was nervous, but the professor had good questions, and it seems like he liked what he saw. He also has an idea about what he would like me to do, I think, and it seems like it will involve supramolecular synthesis of fluorosensors which contain at least one crown ether moiety. That will only help advance my work at Murray, also, so it's doubly good.

After the seminar was over, he brought me into his office and handed me a couple of papers he co-authored. He told me to read them by tomorrow. When I asked why by tomorrow, a sunday, he said, my wife and son would like to meet you. I also want to discuss your direction, so please meet me here at my office on 5 so that we can have dinner, discuss your direction, and make good memories. It's going to be great I think. I am nervous about my korean, though. Let's hope I can stumble through enough to not be a bad guest ha ha.

The culture here is so neat, and I'm going to have a chance to go to a real Korean household! I'm so excited! I hope it turns out to be a good experience. I honestly don't have any doubt about that, but I still need to hope, I think.

Also, I finally figured out what is going on with ping pong this week. I will have training tuesday through friday and then on saturday, I will meet the team at 6AM (6!) at the bus stop and we will journey from there to Gumi. I will participate in both team and in single matches. I'm really excited and will work hard to not get so nervous this time. This week will be serious practice throughout.

I'm truly happy that my classes are going smoothly and that I'm getting everything pretty easily, at least so far. We have midterms on friday, and the tournament is Saturday. It will turn out exactly the way it's supposed to, I think.

Well, I could write more, but I don't think I could write much more about what I've done in the past two days.

For Now,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Day number two, but Day number one as wellf

2009-04-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure exactly how many "Day 1's" I've had here in Korea. I devote myself to doing the better things with my day often, only to discover that my ability to try and create a new healthy habit is not as great as the ability of Korea to sap any and all time from the day.

So, I am once again going to make it a point to really study Korean. I did my homework tonight, and did way more than was required in the way of answers, so that is definitely a start. Sure it took my two and a half hours, but it was worth it. Let's hope for a good grade on that test tomorrow.

Class today was good. I was attentive and definitely learned a bunch. I am getting much better at reading and writing but the speaking and listening is coming slower. It's a common progression for someone who spends 20 hours a day in class and lots of time doing written homework I think.

Today was the big "food festival" at the exco in Daegu. Turns out that it wasn't exactly a food festival. It was more like an expo for the major cities of Korea and then for international travel. It was neat, except that everything was really expensive there. I managed to get a sweet shirt, though, for the low, low, price of a complimentary mudpack. It made my face feel really funny though, like it was caked with mud (who knew, right?).

I got to hang out with a couple of teachers (the only native korean speakers who went with us ha ha) and they were really nice. The other international students spent time with us too, but in a coming and going manner.

On the way back, I read some of my book which has the works of Poe in it. He was really a great writer. I'm really glad for the book exchange in the teacher's dorm. It has some really great books in it, that's for sure.

After I managed to get back from the exco, I did homework and grabbed dinner. Just an average day for the alien Korean.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to grab my camera for the exco, so no pictures:(

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Rabbit Rabbit

2009-04-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

It's my second first of the month! I successfully said the fabled saying of good luck today, rabbit rabbit. It seems like it already worked today. More on that to come.

Once again I've skipped a day of blogging. How boring I am. In my defense I felt not at all like doing anything when I got in last night. I had a pretty rough time at table tennis. We had a tournament and I played..... not very well is a good term here. Basically it was terrible, but, as I will explain later, I think it was for the best. That was my only table tennis for the week. The club is going to party tomorrow and I'm not really up to go out tomorrow, especially since there is going to be a korean food fair in Daegu that the university is taking us to.

Anyways, class yesterday and today went pretty well I think. yesterday was really good, and I easily understood everything. Today, however, my listener was broken again. Simple verbs sounded like gibberish, but oh well, tomorrow will be better. I will start studying more I guess and just hope it all comes. It will, I think, after all, I've only been studying a month or so.

Yesterday I found out exactly how my classes were going to transfer over to Murray. My language is all transferring, and I'm super excited for that. The literature and the culture and etiquette classes are also transferring, which is awesome. The philosophy class isn't transferring though, so that kind of sucks, but oh well. I will drop it and move on. It's a shame too, because I was really enjoying that class. Honestly, I'm just thankful to be getting 18 hours out of this semester. I'm pretty sure all but three of those hours is going to be pass/fail credit so it won't help my GPA any but it will be credit nonetheless.

So now on to what I'm reallyreallyreally excited for. Last night, right before I went to bed, I got an email from Mr. Kang, the international affairs coordinator guy. He is incredibly nice, and I told him a couple of weeks ago how I wanted to get in touch with a professor in chemistry, namely organic chemistry. Well, he held true to his word about helping me, because today I left the Korean Language Program early in order to go and have lunch him Mr. Kang and the professor.

It turns out that Mr. Kang was a former student of the professor, his name is Seung-Hyun Chang. He is very intelligent, and a very nice man. Also, his research is incredible.

I don't know if you have ever heard of contacts which keep your eye hydrated, but they are coming up with a method currently to make a good contact which does just that. After they develop the process, a company they have a contract with will manufacture them. He is also very interested in the type of work I did under Dr. Revell. It's truly amazing that I found a chemist here who is doing such amazing work.

The big question, was, though, if he would offer me a spot in his lab to research and use his AMAZINGLY well funded facility. Near the end of the lunch he did indeed offer me a position, and I now have a desk in his lab. I'm ecstatic.

I also understand now, I think, why I lost so badly last night in table tennis. Aside from not being very good, I think it was a sign. I know many people don't believe in signs, but I believe the best signs are the ones you don't realize are signs until they've affected you. I think I was shown today where my time should be committed to.

Hopefully I get some quality work and a unique experience form working in a foreign country, researching and producing a nice paper as well. Did I mention also that the chemistry department here is funded really well? They have an NMR on campus. I don't have to wait a week to see if my stuff worked! Oh the places I can go!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I met my buddy yesterday. I almost just walked out of the whole program thing at fifteen minutes past the start, a little discouraged that my buddy didn't show. However, he showed up in the door right as I was leaving, so we talked for a good half hour before I went to table tennis. His english name is Tim and he went to Murray State last year. He study economics and speaks pretty good english.

So, with the newfound energy a real project gives me, I am off. It's hard for me to focus on anything non-chemistry related right now.

Before I go, though, I just want to include a couple of things about the program here.

For any students planning to come here in the Fall of '09: Please get a hold of me.

For any students looking for a recommendation: I recommend this program. It's fun, and it's learning. The staff here is extremely helpful and they really do everything they can for you.

Until Later

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Walk Hard...or soft I guess works too

2009-03-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start off with explaining myself for the absence of a blog yesterday. The reason is bright and shiny and makes perfect sense in a country where you are always doing something: I was tired and just wanted to sleep.

So there you have it, and to go along with that flawless logic, I will run through my yesterday in a sentence. I sat around wishing a paper would write itself, watched world cup qualifiers, ate, and thought about writing said paper. However, I still have not written said paper.

Today has been a roller coaster to say the least.

At first today, I was all excited. I thought that I could get up and really start today exploring the world of Korean and different tenses and start making my spoken korean dynamic and whatnot. I was pretty much wrong about this. I understood exactly what we were doing today, and the grammar makes sense. I can write sentences and even say things occasionally. However, my listener was broken today, it was like I was dialed in to the wrong frequency or something because I couldn't pick up anything. I could get the obviously simple stuff, but it was like day one all over again.

That caused me some problems. I have a really hard time dealing with myself when I truly cannot comprehend something. Today I might as well have been sitting in on an MBA class taught exclusively in Swahili, because I had nothing. The good news is, though, that while I was pretty upset that I had failed that one class session (hard to take a test when you can't distinguish sounds) I came to terms with it fairly quickly and set about understanding everything I was writing and reading, and got virtually the same lesson, only without the listening.

I really think that's one of the important skills to have in a second language situation. You must be able to shift your learning capabilities when you have one of the really tough days. There's no rhyme or reason when they are going to come up, but a back up plan for learning has to be in place.

After class, we ended up going to Mie's (the western style restaurant) and I ate my feelings through the deliciousness of bulgogi (basically korean barbecue) creamcheese pizza, and wedge fries. The pizza was just a philly cheesesteak pizza basically, and it was incredibly good. It made me happy, which is the important thing.

Culture class was really great, though. We learned all about the Korean family in a more in depth fashion and it really helps me understand the type of behavior I see when I'm here. Going to a class that helps you understand that kind of thing is so important when you have no prior knowledge of how someone will act in a situation. Or any situation really. Without the culture class, I would probably just be taking everything for face value instead of really getting an inside point of view with the Koreans. They have been shaped just as much by their colorful history just as we have in America by ours.

Class was over, and we had a long discussion with Patrick about the classes and whatnot. He told us about how they decided what we would be taking and the teachers' qualifications and whatnot. While I spent most of the day uselessly and outwardly complaining and worrying that I am completely uncertain about whether I will receive any credit for this semester at all, I have started the wheels rolling when it comes to actually finding that stuff out. I called my study abroad office, and they are figuring it out. Thank goodness for them.

My S.A.P.P. group was also in session today, and I think it really took my state of mind to do the right thing for them tonight. When I found the room (one half hour late) I told them that I was changing around how the class worked. While them asking me questions only was nice and all (it was mainly about colloquialisms, idioms, etc.), I felt like I was doing them an injustice by pretending to be some sort of all knowing sensei who could be asked any question, but could only teach through question and answer format.

It took a day like today, one where I was completely broken down, for me to realize that these poor people are coming to America in like 4 months. At least Korea likes Americans. Our people don't even like foreigners for the most part. We think they're strange, don't know english, and most people won't have a real international student friend. I have to use my strengths to attempt and help them as much as possible. So, I am now basically emulating my Korean culture and etiquette class, but for America instead. I know about (at least generally) how Americans work. I know how we were influenced. I know why people get up in arms over the second amendment (punpunpun). I know some grammar stuff, and I know idiom things and can articulate them well (sometimes).

So like I said, I changed the class. I'm really the teacher now, and my students' subject is America. Today they learned about American history, the hows and whys of our wars, the constitutional rights we're given, and other historical things that make us think like we do. I answered burning questions and made them verbally compare America's system of stuff to the Korean one. For homework they are comparing the two countries in a short little page work. All to hopefully improve every part of their english. I really hope they get something useful out of all of it, because now i know what it's like to be in their position.

Tomorrow will be a good day I think. I have no more steam to let out, hopefully my scheduling deal gets worked out, and I play table tennis. Granted, I have lots of homework and another looming test, and a paper due wednesday, tomorrow will be good I hope.

Until tomorrow (maybe wednesday :( )

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday

2009-03-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

I thought today I would end up going to the jimjebong, which is the korean equivalent of a sauna type place. There are typically rooms of varying temperature, from quite chilly to very hot, and for a minimal fee you can stay there and eat and everything.

I ended up not going, though. Before this weekend, I was in dire need of some rest and relaxation. I now feel like I've done everything in my power to do nothing, and feel very invigorated. I wasn't completely useless, today, though. I got a paper done that is due tuesday, and need to finish one tomorrow which is due wednesday.

Today though, ended up being pretty good. I uploaded the pics from yesterday's trip, and I plan to have the video done tomorrow as well. Korean still goes the same old way, as I seem to be getting a lot of things until I attempt to listen to native speakers. That's when things go awry. It will all come in due time, I bet. I just have to try and keep it up and listen as hard as I can, even if I don't catch anything. The problem isn't enough listening to natural speakers, because I end up giving out my email to pretty much a person a day, and I don't have enough energy to reply to them all. It's good and all, but it's a lot of people to keep up with.

I went and ate at Isaac Toast today a couple of times, which is pretty cheap, and quite delicious. The whole little restaurant is centered around toasted bread with cooked eggs, maybe cheese, and maybe meat. It's delicious, like a hot ham and cheese in the states.

I don't really know what else to say for today, I'm kind of boring.

Until later,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Jinhae, fun +1

2009-03-27T07:37:00.001-07:00

Thursday was more of the same, with ping pong going less than stellar. Oh well, that's old news anyhow. The big part of today was Jinhae. It's such a big part of the note, I made it rhyme in the previous sentence. We left the university at 9, and arrived in Jinhae at roughly 11:30. It was pretty neat there, as there were lots and lots of cherry trees. They weren't all in bloom yet, which made me kind of wish the trip had waited a day or two, because the blooms were on the verge of busting. All in all, it was a fun trip. First, we made a stop at the naval museum. It was really neat, and really similar to the naval museum of groton connecticut (a whole bunch of navy stuff and boat theory and whatnot), except that (of course) it was in Korean. I find that I use a lot of parentheses when I type (go figure). Anyways, they had some smallish turtle boats there (pride of korean military history) and a full size battleship or destroyer that we got to tour. Most of the interesting guts had been ripped out of it, but that's to be expected with military stuff. I got really nauseous though, for what seemed like no reason at all as I was leaving the boat. Maybe I don't have my docked-boat sea legs yet, or maybe it was the sprite and mentos (but Mythbusters said sprite didn't work with it? does anyone know?). Either way, I had planned to do a really nice little video about Korean navy history and the whole museum there, but the aforementioned nausea really just stopped all desire to do anything. So I apologize. Afterwards we headed on over to lunch to a Korean meat buffet. I'm not sure how many of you know what a meat buffet is, but it's a spectacle, especially when 100-120 people arrive there at the same time. Basically, it starts out like any other regular buffet. Everyone finds a seat and sits while the waitress makes sure she knows you're there. After that, too, just like a regular buffet, everyone goes to get their food (in this case meat. Oh yeah, and EVERYONE went to get the meat). Since there was so many, the scene looked like something from the discovery channel. People were situating themselves around the foodsource in accordance with some intrinsic value system, whether it be a line, or whoever could gracefully insert themselves between people already in line. The buffet technicians had to bring out meat basically continuously for the first 20 minutes or so, and at the end, everyone had a reasonable amount of raw meat and fresh veggies and spices. Did I mention the meat was raw? Just as you read it, the meat was uncooked. There were, however, little grills on our tables, and when you wanted the meat to be cooked, you did it yourself on your little grill. It really was delicious. Our table first carefully laid out a tray full of meat, making sure it was all perfectly flat. Then, mounds of garlic, onion, and fresh kimchi were also piled on. Once the meat was done and the veggies grilled to satisfaction, everyone took turns making a little meat burrito. Making the burrito is just as fun as it sounds. First, you take a big, green, leaf. Next, add any and all manner of desired ingredients (meat, onions, garlic, rice, kimchi, hot paste, etc.) until you feel your korean burrito can get no more delicious. Then, fold the burrito up and put the ENTIRE thing in your mouth. It's impolite to eat it any other way. I really can't exaggerate the deliciousness of the meat cooked on the grill. They had everything: pork, beef, squid, octopus. The smell gets in your close, but in the end, you're full, so who cares? We all waddled back to the bus after lunch and headed off to the naval academy. That was a really neat place too. They combined the academy with another museum thing. It even had a full size turtle boat! I was so excited! The line looked daunting to me, though, so I didn't go inside it, but it looked fierce even in my modern mindset. I tried to get more video of everything, but I realized I forgot the platform (this fixes the camera to the tripod) for my camera in my room, so my tripod was basically useless. So the video I do have is relatively brief, unfortunately. I apologize again. I tried to capture today the best I could, it just seemed it wasn't going to work out. Besides the turtle boat and nice scenery, there wasn't much else to be had at the naval academy. I really wanted to stay for the parade, but the buses were leaving before and I was too tired to have another adventure. On a bright note, though, I was able to read ~200 pages of a really interesting non fiction book today. It's called Talking Hands and is about a sign language made up in an israeli village. That's pretty much all that happened today. When I came back, I attempted to study, but found that I couldn't, so I am trying to salvage the day as a day of rest and recharge for next week. Let's hope the weekend lets me do it. Until next time, Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

sometimes you can be as surprised as a bear in a snake trap

2009-03-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Today, for the 239572 time, I have been shown the kindness of a people through a simple act of selfless giving. Before I get into that, though, I left out a really interesting part of my day yesterday.

I don't know how many of you follow/care/know about baseball, but yesterday was actually a big deal as far as sports is concerned. The game played at 9:30 my time (7:30 CST) was yet again another example of how America's place as a world leader in everything is diminishing.
Back in the good 'ole days (not quite as far back as when you had to walk 6 miles to school in the blistering wind of a hail storm, while you collected the rocketing ice balls for fresh water because otherwise you had to go and pump the well for ten minutes in scorching heat just for a glass of water...) America was the best at everything: baseball, basketball, football, manufacturing, and life in general.
Everyone wanted to be us. It felt great, really.
However, yesterday, the championship of the world was at stake. Two titans were in the heat of battle with each other, and boy was it a slugfest. America's team however, was nowhere to be seen (on the field, at least).
That's right, Japan and Korea were the competitors in the final game, with Japan edging out Korea in extra innings. I have heard of some editorials that blame the pitcher and manager for the loss, because Ichiro Suzuki should never be allowed 8 straight pitches to try and score the winning run. It's simply not good managing. I'm not saying, that there weren't other people responsible for the loss (i.e. the whole team), but walking Ichiro would have probably gave Korea a better chance (Ichiro is probably the best hitter to ever come out of Japan, much less, Asia).
But I digress.
The important point of the matter is, if America ever wants to see domination in (anything really) baseball, we, as citizens, have two options.

1. Put the best players we have in the game. When every other team is putting the absolute best they have to offer, we have to do the same (see the 2008 United States Summer Olympic Basketball Team). Sure we had guys like Rollins, McCann, Adam Dunn, Jake Peavy, and Latroy Hawkins, but where are our superstars? Where is Joe Mauer, Barry Zito, Tim Lincecum, Carl Crawford, Pince Fielder? I could essentially go on and on.

2. (this might be a little radical) Produce better players. I think the American mindset has allowed us to become happily stagnant. We aren't the best anymore because our athletes (for the most part) are satisfied with making it to the majors and then assuming it's a job. It's just like the average citizen, too. Everyone wants the easy money. Everyone wants the gain without the pain. I think we know we have something to learn.

I hope you don't think the World Baseball Championship is just a meaningless tournament. Baseball is America's game.
Sorry about the tangent, though.

On a lighter note, it was neat to be present in Korea for the game yesterday. You would have thought that Korea was landing a man on the moon. Everyone was watching. I don't even mean that as an exaggeration. As far as I could tell, everyone was doing everything in their power (even if they don't care about baseball) to watch the game. Granted, the game was Korea vs. Japan (easy to say they are historical adversaries), but when does America ever get together for the sake of pride? Besides tragedies? or the final American Idol show.
I'm done with the baseball talk now.

Today was good I think. My korean class went pretty well. The teacher is talking faster and faster and it's hard to understand sometimes, but I'm doing pretty well so far so I'm really excited. We have another test tomorrow, so I will need to study for that I think. I'm really looking forward to Friday, when we go to the cherry blossom festival. I think it's going to be so beautiful.
My philosophy class went well too. We went over Socrates, the Sophists, and their conflicts and why they didn't like each other. Philosophy really intrigues me. It's like, a study of everything, and a study of nothing at the same time. You can be right and be completely wrong all within the course of a conversation. Fascinating, really.

After class, I did a little table tennis conditioning and headed off to dinner and my english group. Dinner was good (pork, kimchi stew), but helping the english group was great. I taught them how to use a, an, and the, and also how to use colons and semicolons. They are really good at english, it's pretty neat.

After helping the group, one of the guys (his name is Rza, like the rapper) walked me home and asked how to get rid of his accent. I told him to just do what I did to get rid of my southern accent: watch newscasters and try to impersonate them.

I arrived in my room and quickly got into my table tennis stuff to condition some more. I went to the gym, and hit the table tennis room for a little bit. In there, I met a guy who didn't speak much english, but I knew enough Korean to introduce myself and get him to start playing.

Before I go any farther, I just want to say that having some sort of skill (sports, photography, music, serious religious convictions), whatever it may be, is actually really useful in Korea. Surprisingly (hopefully not though), Koreans are interested in hobbies too, so if you share a past time with a Korean, they will want to be your friend.
All joking aside, is really is a great way to meet Koreans. They are tough to just approach and get to know, and using a hobby makes it WAY easier to do so.

Anyways, back to my story. This is the whole part about more kindness and loving the Koreans' attitude, by the way.
Me and the guy get done playing, and we had a blast. He had a really fun paddle, which , when used back in the States, allows old, and/or obese men to play with younger guys. It does this by reversing the spin of anything hit at it (I don't want to get too technical, so I will leave it at that). It was really a blast. I could tell he was having as much fun as I was, and when we were done, I remarked that the paddle was really nice, and it makes playing table tennis lots of fun. I in no way even remotely made it sound like I wanted it.
However, after some conversation, he told me that he wanted to give me the paddle as a gift. I couldn't believe it. He had two paddles that he and his friend used, and he wanted to give this one to me. It was pretty much the ultimate act of table tennis kindness you can take part in.

I'm honestly amazed every day by the attitude of people here. How are they so nice, so kind, when back home we are so cold? I understand that it's because of cultural things, but when did our culture become so?

I sincerely hope everyone reading this gets to come to Korea some time.

Forever Amazed
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

tuesday on my mind

2009-03-25T07:13:00.002-07:00

today was really a lot of fun. Lots of class, I was supposed to meet my buddy, and to cap it all off: Table Tennis! I'm going to go ahead and apologize ahead of time for the brevity of this note. I'm really tired ha ha.

So class was ok today. I was really tired still but luckily I am able to grasp what we're doing easily. I know it's sticking with me because I'm able to speak Korean a little and use what we're learning in class.

Doing the homework is a little more difficult though. Not on a skill basis but on a time basis. Haha I got in at 11;30 because of table tennis, so I will do homework before class. Lucky thing is that it's easy. My literature class assigned its first paper today, too, so that was pretty exciting. I like writing papers, especially about characters.

Today I stayed under my budget again! I'm so happy! I spent a total of 6000 won today (but no dinner ha ha) so lets hope I can extend the streak to two days. I bet I can. Now that I have found out how, it's going to be easy I think.

I was supposed to meet my buddy today, but he didn't show up. It's ok if he doesn't, because I have met many Korean friends here now (all through sports, basically) and I can talk to them for practice. If I need something, I will just ask Mr. Kang. I'm assuming my buddy won't contact the office, but if he does, having a buddy will be nice too.

Table tennis went really well tonight. My coach went through with more drills today, and even showed me some good exercises I can do to strengthen my legs. They are great. I'm pretty sure I will have legs of steel when it's all said and done.

I checked my comments from a couple notes ago and saw how everyone was worried about how I was doing and everything. I want to thank everyone for their kind words, thoughts, and prayers, as I had struggle #1. I really do appreciate it.
As much as I appreciate it, though, I don't want anyone to spend the kind of money it takes to send something over here. I was just made aware of the fact that it's really expensive, and for some home comforts, I'm not sure that's worth it.
If you still feel compelled, be my guest, they are still home comforts and they would still be ok. It's always nice to know someone thinks about you that much. It's very expensive though, and I would rather not be a burden like that.

Until Tomorrow
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

monday to start all mondays

2009-03-25T07:13:00.001-07:00

It's been a pretty good one here so far. I learned some neat things today, though, and that's the most important thing, especially on a monday.

No.1: There IS a way to stay on a budget when abroad. I know it sounds crazy, but I actually did it today. I was even under the budget for today, so I was happy. It's really hard for me to eat under a budget that's only 10$ a day. I couldn't imagine... well I could imagine living on less I would just just be hungrier. I barely get hungry during the day, so I'm in a good place right now.

No. 2: Instant coffee does not have the caffeine content as regular coffee. I'm pretty sure this one is true, anyways. I make a thermos of coffee a day, and I'm just as tired as always. However, something that may be a contributing factor is that I'm tired to begin with, and that always causes some trouble with caffeine waking me up anyways. How enigmatic.

No. 3: Men are much more emotionally aloof here than in America. I have heard girls talk about how guys were just too boring because they had no personality, well they would hate to meet Korean guys. Before they become friends with you, there is this really weird awkward stage, which is pretty painful for everyone involved. It's kind of amusing though, because it's like being in first grade all over again.

No. 4: Everything (at least for me) stays in a constant balance between good and bad. Just when I think everything is going bad and I don't know what to do, something really good comes along and fixes everything. Seriously, I wonder if it's like that for everyone else, but when I audit my life's good and bad points throughout the day (probably a bad practice anyways) I always seem to come out relatively even for the day. If not for the day, then most certainly the week.

No. 5: It's really tough to teach a second language if you don't know the first. Physical things are easy. Show a picture, act it out, whatever you gotta do. When you're dealing with intangible things though, it's really difficult to get your message across. On the same note, unless you know exactly where you're going with an idea to try and explain some grammar grammatically, I recommend skipping over it. At least in my case, it made everything worse.

Tonight I met with my english group again and it was a good time. They are really good people and truly want to learn. They consider my advice and listen intently-as long as I don't go to fast. They don't know english so well, but that's definitely ok. After all, they still know english way better than I know Korean.

All day today I've been looking forward to tomorrow, when I have table tennis practice again. It's basically the best thing that could've happened to me while I am over here. Except that I also get to meet with a chemistry professor next week about research. I'm really super excited. I hope he's interested in something to do with Organic Chemistry, but if he's not, I don't care anyways. I will still work just as hard.

Something really fun also is that my Korean is picking up really quickly. I'm starting to understand what people say a lot better and also I can talk a little better each time. I just feel more comfortable each time I open my mouth. I think by the time the Discover Korea group comes here and I help them around Daegu and whatnot I will be able to actually help them ha ha.

It's getting kind of late now though, and I need to try and get some sleep.

Until Later
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

weekend (boo)

2009-03-25T07:12:00.001-07:00

So weekends here kind of stink.

Unless I'm going on a trip to somewhere fun, weekends are a drag. They are usually spent worrying about studying and about all the things I should be doing. Too bad it never seems like anything ever gets done, though. It seems like I can never study enough, like I can never save enough money, or just use my time wisely enough. Not to mention all the official restaurants on campus close for the weekend, and I have to walk to more expensive places. It's all just minor stress stuff.

Living here is fun, but it's tough for a while. Korea is full of lots of low level stress things. The water is different, the air tastes and smells funny, the shower is the bathroom, it's not humid like it is at home, I can't get my normal comfort foods, etc. Normally any one of those things wouldn't do harm, but all together they can pose a problem eventually.

I can't seem to get my mic stuff to work, I think I have a faulty piece of wiring for them. I will have to call Shure I guess and see what I can do about getting another deal, or I might just buy another one. I'm not sure. I just wish it would work the way it's supposed to.

Today wasn't supposed to be one of the those tougher days. The only things I have done is study and try to be productive, but somehow or another it's gone downhill. I know I've only been here for about a month now but I feel like I don't know as much Korean as I should. I can say basic sentences and stuff, but that's pretty much it. The grammar is difficult, because it's like crazy yoda talk.

I'm also kinda worried that I'm not going to get credit for anything when I get back. Funny thing is, that worry is going hand in hand with the worry that I actually will get credit for being here. I really feel like I will be totally dishonest if I say that my language course is deserving of Murray State language credit. My class doesn't seem like a major-level class. Sure, the teacher talks in Korean for 95% of the class, but I don't know many many things. I can't (haven't learned the rules for) say things in the: past tense, future tense (near and far), subjunctive. I also definitely can't say anything that matters, except that I am an American, I study at Daegu University, I'm going to the library, and such sentences as that. I am really starting to feel unsatisfied with myself for trying to pass that off as deserving twelve hours of language (major credit nonetheless). Sure, I'm in class for 20 hours a week, but I'm in the beginner level. There are four levels. This may seem really dumb to say all of this, but I feel really crappy.

As far as my english classes go, what happens with them? I think I should actually get credit for them, but sadly (and this is my worry), my teachers aren't professors. I know that there are assistant professors and whatnot, but I just know MSU won't like it. Two of my teachers have Masters' and the other I'm sure could right a dissertation on Literature with his knowledge. I really do think the classes are equitable to those Gen eds in Murray, I'm just worried it's not going to happen.

I can't seem to live up to the serenity prayer, no matter how hard I try. I know if I can't change it, I shouldn't worry, but what if this all counts for nothing?

It's all exhausting to think about.

The whole day and yesterday have basically been the same thing, so this one entry pretty much accounts for both. Sorry for no video this week. I should have two next week.

Until Tomorrow
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Thursday (Korean second wind)

2009-03-19T07:36:00.001-07:00

So today I found a new energy, mainly spurred on by the fact that I actually had a substantial conversation with a korean person. Also, ping pong pretty much rocked my world tonight, and also I am pretty much getting the hang/dominating my classes.

I really do like the classes. The whole intensive deal is pretty neat. At first, it seems like a lot, but eventually it's just like regular school. You get used to, study a lot, do what you have to do, and hopefully learn something. I'm a big proponent of intensive. I wish there was more intrinsic conversation time in the class, though. I know that it should come from me going out and meeting people, but it's hard to find time to memorize all the verbs and nouns.

I did have a good time last night and a little tonight though, going around the building and acting out the verbs in a quasi zombie like manner. I can just imagine how I looked: Big goofy American, walking around without any real energy, performing random actions and talking to myself in a language which sounds like Korean but is only made up entirely of verbs. It was definitely funny to do, but it really works. I recommend doing that with any language. It really helps to get those words into your sub conscious.

Honestly, memorizing new verbs (action & tangible verbs help a lot) is a lot like working out. If you can manage to find time to go catatonic and just act out verbs for like 30 minutes a day, you will learn really quickly. How quickly? The goal of learning a language should be learning it to be used throughout life, and I guarantee you the time to learn the new words is way less than the time you want to use the language. I'm pretty sure these intensive language programs are a lot like broken vending machines that don't accept change. Basically, you only get what you put in.

In a completely unrelated matter, spring is pretty much here! It was 74 today, and I walked home from ping pong in a t shirt and shorts. The yellow storms are still around, but my allergies are getting used to them, so maybe it's all going to be fine. I hope so anyways.

Speaking of ping pong, that had to be one of the better parts of the day today. I did ok in playing with the other guys there, but I started trying to talk Korean to the guys this time, and they all wanted to talk to me. Whatever Korean I didn't know, they would try to say in English. They are so nice.

Anyways, it turns out that the Korean National University Table Tennis Championships are in April. They only get to take ten people to it, and they want me to be their #1 guy! I'm so excited! The coach cam up to me, and the best he could in a hilarious but pretty neat mix of english and korean, told me about the tournament and that he will expect me at practice every day leading up to April 4. It's on April 4 by the way. We will take a train up to a town called Gumi, and the tournament will be held all day. Even if I do terribly, I will be happy. I'm lying, of course. I would never be happy doing terribly at anything. I am going ot practice on my own every day that I possibly can.

Something else really good happened tonight though, too. On the way back from practice (and for the 2 time in 3 days), I saw like 30 charter buses and Koreans boarding them in a crazy, almost hurried manner. It didn't bother me too much this time, since I had seen it once before. The first time, though, was kind of unsettling. Whenever you see what you think is every Korean in the university boarding buses to get out of the university, I think you would get a little worried. A hundred scenarios ran through my mind. Maybe North Korea was attacking. Maybe the Hello Kitty outlet went bankrupt and the doors were left unlocked because the manager was getting back at the owner for not giving him advance notice that his job was in jeopardy. It could be any of those two reasons.

Either way, this time I was determined to find out what was going on. I couldn't find anyone at first who didn't look too hurried, but I found a girl walking by herself so I ran up to talk to her (Just for the record, I realize that in America doing the same thing would be asking for a face full of mace or an ear full of rape whistle or something of that sort, but I'm in Korea).

Turns out that the university here offers buses into the city of Daegu every night at like 1030 or so in order to get students home safely. It's needed here because the university is an hour outside the city, and the public buses stop running at 10.

Well, that's basically all I have for today. I didn't think I was going to have much at first, but it turned out pretty well I think, in length.

Until the next note
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Wednesday all around

2009-03-18T05:46:00.001-07:00

The Language program is really kicking into high gear. We have lots of homework and have a test every day. the good news is, though, that I'm learning a whole lot. It doesn't take much to retain it when it's basically all you're doing. I have another big test tomorrow, and probably one the next day too.

My philosophy class went better, but I think I need to step up my out of class reading. Somehow I still wasn't completely prepared for the discussion. I have to go deep into the philosopher's whole ideas instead of a moderate view of each. It is really much more difficult than I expected. I got assigned a paper too, and I love writing, so that should be a fun time. Today we discussed (mainly) Heroclitus and Parmenides. Their philosophies really helped to shape the sciences of physics and chemistry I think.
Heroclitus dealt with the constant flux of everything, while Parmenides dealt with the stability of everything. Heroclitus thought that you could study things by learning their attributes (heat, speed, color, etc.), which sounds a lot like physics to me. Parmenides thought about how everything should be reduced down to its indivisible essence, and thought that a change in appearance of something (decay, heat, etc.) was only a change in perception and not of the composition of the subject itself. It's so fascinating to know that these guys came up with these ideas over 2000 years ago.

I think I may finally be able to stay on budget food wise. I bought the coffee, which saved me from spending three bucks a day on a coffeehouse coffee. The pound bag of instant coffee has already paid for itself, and there is still an incredible amount left. Also, I'm going to stop eating a normal, western breakfast (pastry items from the bakery, since I spend about $4 a day at just that meal. Instead, I can have a Korean breakfast for ~$2 a day. The reason I must budget food money is because I get 300,000 Korean won a month to eat on. If I can keep my food under 10,000 won a day, I will essentially only be paying for fun stuff while I'm here.

I met my other english communications group today. They are really nice too. They speak english very very well, and might even end up coming to Murray. I'm pretty sure they would have no problem taking university classes, since they understood quite easily what I was saying. They're english education majors which helps I think, but they said that they have only been preparing to come to America for 8 months. If I could be in that kind of shape after 8 months of preparation I would be so happy.

On that note, I want to say that so far I am really confident that a person taking the Korean Program seriously could quickly progress through Korean and be proficient at it within a year. the language program is only 10 weeks long, so they could take the intensive program around 5 times. 5 times is supposed to be the amount of time it takes to be ready for university classes, at least from what I'm told. It takes 2 or 3 times that long to be ready to study in another language with our American semester class system I think.

I really hope I continue to enjoy my time here in Korea. It really helps when I get letters and stuff from home. Speaking of letters from home, I was so excited to day when I got a letter from Beth! She sent me two letters and they absolutely made my day. I know that it's hard to understand how much of an effect letters can have, especially in our age of technology, but in a weird country, to have physical confirmation that someone back home is thinking of you and you're not all alone is priceless. I know it won't always be so great here though.

I know that there is a system of steps that one goes through as they spend time in another country, and I think it would be awesome if I never moved into the "I hate everything about this place" stage. It will probably happen, but here's to hoping. This really is a nice place. I think in the realms of places you could live, this country is close to what America is like. Today has been consumed with school and studying though, so I'm sorry to report that I have nothing really more to say about what I've done here.
Spring IS on the way though, and fast. It's been in the high sixties every day so far this week and trees are starting to come into bloom. I know that basically means nothing in Tennessee and Kentucky (snow can happen any time), but I think here it's a good sign.

Until Later,
Aron Hucakba International Vagabond

Yellow Storm Fallout Tuesday

2009-03-17T07:31:00.001-07:00

Today I woke up and could definitely tell I had been sleeping in some sort of gross pollution-y muck. Luckily, the yellow storm was over by the time I got outside, but I still feel it, more than 14 hours later. It's so weird, to have bad air quality. It really puts a damper on your life when being active causes more harm than good. Hopefully I get over my coordination problems in time for Thursday because ping pong tonight wasn't good (no coordination).

Class went pretty good today, we are getting into the real korean stuff now, with the verb conjugation and the sentence structure and whatnots and whathaveyous. Same style language classes just way faster pace. In a week and a couple days we've already surpassed at least double the time of American language class.

I really wish I could explain how great my literature class is. We read THE most interesting stories, have great discussions, and have a really good teacher. Nothing else could be better really. We read Chopin and Hurston last week and this week have another famous guy (I forget his name... how ironic) Since yesterday I felt terrible and sickly, I didn't have a chance to talk about one of the best parts of my day. I finally met my english group I'm helping. They are called the Study Abroad Preparation Program, and they are all planning to study somewhere in the U.S. next year. Their english is pretty good, and they want help with what makes American English so great: The butchering of definition that is prevalent thanks to colloquialisms and idioms. I'm really exciting to be helping them. They seem eager to learn and I think I can definitely help them with that kind of stuff.

In order to balance out the cosmos (ping pong went badly, as I said before) some good things happened to me today. The best thing that happened to me all day was walking by the little desk manager office as i was walking through the glass doorway of my dorm. You might be asking what made it so good.

It could be that I saw a unicorn fighting a dragon for supremacy of the universe. You know, good and evil and all that jazz; it also might be that I found a baby giraffe. Both of those would have been awesome.

What really happened was something in between. The desk lady stopped me and gave me this big package with my name on it. I was shocked, to say the least. I really felt like I had just won an oscar or something. It was ok though, because I sincerely thought of thanking the academy as I was signing the package log.

I would now like to just put in a few words for who I really do want to thank. It's extremely difficult living in a foreign country. It's also extremely difficult to know that of the population in the country you live, you and your fellow countrymen (native country that is) make up a whopping 1% (generous estimate) of the general population. Many other things are difficult when you are 7400 miles away from home. There are some things that seem to make all the difficulties go away, however. Like seeing a baby giraffe.

Seeing that baby giraffe, however, pales in comparison to receiving a package from someone back home. Dr. Ratliff sent me a package full of the most amazing things I could ever wish for. In the marvelous chest of magic, there were goldfish (Real, tangible goldfish) and Pringles, and even candy! It may not seem that much to you, but when you're missing home, it's like a godsend.

So I would like to say once (and probably not for the last time) thank you Dr. Ratliff. For everything you've done for me. You might have thought it was just junk food you were sending, but it was actually a box full of happiness. I'm aware of how corny it sounds to say that stuff, but I'm completely serious.

Oh, and more good news to boot. Or sneaker. Turns out that next Friday, we're going on a trip with the Korean Language Program here. We're going to a cherry blossom festival!! I'm so excited! I won't have a video this week I don't think, but I should end up being ready to go with two next week. Cherry blossom festival is actually a big thing for Korea. It symbolizes the start of spring and the new life that comes with it. Not to mention, when every road in a nice, rustic town is covered in said blossoms, I imagine it would be a beautiful sight.

The Language Program was originally going to a really famous Korean king's tomb, King Sejong (he created their language) but when they announced it, I looked kind of sad. My teacher asked why, and I told her that I was going to have to miss out on some plans I had to go on a trip (I fully thought they were talking about saturday, not friday). She naturally asked where I was trying to go, and I told her about the cherry blossom festival. In a really cute asian way she smacked her head and said "Oh I forgot about that."

I didn't think anything of it, but today they made the announcement about the schedule change. I think the fact that the city we're going to is 3x closer really helped too, though. It wasn't just me (I can still pretend like it was though).

The next day we will be going somewhere, but I'm not sure where yet. I hope it will be somewhere fun. There are definitely a lot of fun places here. Here's a list of some upcoming events I will be doing: Acupuncturist trip (oriental medicine stuff) Sauna Trip (You might be asking, why a sauna? Well, it's very popular in Korea. Unfortunately, you have to be naked the whole time, so I am going to waive my right to film my adventure.) Water Park (The water is heated to a nice warm temperature constantly, even in the winter.

Looks like that ends our tour for today.

Until I post again,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Manic (Crazy Yellow Sand) Monday

2009-03-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

Ok so today has been dominated by something called either the yellow sand or the yellow storm. What do you think of when you hear the words yellow sand? Is it a giant hazy cloud of gross pollution floating in from China?

My visualization wasn't either, but the sad truth is that the unwanted picture is exactly what is true. Apparently, every spring, these giant clouds periodically come over from China, and the whole day becomes shot. Walking around is like living as an emphysema patient. Depending on how bad the "storm" is, you can suffer several different stages of lung incapacity. Today was rather light, at least from what my korean friends said. However, I'm used to the nice, crisp, clean air of the Kentucky Lake Area, so I was basically dying all day.

Pollution is amazing. I believe firmly that it can destroy your body completely. I feel completely unable to perform any kind of coordinated movement right now, sports related at least. I played basketball earlier today, and that was a BAD idea for sure. I don't know what got into my head, when I knew about the pollution. I really hope it all goes away by tomorrow like it's supposed to. I can't take another day in a row of it. This is definitely my least favorite part of Korea. It's downright oppressive, physically and mentally.

This note is going to be short because I just can't get the motivation. Pollution sucks. End of story.

Give a Hoot Don't Pollute
Aron Huckaba Internatonal Vagabond

Easy like Sunday Morning

2009-03-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday. I'm 14 hours ahead, so as you're waking up I'm about to be off to bed. Strange right? I see every sunrise before you and I can call you every day and let you know how beautiful the sunset is. My waking hours are taken up for the most part by your sleeping hours and vice versa. It really makes talking back to anyone in the states tough. When I feel like talking to most people, they are asleep. Just something I wasn't sure if I had mentioned before. So if I haven't had a chance to personally stay in touch well, I hope noone is offended. It's just tough to find the time to do everything since free time is either in my morning or late at night.

Today was pretty cool. I got up and accomplished everything I set out to do, which is pretty exciting. The only thing I haven't done is study korean enough but that isn't possible since I can't study enough ha ha. I'm getting back into the swing of school though. I have coffee now, so that's definitely a contributing factor. It's instant coffee though because regular coffee here is very expensive. No idea why, except that Korea is a lot farther from South America than the U.S. is.

It's a good thing the won (Korean money) is so weak compared to the U.S. If it's not food, it's expensive here. I wasn't aware of it at first, but so many things are more expensive than in the U.S. Some things are cheaper, but not a lot of stuff. Brand name clothes are incredibly expensive here, and it seems like everything is at least 20% more than in America if it has a brand attached to it. Maybe it's do to modern day trade policy and maybe it's do to the Confucianist structure of Korea. Who knows? I'm not in the mood to delve into it farther, I just know it is not good for my shopping pleasure.

Anyways, after I got lots of stuff done, I went to church. I had met a pastor a couple of weeks ago and he told me how to get on a bus to come to his church. It was a Presbyterian church but I didn't mind. I followed his instructions this week (couldn't get the motivation last week) and jumped on the bus I found there. However, this bus was definitely not going to the Presbyterian church in Hayang. We went into downtown Daegu to this giant other Presbyterian church. Turns out that the church had korean, chinese, vietnamese, and english services. We thought it was pretty cool and upon entering the church, were snatched up by a korean person and showed around the church. We went down to the Chinese part of the church and caught the Chinese service. It was good, I think. There was an english teacher there who spoke some Chinese so he outlined in the bulletin (in english) what we were reading.

So the sermon was on Matthew 13:24-46. This covered some parables which described how God would pick the good and bad people, and also what heaven would be like. The pastor was very animated and from my experience in American protestant churches I could kind of get what he was saying while catching very few words. After the sermon we got in touch with the english teacher guy and ate lunch in the little cafeteria there.

I'm going to digress for a minute or two.

Korean church culture is pretty neat. For us Americans, we're used to going to church on Sunday morning and being done in the early afternoon, dispersing to all of our personal plans for lunch or whatnot. The service is relatively short (1-2 hours) and fellowship extends right up until the moment the final prayer is said, and then whoooooosh! Everyone is out the door.

This isn't the way Korean church culture works, or at least how it was explained to me by Andy, the english teacher I met there (I have only been to the one church so I wouldn't know personally). The first service goes from ~10:30-11:30 and last roughly a hour-1.5 hours later. At that time, everyone fellowships and has lunch together there at the church. After the first service, everyone comes back and has another service which lasts another 1.5-2 hours. Apparently Koreans really value the whole deal about the Sabbath, at least the churchgoing ones do. The church usually doesn't let out until late afternoon and then everyone goes home for the day. It's pretty neat that here in the busy culture of Korea, church is actually much longer than in the states.

Also, I noticed something else in the church today. I met Andy and he was a really nice guy. He was trying to get into better and better teaching jobs and also trying to do some mission work. He knows some chinese and some korean and of course english (he's from ohio). He lived in China for a little over a year and has been in Korea for a year in a half. I guess he likes it here in Korea, because he is trying to become a college english teacher. This all brings me to my point.

The things I found today kind of bothered me. Not in an offensive sort of way but in a concerned, fascinated sort of way. Let me start off by saying that I'm not as nationalistic as many people, and lean strongly towards a global state of things. I wish everyone would broaden their horizons and study abroad. I want everyone to see what other places are like and how the basic human struggle is intrinsic, no matter the culture.

What I saw today in Andy awestruck me. At first I thought I was speaking in a strange tone or doing something wrong, because his nonverbal communication clearly suggested that he wasn't following anything I was saying, at least until he thought about it. The fluency in his english has seemed to disappear to give way to some kind of semi-natural way of speaking one would expect of someone studying and still trying to master the language. His verbal communication skills were also lacking, at least in english, as his tones were slightly off, and he had a considerably peculiar air about him as he talked, almost like he was unsure what he was saying. Right before I would begin to speak, I could see that he was waiting me to say something, but as I began to talk this melted into an instant uneasiness and a kind of disappointment. I honestly couldn't figure out if I was doing something wrong or if I suddenly developed a crippling lisp or something.

All this description is necessary, I think, to help me bring up my point. Is this kind of loss-of-fluency normal? According to Andy, he had only spent a total of 2.5 years overseas, and that time had been split between two countries. Does intensive language training result in a complete loss of your formal self? How fast does a person unknowingly assimilate into a new culture? It makes me worried about losing my ability in english as I'm immersed here, at least to the extent I saw today. It was actually kind of disturbing, I think, because I can definitely feel that my english vocabulary is shrinking in a rate directly proportional to the rate my Korean vocabulary and understanding goes up. Is this what's to come of me? Will I lose the only thing that makes me a natural citizen. Will I end up in a sort of perpetual awkwardness between cultures?

None of these questions will keep me from fervently pursuing my Korean studies, especially since become proficient is my goal. It's just unsettling, that such a natural ability would be easily lost like that. I'm pretty sure I wrote twenty questions just now, and honestly I might be able to answer like 2 of them. This is all a big pool of unknown territory to me. In the end it boils down to the fact that i really don't want to lose who I am in the pursuit of personal improvement. It's similar to waking up one morning and discovering that you've turned into an animal or some other Kafka-esque metamorphosis.

Thinking about it further, I can see the self-cultural shift is inevitable if one truly wants to be fluent in a language. Look at the naturalized citizens we have here who speak english very well. Many of them have assimilated into the culture in some way or another to a large extent. I'm sure if they were to meet someone from their home nation who barely speaks english, the impression they would give would be like the one I got today. The whole church trip thing essentially took up my thoughts and energy today. Like I said before, I got all the necessary homeworkish things done today but I've been hung up on what happened in church today.

For Now

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Haeinsa Temple Video

2009-03-15T01:28:00.001-07:00

Blogging is tough when your days are nothing special

2009-03-14T07:25:00.001-07:00

So basically the title sums it up. I think this is as great a time as any for a little exercise I call realization and reality check. Instead of offering up a summary of how my life has been extra ordinary instead of extraordinary for the past three days, I would like to allow a deeper look into some of the observations I have made while here.

Originally this looked like a real honest-to-god paper. It had the same cold feel, had logic trying to prove a point, but who needs that? This isn't a paper writing class. This is a neat little blog I like to keep because it gives me a chance to express myself in a situation where it's hard to do so on a regular basis with anyone I wish.

Let me start off with a question.

Why Study Abroad?

I asked myself this a considerable amount of times when I first entered college, and my answer was always the same. "If I want to graduate with honors, I have to study abroad." That was that, I thought, purely obligatory.

It would be easy to say that's how it ended, that I went and ended up enjoying myself for a couple of weeks. I went on a couple of two week excursions into new countries and really did enjoy myself. The experiences were great, and the classes fun and interesting.

The best part about study abroad is that there is a deeper, less obvious benefit to spending money on a trip and class rolled into one. I never really got it until I got back after my trip to Korea in 2008, but once discovered, it could only be described as an awakening, a blinding flash of light which engulfed me, picked me up, shook me around, and sat me gently back in my chair.

Through my travels on the first two trips I realized something profound: There is more to the world, more to humanity, than what is offered in America. The U.S.A. is a melting pot. It's a populous country where things are good and things are bad but as Americans, we have a feel for it, and it's comfortable to think it's all there is.
Even though it's all of those great things, I see that we're pretty isolated from the rest of the world, both in thought and attitude. From what I can tell, isolationism is second nature to us. We want what's best for our country and only our country. We're afraid of anyone who doesn't like us, and our idea to fix that wasn't to improve relations, it was to shut ourselves off even more. That stuff is easy to see, and when concerning yourself with a country for just 2 weeks is certainly great, it's like getting a slice of the pie. It's certainly delicious, but when you're done, you kinda want to see how the rest of the pieces taste. The whole pie is the semester abroad, and is just as delicious as the first piece was.

Studying abroad is like being able to broaden your horizons a little (the jump is comparative to the transition of black and white tv to color) while gaining an appreciation for who you are as both a citizen and a person.

Being engrossed in a culture which can certainly be seen (opinion starts here) as an America that still has faith left in the world (end opinion), I have come to understand the subtle differences and the traits we share. Their are also blatant differences, but they should be easy (they're blatant) to spot.

I have come to understand that the American mindset is very unique.

To each other, I believe Americans feel some sense of duty to their country, but greatly feel the need to be some sort of emerging dissenter. Nothing every comes of partisanship, except a sluggish system and resentment towards fellow citizens.

To other citizens of the world, Americans come off as very different. Some see us as too patriotic. Others see us at not patriotic enough. Furthermore, some see us war-mongering blubbering idiots, while others view us as kind and gentle creatures with hearts three sizes too large.

What are we really? I believe we're somewhere in between, and everything at once. I'm sure any able bodied American can think of times when each of the previous criteria applied to them. When compared to Koreans, it's easy to see where it's true.

Koreans are naturally very passionate people. The average person here is very willing to assign themselves to a cause and truly care about people. They have a sense of unity and patriotism that Americans can certainly look up to. I believe patriotism is a good quality, and should be separated from nationalism. The former is a love for one's people and place in life (country, people, province, hometown, etc.), while the latter is a biased view towards issues driven by one's elitist attitude. I don't know how many Americans every day that can be seen the same way, but I won't tell you your own experiences.

Koreans are extremely kind people, as far as I have seen, and truly love Americans. That being said though, there is certainly a dark side to every situation. While they love Americans (I should really say caucasians), they treat other races much differently. Koreans are actually pretty aloof and cold to each other, based on their social system of respect and politeness rather than their heart size, and treat people who aren't caucasians like second class citizens. This observations don't include black people, though, because Koreans treat them as mainly an anomaly I think (there are not many black people at all in the entire country of Korea).
I think this behavior is the opposite of how Americans treat each other, for the most part. We are often afraid of foreigners and warm to those fellow Americans around us (sometimes).

This entry was supposed to have so many different paths I'm pretty sure that I ended up straying several times, and it's actually kind of hard to keep a train of thought up. I will keep posting my observations about Korea as time goes by. There are plenty to be had, thats for sure.

For Now
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

P.S. I will have the video of Haeinsa up tomorrow.

March 10th, 11th

2009-03-11T07:59:00.001-07:00

I really do need to keep updating daily. It was hard for me to update yesterday though, seeing as I had class and I had to basically go straight to table tennis practice. I didn't want to be late because I had no clue where the gym was.

My apologies for not updating about my first day of classes when I got back, and for not having my video of the haeinsa temple trip up yet. When I got back I was so tired, I collapsed after a shower.

So here's a summary of my first day...

Mar. 10

I went to class not really knowing what to expect. All I had heard was how tough the language class was and how quickly it went. After all, it IS held for four hours a day. A lot can be covered in that amount of time. Not only did that weigh into my nerves, but all I had seen was that the test destroyed me completely. I was a little worried.

My worries were for the most part unfounded, however, as my teacher spoke some english (only when necessary, i.e. to tell us the meaning of words) and spent the day on the common vowels. We got ten minute breaks every hour, so it really wasn't that bad. However, I don't know how many of you have been in a super intensive learning situation, but it literally drains the energy right out of you. I went in with a full stomach and only four hours later, I was starving, and I'm not joking. It's pretty neat though, how concentration like that can use so much of your energy.
Personally, it really makes me appreciate the great minds of our time that much more. I definitely need brain training if I think I am going to be in that higher state of mind for extended periods of time.

The class got over, and after lunch, it was time for my literacy class. My instructor's name is Antar. He is an older black man who is really nice and extremely intelligent. The theme for our class is basically discrimination and the underlying themes. We will be discussing sexism, racism, classism, determinism (just kidding), and sort of prejudice issues in general I guess. I truly love discussing things that have meaning. It really invigorates me to learn by conversation, and to be exposed to new ideas.
I think the class is going to be great. At least, I hope so. I'm going to be drained coming out of language class so let's hope I have something left in the tank every tuesday ha ha. We already have a bunch of reading to do, but at least it's great writing.

After all the class was over for the day, I rushed home to get ready for table tennis practice. When I arrived at the building I was meeting the people in, I was asked to play with a chinese guy (I think) I had never seen before. Turns out he was really good, and I had a real problem dealing with the shots we has giving me, and controlling the table in general (I found out later that he was the best in the club) but I held my own for the most part.
Everyone eventually showed up, so we walked the 2498324 miles to their gym. That distance is a slight exaggeration, but it was a good 20 minute walk. When they said gym I was expecting some sort of monstrosity with like 20 tables and people playing everywhere. There were three nice tables and a good floor surface, and a good rotation going throughout the night. All in all it was good, even though it wasn't what I thought it would be like.
I went on playing well into the night and when I looked up it was close to 11 PM. This was no good, since the door to get into my dorm stops working at 10 PM. I decided to try my luck and walk back anyways. Luckily for me, there were a couple of Mongolian girls in the lobby to let me in.

The night ended in success. I then took a shower and powered down for the night.

March 11.

Today was waaaaay more boring than yesterday in language class, but only because I was super tired all day. I couldn't help it. I woke up after my first table tennis practice feeling more sore than days of strenuous weight lifting. I almost slept in, but luckily woke up by my internal clock in time to grab some breakfast and head to class.
We learned about some diphthongs and simple consonants today in class, which, just like yesterday, focused on pronunciation. I can always use pronunciation practice, especially since I have been studying less than a year. Another good thing about the class, even though there is very little english spoken (maybe 5 words in 10 minutes), is that there is very little english spoken. It's like a crutch has been magically lifted out form under me and I now have to figure out what's going on, or just be left behind. Needless to say, I am listening much better than before, even only two days in. I feel very confident that even though it's kind of a shock and awe system when it comes to learning in a new language, I will definitely be the better for it, and will probably come out with much more knowledge than if english were used widely in the class.

Today I also had to adjust to a new teacher (ours left at halftime). She was very good as well, and spoke good english (too bad she didn't speak much ha ha). It was her job to help move us into consonants and the double consonants. It went well. Before I go any further, I would like to talk about the Korean language in general.

I believe that any serious student with a desire to learn can easily excel in the classes offered in Korean Language here at Daegu University. The language was made so that it's easy to learn (the alphabet is phonetic), and when taught, holds up to the desired non-difficulty. I'm in language class for 20 hours a week, which equates to much much much listening practice and much speaking practice. To go along with that, the classes are filled with other international students who have their own problems with the language based on their first language. It truly is a nice program so far, and I think even someone with no prior knowledge of Korean can do well here. That being said, for the first week or two of being here, a knowledge of common words used (like What time is it?, or even Where am I?).

So after class, I was told that I finally get to move into my new room! My new room is on the seventh floor, where I stayed last summer. I was so excited to hear that, but it would have to wait, as I had class first.

Today's class was Western Philosophy. My instructor's name is Steph, and she's from Ireland. She's really nice, and her accent is awesome to listen to all day. It's kind of soothing really, I don't know why. Anyways, I have a feeling her class is going to be a blast. Since it's philosophy, she is centering it around outside reading about the persons covered and also discussion. Like I said, I love discussion, and reading about how others viewed the workings of the universe. It's so interesting to me how to try and discover things about humanity in general, just as Plato did. I might not be able to define justice just yet, but I know that by taking the class I might get a few steps closer to developing a sound philosophy of my own.

After class I finally got a chance to move into my new room. It was jsut as great as what I hoped it would be. The drain in the bathroom doesn't back up, I have a breakfast nook type thing, a giant desk, ample shelf space, a flat screen tv, and a fridge. Also, the view is sweet from up here, which certainly helps determine how nice my room is. I'm a sucker for nice views. This room is basically what the dorm rooms in Murray isn't though. It's comfy, inviting, interesting, warm enough/cool enough, aesthetically pleasing, and agreeable in decor. I might just have to find a way to extend my visa just for this room. Maybe I won't go that far, but you will see what I'm talking about when I post the pictures of it.

That's all I got for now, and I have lots of homework and studying to do before sleepytime hits.

For now,
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

P.S. I have table tennis practice tomorrow as well, so the idea of updating tomorrow is still up int he air. I hope I remember to not play so late next time, but we'll see.

Video 2: Korean Medicine Market Adventure

2009-03-10T07:50:00.001-07:00

Video 1: Korea

2009-03-10T07:49:00.001-07:00

Mar. 7 (Haeinsa Temple: insanely beautiful, insanely insane

2009-03-10T07:30:00.001-07:00

Sat 8:54am
Today turned out to be possibly the craziest day so far. Seriously, I felt like I was in National Lampoon's Korean Vacation or something.

The day started off basically as any other day has. I got up and ate breakfast while reading some more of my Einstein biography. About 10:30 rolled around, so I went and woke Kayla up to make sure we were clear on plans for the day. We decided to go to Haeinsa Temple, where the most complete and largest collection of Buddhist scriptures and teachings is kept. We weren't going to leave for an hour or so for lunch and then the temple, so I just kind of relaxed.

Finally the time came when we could start off our journey. We ate a boring meal at our downstairs cafeteria (pretty much every building on campus has one) and headed off to the bus stop. I had researched where we were going and how to get there, so it was fun translating the theory of traveling into the real thing when you have never been there before.

We caught a familiar bus into Daegu and arrived at the train station after about an hour's drive. We hopped on the subway bound for our next bus stop, and it wasn't long before we were at the sobo bus station. We ended up in the station somehow, and were very lucky in that a bus was leaving for the temple in the next ten minutes. So we boarded the bus and awaited our departure.

It was really neat getting the chance to get around for real on our own. We were able to cover a lot of distance without someone who knew korean or korea in general very well. Both of us have a drastic improvement over our attitude towards listening and speaking, it's really pretty great.

The bus departs for the temple, and we make it after about an hour and a half (which is crazy because on the map it didn't look very far away). We successfully made it to the Haeinsa Temple compound thing and were immediately overtaken by a feeling of peace and serenity. They had a smallish museum there, and for about a buck we got to see what was in there. They had lots of buddhist stuff in there, and even some replicas of the buddhist canon they are famous for (for tourist's picture taking).

The museum was just the start of the trek, though, as all the buildings were at least a kilometer away, and it was definitely uphill. The air was pretty cool and very crisp. Much to my surprise, and quite a nice twist of fate, the air was actually very similar to the air back home. Instead of a heavy, strange city air which bogs you down, it was clean, clear, and it put me in a good mood.

We made it to the Temple itself pretty easily. It was so beautiful. The buildings were absolutely stunning, and the painting underneath the roofs of them were gorgeously bright. There was a really interesting mix of historic atmosphere with religious tension there that is hard to put into words. It was almost like I could feel an unseen energy pulsing through me as I walked through it.
The main attraction, the Buddhist canon, was really neat. It was housed in its own special room at the top of the temple (which also means the holiest part). You couldn't take pictures of them, but when I saw Koreans breaking out the cameras, I had to snap one too. The shrines were absolutely beautiful, and the people there worshipping seemed as if they were in a trance. All in all, the place was breathtaking. I only regret that we hadn't enough time to look at the entire place. It started getting dark as we left the temple, so we decided to head back.

This may seem like the part where the story drops off, because the objective of the day has been reached, we got there without incident, and we were heading back. WRONG.

So we march back down the mountain, casually joking all the while, that since it's six o clock, the buses probably don't even run. What a funny joke. Too bad it turned out to be true. When we went back down, all the little vendors and everything had closed up shop and the only signs of life were two buses parked by the main pavilion area. We went up and asked the guy if they were going to Sobo, our bus station in Daegu. He immediately looked worried, and dashed off, talking to other worried looking guys.
That seemed a little strange, I thought. He rushes back to us, and in broken english explains he isn't going into Daegu. Ok, we say, no problem, we will just wait for another bus. That worried the guy even more, and he dashed off again, this time bringing back an order to follow him into the first bus.
On the first bus, there was a guy with a microphone standing up talking to the passengers. The worried looking man spoke to him, and he had a look like, "Are you kidding? Really?" It took a second more of unintelligible korean banter before the guy, looking slightly agitated, motions for us to sit in the first seat. This wasn't bad, I thought. these seats were special though, in that in getting the privilege of sitting there, one also got the privilege of holding all the trash of the bus. The worried man explains to us something about Daegu and highway, so I thank him a lot and try and get comfortable amongst the trash.
The bus (which we didn't pay for) started off and microphone guy starts singing. The lights get dim and he is just singing away, when Kayla recognizes that we're on a bus with built in Karaoke. It was then that I realized how unusual it was for them to give us a ride. They were a buddhist tour group (I knew they were buddhist because I saw many of them praying in shrines) who were now on their way back home from some sort of pilgrimage thing, and we were definitely just a couple of foreign hitch hikers.
So there we are, literally vagabonds on this bus, while microphone guy sings his heart out. We are offered soft drinks and try to get comfortable, when microphone guy offers for me to sing a song. With a little hesitation I accepted, and because I felt hurried and couldn't find a nice sounding song to sing, I sang "When I'm Gone" by Three Doors Down. I felt like a stupid American, because all the songs microphone guy sang were pretty and had to do with love. I sang a rock song. Boo me. Kayla got to sing one though, too, and got to pick Manic Monday by the Bangles (turns out I missed the majority of nice songs by a page turn), which was a nice change from my song.
When our songs were over, everyone clapped and cheered, and me and Kayla were having a blast on the bus. Microphone guy just kept singing and would come up to our little trash haven and dance with us. What a time it was. They even offered us food, and we had some neat rice cakes with bean paste in them. Boy were they tasty. Nothing in the world could ruin the way home.
Right as the thought of how great a trip we were having went through my head, traffic slowed down a little. Taking stock of what was going on around me, I noticed we were in a different lane than everyone else. At the same time, I see and hear the bus door open up and the driver says something to microphone guy. He takes the info, seems to curl it around in his brain a moment, and says to us, "This is the Highway outside of Daegu. Get a Taxi." Upon his last word, he used the international signal for please step off my bus.
Shocked, we grabbed our things and walked off the bus, getting a nice round of clapping and waving bye. So we stepped out onto the shoulder of the busy freeway and the bus drove off.

There we were. Kicked off our karaoke bus and left to fend for ourselves on the freeway. It was insane. We had to time sprints up on-ramps and other places where there was virtually no shoulder with an absence was cars. After what seemed like an eternity, we made it into Daegu, though. The only bad part of actually making it into Daegu is that I'm pretty sure that when people said, Don't go there at night, or Don't go alone, or Daegu can have bad parts of town. That was what they meant. It looked like I was in the Korean version of American Gangster. Needless to say, we power-walked it to the nearest bus stop, no telling how far away. Luckily the bus stop had a bus that took us to another stop that we could catch a bus back to campus. If we had been any later, the buses would have stopped running and we would have been in a bad way.

It was a crazy trip, and probably one of the more eye opening ones so far. Once again, I want to stress how nice the average person is here in Korea, after all, they let us hitchhike in their very nice chartered bus. Something else I learned: Koreans of all ages love Karaoke.

On a serious note it was wonderful seeing the Temple today. It was a UNESCO World Heritage sight, which means that it's deemed one of the most important places in the world, just like Stonehenge. Preserving treasures like that for future generations is very important, since, as a famous man once said, we can never know where we're going until we find out where we came from.

Until next time

Aron Huckaba Internatonal Vagabond

Mar. 8/9

2009-03-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

Today and yesterday were a hodge podge of laziness and then rededciation. I was still getting over the ride home from Haeinsa yesterday, and I needed to do laundry, etc. All in all, it ended up being a good relaxing day, just what I needed before classes start.

That's pretty much all I'm going to say about sunday. Mainly just a rest day.

Mar. 9

Well, I started class today. The first task was to take a Korean proficiency test. I did really good on the grammar, or at least, I felt like I did. I did incredibly bad overall, though, because even though I know how sentences should look, I know not the vocabulary I should. It was all well and good, though. I am pretty confident that my course and a half here will make me be leaps and bounds closer to my goal of being fluent in another language.

Goals. That's going to be a theme of this note. Let's hold off on that for just a little bit though, while I recap today.

Anyways, after being completely and utterly stupefied by the proficiency test, there was an orientation. A very nice lady explained to us our probable schedule and let us know that the next day classes would start in earnest (I really want to make a joke about how I hope Earnest doesn't mind, but that would take too much thought right now).

After the test of doom and the orientation, we made our way back to the dorm until our culture class. I found a lot of cool things using StumbleUpon, and it's one of the reasons I am trying to rededicate myself the right way.

Culture class was pretty good. I am going to love that class. Discovering the unspoken laws and the customs and historical reasons for an entire population's actions and outward attitude is really interesting to me. there might be lots of people in there our there might be only me and Kayla. The teacher isn't sure yet. We will find out next week though, that's certain.

After class we ate our dinner and trudged back to the dorms wehre I had a less than stellar night in the table tennis arena.

So back to goals. I firmly believe that I am incapable of sticking to my goals unless I write them down. Since i have no really good medium with which to do this, Im going to use Facebook to try and keep myself to my Korea-related goals.

Ultimate Goal (Stretch)
=Become reasonably proficient in Korean by the time I leave
Small Goals which will help achieve the stretch goal (short-term)
-Learn 5 new Korean Words a day
-Pass my current Korean Language Program with High Marks
-Study Korean for 1.5 hrs a day (outside of class)
-Use my language buddy to help conversation skills
-Every week hold a real conversation with 7 people (in Korean) [1 a day?]
-Write a paragraph in Korean about a current issue in Korea every day

Ultimate Goal (Stretch)
=Reach 2000 level status in table tennis by the time I get back
Small Goals which will help achieve the stretch goal (short-term)
-Practice at least 3 times a week
-Practice good form every time I play
-Win one of the monthly tournaments offered by the table tennis club
-Use good manners and etiquette, allowing me more practice time with club members

Ultimate Goal (Stretch)
=Gain a healthy appreciation for Korea and its culture
Small Goals which will help achieve the stretch goal (short-term)
-Pass my Culture class with High Marks
-Make a cultural visit to a famous site in Korea once a week
-Visit every UNESCO World Heritage Site in Korea
-Use my language buddy as a chance to learn about the culture

Ok, so some of the short term goals are less concrete than they should be. Oh well. I can definitely reach them I think. These are just the ones for this trip and the ones I hope to achieve by the end, not the ones I hope to achieve on the timeline of my life.

For Now,
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Bloggenstein (Mar. 4)

2009-03-10T07:29:00.002-07:00

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 8:37am
Well, today has been much better. For a variety of reasons. Let's begin with the first.

It's not square root day anymore, but let's talk about the root of all evil: MONEY. Today my money came in, and I got sufficient funds for a few days. It seems really complicated because it's sitting in a global account right now as dollars, but I need to get it transferred to my real account in won. By the way, the exchange rate is pretty darn good, and I want to time the transfer into won with the best possible gain.

To spice things up, let's counter the good news with some hilarity.

Today I was in my restroom, minding my own business when I accidentally hit a button I'm not suppose to.
Before I tell what happened, let me explain how the bathroom is laid out. Walking in, there is a sink in front of you, and directly next to the sink is the toilet, and on the wall next to the toilet is the shower fixture. My entire bathroom is the shower. There is a drain in the floor and the walls are waterproof. It's pretty neat, I think. How is this really super neat shower operated is what you're wondering I bet. Well that's simple. Right at elbow height is a metal button, and once you push that button, water comes out for a few second, so that you don't waste water.
On to the story. So I'm in the bathroom, lost in thought, when I accidentally lean against the shower. I didn't realize it though, so a very unfortunate series of events occurs in a matter of seconds, or, as dogs would call, minutes (I know that dogs would probably call seconds ruf-ruff or wow-bow-wow or something else, but it's a timeline joke so let's carry on). At first, I heard the shower kick on. However, like most things, there are some steps which can help explain human behavior when the action happens.
1. Denial- I heard the shower kick on, but in the milliseconds before I discovered the truth, I thought maybe the person in the next room was showering too.
2. Shock- All I felt in the world was coldness. Wet, moist, slippery, uncomfortable coldness. However, this soon gave rise to:
3. Anger- So once I figured out what happened, all I could do was scream something that probably sounded like I was coming to terms with an unexpected shower. The sound wasn't pretty.
4. Depression- I had all my stuff in my pockets, regular clothes on and no expectation of a shower so early in the day. It was the saddest moment of the day. Luckily, as soon as the water shut off, it all melted into:
5. Acceptance- Let's face it, when you are in the bathroom and accidentally get a nice cold shower in your street clothes, it's funny when it's all over. I couldn't change that I was wet and cold, so I just laughed and laughed and changed clothes.

So after all that, almost immediately actually, one of the guys who works in the international affairs office came by and told me that he had contacted a chinese girl about playing ping pong. Not only was she good, she was supposed to be the best on campus. Boy was I pumped. Only problem was that the ping pong room I knew of now had health fair stuff in it because they had a health fair going on there until the eleventh. However, (the guy's name is Hang) Hang knew that my dorm has a ping pong table in the basement. I was even more pumped, because the girl wanted to play at seven. It was six! I went and ate dinner and then it was ping pong time.
It made me feel pretty good that she wasn't much better than me. When I concentrated and performed like I should, I didn't lose many rallies. She was good though, I can't take that from her. Long story short, I had a great time playing my favorite sport for about three hours. Now I think I have a solid group of people who like to play too, and that's practically invaluable because I should be able to get much better by the time I leave.

For tomorrow's plan I think I will go and check out some second hand stores in Ha Yang, or in Daegu, wherever they may be.

Oh, before I forget:
I want to thank Kayla Baker for letting me borrow money from her while mine was in transit. It was a good 4 or 5 days so for her to take on my food costs (which is plenty) and my dictionary is truly a testament to her kindness and the caliber of person she is. Thanks Kayla, you helped make my trip happy thus far.

Until next time,

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Mar. 5!

2009-03-10T07:29:00.001-07:00

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 7:27am
Today started out pretty slow but had some sweet parts to it.

The plan for today was to go thrift store shopping. Our friend Angela wanted to go as well, so we said, yeah sure, after lunch then. Our lunch time was -1200. Too bad that was EVERY single other person in the world's lunch time too. We visited 5 restaurants on campus before finding one without a really long line. Thank goodness it took a while, too, because what we found was great. It was a restaurant on campus whose prices were higher than the rest, but it was traditional korean dining. They had a smorgasbord of food for us, lots of little things, and we also got our main course. All in all, it was a great meal.

After that, we went back and looked for Angela some more, but she was gone (turns out she had an unexpected class). So we went to Hayang before the rain started up. We got there and found the thrift store market place, and also found the presbyterian church, it was huge!

The street with all the thrift stores was just what I hoped, a smallish street, with a market, not covered, but it was a market nonetheless. the thrift stores looked especially shady and full of 70s era clothes, so we only checked one out. We did find a covered food market, however, which turned out to be the highlight of the trip.
We turned a corner and there was a guy lying down on a bench just smiling at us in a really funny way. I wanted that picture, so I went back, but he was outside and posed for us in front of some dried and salted flounder. We thought nothing of it and walked on after the picture was taken.
Turns out Hayang is even smaller than we thought, so we decided to go back into the covered market for pictures of all the neat korean produce and fish they had for sale there. The guy was there again, except this time he seemed really excited to see us. When we got closer, he motioned towards me with the universal motion meaning, come in here please.

However, I was 6 years old once, and my mom specifically told me about the stranger danger rule, so I was pretty weary of this middle aged Korean man wanting to show me something inside of his fish store. Going in there kinda seemed funny at first, and Kayla was having none of it. She was determined to make sure that she wasn't going to get snatched or something so she let me brave the peril on my own.
When I got in there, though, I felt silly for the assumptions I made about this guy. All he wanted was to give us some coffee and talk to us. It turns out, this was probably one of the nicest guys we had met yet. We sat in his fish store office for a good hour, just stumbling through conversation and listening to him talk. The best part was, I understood a lot of what he said, and I could even say things back. It was pretty much at the same rate a small child would, but I was having what appeared to be a real conversation.

What I learned about random korean fish market guy:
1.His name is actually Song Yang Lee, not Korean Fish Market Guy. Guy is a french name and we are in South Korea.
2. He owns the fish store, but he has only been there for 9 years (2001-2009).
3. His last job was as the manager in a department store in the women's high fashion department.
4. He has a daughter in elementary school, who he homeschools, and a daughter in middle school (8th grade) who goes to regular school.
5. His wife works at the fish store too.
6. He gave us apples, for free! When he saw we were leaving and had no umbrella, he gave us one!
7. He taught us Korean! We learned all kinds of stuff, but mainly how to say ok, thank you, and no thank you in a really polite way.

It's this kind of thing that really helps keep faith in humanity. Who would've thought that random korean fish market guy would turn into Mr. Lee?

We came back and I read and stuff, but the cap on the day was surely meeting Mr. Lee.

Until next time,
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Mar. 6 (another fun filled trip to Daegu)

2009-03-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:45am
Today, as the title suggests, we went to Daegu! It was really a great trip, one of those that leaves you slightly exhausted and struggling to recap exactly everything that happened during the trip. My best attempts follow:

First we wanted to check out some lunchable activity, so after exiting the bus in Daegu, me, Kayla, and our newly found english-teacher-turned-korean-student-and-all-around-good-guy Wayne started looking around for places to scrounge on the way to the art show. It wasn't long before we found a little place, and it offered korean barbeque beef. It was on. We went in there and told the lady to get the barbeque fired up.

After talking amongst ourselves for a while, the old lady who ran the shop by herself brought out our barbeque, which looked great. She put it on the oven in the middle of our table to cook, and brought out our side dishes.
I just want to go ahead and say once and for all that I wish American restaurants would put out side dishes the way they do in Korea. It wouldn't even cost them much more, because instead of the side dishes being with the dinner, they would be out in the middle for everyone to share. Quite economical really. Who wouldn't want to go into Cracker Barrel and along with those biscuits and jelly, they brought out little servings of things like hashbrowns, grits, you know, easy side stuff.
Anyways, it turned out the lady charged us for individual meals when we shared the one big tray, which was shady I thought, but we were full, and she gave us some hypersweet drink that came in like 1.5 oz. bottles (thank goodness it wasn't any more).

We had a chance to casually stroll through downtown Daegu and make our way to the Design Center, which was apparently BRAND new (they hadn't even finished putting the books on the shelf in the bookstore). The design center was really nice, and the layout was top notch. The art show (which only costed about $5) was really good. It was centered around modern art and had masters like Warhol, Picasso, Dali, Matisse, Boar, Ratta, and many others. Their work was stunning. The prints they had in the museums were absolutely mesmerizing, especially if you were familiar with the difficulty of making perfect and consistent prints. I even got an illegal picture next to some Warhol paintings. We casually got our fill of the best modern art to behold and meandered our way out of there.

On the way out, we met a very young toddler who was incredibly cute and who I was able to play with just like a baby in the states. It's so neat to see that all babies really are clean slates and react in virtually the same way no matter where they are from.

When we left the art show, we decided to head out to the traditional korean market to see some neat stuff. Wayne described it as a "sprawling jungle of covered markets with all the riches of a world you've never seen." needless to say, I had to go, which brings me to my next little interlude.
Korean taxis might just be the scariest thing ever invented. Imagine that you're in an amusement park. You're about to ride a semi popular ride that you got good reviews about. So you strap into the ride, and get ready as it gears up. Little known to you and better known to everyone else on the ride, the ride you're on is known for its seemingly near death experiences. In a matter of seconds you're tricked from thinking that you're about to be imploded forcefully by two buses at once to wondering why Korea even has crosswalks at all if people are almost struck every time they cross. count in the fact that the ride's operator sits in the front, and he makes angry gestures at people going too slow or trying to stay in their own lane or just driving defensively. The best part about my little taxi ride was getting out of the car ha ha.

Before we got in the taxi, though, we saw a really curious building with trees all over the terraces of its multi floored premises. Wayne explained to us that it was a wedding hall and that it probably does 25 weddings a day on the weekend. When all he got was puzzled looks, he also explained that Korean weddings take, at most, half an hour, and often the ceremony and reception are done in 35 minutes. I don't think I have been to many weddings where the ceremony was under an hour, or at least what felt like an hour.

Anyways, we got out of the taxi and decided that before we went marketeering, we needed to get some coffee. When we stepped out of the cab, there was a Starbucks waiting for us. Creepy I know. However, the coffee was on par with what Starbucks serves, and I even got to try some Walnut Pie. Imagine Pecan pie with less taste and a more gelatinous filling and you have yourself a walnut pie.

We had some more fun conversation over the coffee, talked about the culture in Korea, getting a job, being happy here, being happy in Canada, all kinds of fun stuff. Afterwards we packed up and headed to the market to try and find some deals.

The market proved truly ginormous. That's the only word to describe it. People were everywhere, and shops seemed to be overflowing out into the walkways. There would be stalls of vendors, shops in buildings, floors of buildings with shops on all of them, incredibly inexpensive clothes, hunks and slabs and oodles and oodles of dead fish waiting for purchase. It seemed like it could have been a Korean person and dead fish enthusiast's heaven. Not to mention all the neat little makeshift restaurants. We got there a little late, so everyone was packing up their stalls for the day.
On a strange note, we did get to visit the "exotic meats" section where they have things like pheasant, live chickens, roosters, rabbit, dog (yes, there were puppies in cages). We didn't get to see any slabs of dog or anything, but it brings up an interesting point about the whole bit.

Back in olden days, when men were men and women were property, It was very common to chow down on whatever meat you had available to you, and to the average feudal person, dogs were like, uh, for lack of a better term, livestock. Traditional and country dwelling koreans still treat them as such.
Coming to Korea, in a way, is like taking a serious step back from the American way of treating animals. In the states, we're all used to the unwritten rule that animals deserve their own pedestal in the household. No harm should come to them, and they should basically be treated as a person who has yet to learn to speak, or write, or in younger cases, use the potty correctly. The care of dogs here in no way mirrors the popular game Nintendogs. Cats are basically treated as urchins and vagabonds who are only tolerated because they keep the mice population down. Koreans think of them as wild animals. Dogs are a kind of livestock, and would be openly eaten by all Koreans, if it wasn't regarded as taboo to westerners. These animals aren't friendly, the culture doesn't put any value into raising friendly animals. The animals will bite you if they get the chance and truly act as if they had no domestication at all.
While I do love dogs, I also know that they are just another animal as well, and being an animal, are infused with a delicious substance us laymen term "meat." While this is nothing close to A Modest Proposal, I venture to say that the vast majority of the population would find a way to get at this meat if no other food were available. I could also venture to say that in the case of scarcity, those people would probably even think the meat was tasty and would even wish they had more. Such is the tie that binds all humans. Maybe treating dogs like less-than-humans isn't a very modern American value, but it's certainly some kind of innate notion us citizens of the world were born with.

We left the market as it was getting around dark and caught a bus home after taking another incredibly fun (not) ride in a taxi to the bus stop (sounds weird, but you couldn't get to it form where we were on foot very easily or quickly).
On the bus, we met this guy named Ismael. Ismael was from Morocco. Right off the bat, it seemed like he had led a pretty interesting life. While he had some nice stories, something didn't feel right about him. He said he came to Korea from Morocco when he was 14 in order to go to school. He didn't know much Korean though (guessing he went to an english school) and said that out of high school he became a professional soccer player. He played for the Pohang Steelers, which is a team sponsored by the Posco steel making corporation (in fact, the stadium is within the confines of the factory complex). He said he had to quit playing soccer though, because of some cerebral problems, which makes sense because I remember reading a study that said soccer was harder on the brain in terms of trauma than any other sport, including boxing. He tried to go to school in Pusan, but decided to forego finishing university in order to teach english to kindergartners. He said he really likes it, and that he makes 50 dollars an hour doing it. He did admit that he had gotten kicked out of one school though, and is working at another place in Hayang. He said to fill his free time he directs movies (type in "the story of wine trailer" to youtube?), and is doing a tv show. Not sure how true any of it was, but he was definitely an interesting guy. He invited us to a party tomorrow night, but I don't know if I trust that situation very much. The spidey senses are tingling, as they say.

So we ended up back on campus, retreating to our rooms for the night. On the agenda for tomorrow: Either Itaewon or a buudhist convent temple place. Either way, it will be great.

Until next time
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

Edit: turns out ismael really was in that movie trailer, and it looks good, in a Korean way. Ismael had short hair and a short duration in the trailer.

Bloggity Blog

2009-03-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 6:40am
Well to say the least these past three days have sucked. Not to get on a complaint spree, it just hasn't been conducive to writing a fun blog about a great time. Bad weather, nothing to do, no money, no class. Ha ha, pretty much like Murray before I left.

Doesn;t matter. Let's recap on the good things:

I started training for the 5k in April hosted here. I'm getting good treadmill time in (which I know accounts for not much realistically), but hey, I'm not getting fat.

I'm exercising in general, regularly even, that's a first for me on trips abroad.

I might or might not be coming to terms with myself as a person, instead of living life like I wish I could, and being in denial with myself. Jury is still out though.

I have found people to play ping pong with, and may even have found a great one, if I can ever get in touch with them.

Once I get money, I can start doing exciting stuff again. Until then, not so much.

Oh yeah, another good thing is that I have started to seriously study on my own the things that really interest me. I have gone almost all the way through a free linguistics course that MIT has and will hopefully study many different subjects and be proficient at them one day. It's another one of those trying to better myself things. I look at all the great minds and see that they studied independently and really took it upon themselves to be responsible for the contribution they had on the world, even if history is the ultimate jury on that.

So even though these last three days have sucked, for more reasons than I can list, They have still even been good, for more reasons than I have listed here.

Now for a new little bit I like to call, Korean Made Simple.

I'm going to list some common Korean words and then exactly how we would say them without using fancy characters. syllables are shown using dashes and all of the shown syllables are ones we have in English.

Here's an example:

Annyong Haseyo (hello, how are you?) ----On-yong Ha-say-oh

Easy, right?

Kamsamnida (thank you) ----- com-som-knee-da

Miguk saram (American) ------ Me-gook Sa-rom

Korean Sentence:

Hanguk saramibnika? (Are you korean?)-----Han-gook Sa-rom Ip-knee-ka

Aron Huckaba International Vagabond

The next entry in the Korean Odyssey

2009-03-10T07:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 9:00am
2/27

So today we tried to go to church. We travelled to ha yang to the nearest catholic church because that's where Kayla needed to go. Me, Angela, and Kayla all got to the church only to find that it was empty. We asked a lady moving stuff around in there and she said that the next service was on sunday, or March 1. Kayla was pretty disappointed, but at least there was sunday.

When we were done we decided to explore around ha yang (which gave me a great excuse to try and find a tailor). I know a guy who was stationed in Korea for like 6 years and he said the best deal to get here was to hire a tailor to make all new clothes for you. He said he had a silk suit made for like $200 bucks, which, when I last checked, was like $1300. With the exchange rate the way it is I think the price will fall for me to like $150. He also said the regular clothes are very inexpensive too. A custom wardrobe would be sweet I think.

Anyways, we went exploring in ha yang and found some cool cheap little stores, but not much else. I think there is much more exploration to do there. We ate at a place called New York New York and had Korea's version of a New York restaurant. There was spaghetti and steak and that's basically it ha ha.

After the meal we came back and I ran some in the gym. I don't know if the air quality is bad here or what, but I felt like I was running on jello instead of legs. It took me twenty five minutes to run 3k, even with the incline at 10% on the treadmill. I will have to do way better if I want to run the 5k here in April.

I got done working out and pretty much had destined myself in for a night of much ado about nothing, when Kayla suggested we go over to our friend and English teacher, Eli's house.

When we got there they were deep into a game of Cranium. They finished and we started again. Basically, to sum it up, I am awesome at drawing with my eyes closed and impersonating Martha Stewart. Kayla's team won after a good two and a half hour game ha ha. People came and went but for a while everyone sat in Eli's living room and jammed out using guitars, maracas, bongoes, an african xylophone thing, and a didgeridoo. Oh yeah, I got to play said didgeridoo. It was awesome. I was even able to kind of make it sound like it does on movies.

It's pretty neat that the english teachers here are mainly form non-American countries. There are teachers from Australia (Eli, Ryan, Andy), Canada (Julie, Justin, Janice), Ireland (Steph), and the U.S. (Chad, Jonathan). There are some other teachers here too, but I only listed to ones I have met.

It got past midnight and I asked the teachers how me and Kayla were supposed to get back in our rooms. One of them said to just open it with my hands. That's exactly what I did, however, it was a bad idea. The desk worker came out and told me not to do that anymore and that next time I should call a teacher to let me in. I apologized fervently and told him it wouldn't happen again. He let us go. Thank goodness.

2/28

Today was probably the best day I have had in Korea so far. At 2 o clock we met Angela and some guys from China (I can't remember their names or how to spell them, but on a funny side note, one of them was the guy who told me not to open the doors using my hands again, but it's ok because he was cool) and we headed out for downtown Daegu. We planned to have fun and shop and find a nice place to eat dinner. We took the hour bus ride and when we arrived I immediately saw a sign for what I wanted to do there. There was an herbal medicine market and museum not far from where we were dropped off. It was perfect.

We headed to the market and randomly selected one to be the one we go inside of. It was so beautiful inside and it smelled incredible. Just walking in was like a pick-me-up. I got my Chinese friends to explain what the shopworker guy was saying in Korean (their major was Korean language) and the guy explained to us how the herbal medicine could be used to treat many different symptoms and illnesses. We had left and came back to try and buy some stuff when they said an eastern doctor was on the way, one who prescribed certain herbal remedy things and who could tell you what was wrong with you just by feeling your pulse.

I was ecstatic about this. I wanted to get the scoop on the eastern medicine, especially since I want it to be the subject of my fulbright research project, if I get it. We wait around for a few minutes and the doctor comes in. He looks just like I imagine, with a nice suit and a very scholarly appearance. We let some old people in front of us and then it was my turn to get my health read and try to figure out what, if anything, is wrong.

He took my hand and concentrated on finding my pulse while he asked my translator about me and my lifestyle. He let go of my hand and told my translator... that he couldn't find my pulse. I switched hands. He found the pulse in my right hand and asked if my back had been hurting me.

I was really intrigued. How could this guy have known that a have an acquired hip dysplasia that causes my spine to be rotated and it to hurt if I am very active during the day? I was beginning to think that maybe this eastern medicine thing was real. Why even see a real doctor anymore?

While I was going through that process in my head, my translator was very busy and told me that the doctor also asked if I get tired easy. No, I said, wondering where the doctor was going with this. Not needing my hand anymore, he returns it and says something to my friend. Puzzled, he looks at me and says, you need to play more sports so that you won't be tired as easy and your back won't hurt anymore.

I was kind of disappointed, I thought it was going to be an amazing experience and that the doctor was going to tell me how to maximize my potential through the power of herbal healing. I was pretty wrong. However, when Angela and Kayla went to get examined, he was exactly right about their conditions. Maybe he was right about mine. Maybe I just don't play enough sports anymore.

This in a roundabout way all brings me to something else I found out today. the eastern medicine doctor is completely, 100% free to all patients. All they pay is their medicine cost. The most remarkable thing about this is that many patients (at least according to an old lady in the waiting room/lounge/den area of the shop waiting with us) receive complex diagnoses which are often confirmed in a hospital. The herbal medicines help with those things, and many people in Korea firmly believe in them. It's kind of a nice change from the $500 minimal fee (before insurance) it takes to see a doctor in the U.S.

We said goodbye to the doctor and his kind and left on our merry way. I was practically floating. I got to experience the herbal medicine experience, something that had intrigued me for a while. We all went shopping in random stores and in an underground mall until dinner time.

Our dinner was pan seared chicken, and the cool thing was that it was brought out to our table as it was cooking. So there we sit watching the broth basically get boiled off because the iron pan is so hot. The steam flew and the smell was amazing to say the least. It was probably the tastiest meal I have had here on this trip.

After dinner we went to the famous Kyobo book store. It had both Kroean and English books in it. I managed to get a sweet kroean-english english-korean dicitonary and helped Angela pick out twilight and a walk to remember. When I went to pay for the said dictionary, though, I ran into a snag. Big surprise. I tried to run my card from home (which I run as a visa credit card all the time) in their machine as a Visa.

The card isn't technically a real credit card. It's a card which, when ran as credit, takes the amount out of my bank account, so it's like a creditdebit/debit card, if that makes any sense. Anyways, I run the card and the transaction goes through. I'm in the clear, right? Wrong. They stop me and tell me that they don't know what kind of card it is and that after some phone calls they decided to cancel the transaction altogether and make me pay cash. boo. I had to borrow a little more money (the wired money is in transit I guess) but I got the dictionary.

We boarded a bus back to the school and made it back to our rooms all safe and sound.

day 2:stumblebumble adventure time

2009-03-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 6:42am
Today was definitely exciting in its own way and definitely hectic.

I got to wake up at my own leisure today, but thanks to a little friend I like to call jet lag, I woke up around 8:30. Oh well. I had nothing to do today though so I tried to mess around with my camcorder and figure out why my mic isn't working. I think a cord is bad or something, I don't know. The microphones just won't work, both of them. I need to e-mail my tech guy at Murray and maybe he can help from afar.

It's really amazing how little I can speak to the people here and/or understand. I don't even want to start imagining what life would be like if there wasn't another english speaking person here. I tried to withdraw money today because of my serious lack thereof, but I found out that I can't because the ATMs don't support American banks here. So me and Kayla decided it would be a good idea to go and see Daegu and I could also try and find a Global ATM to get money out of.

We went at first to the international affairs office to try and get directions. They told me there was a Global ATM close to nearby Yeongnam University. It wasn't a big deal because the bus that took us there also took us to Daegu, so we got on that. On the way though, they announced all the names of places in korean, of course. Needless to say this left my bus navigating abilities severely weakened. We missed the stop and ended up in Daegu 20 minutes later.

Trying to salvage the situation, we found the bank which has a branch on campus and tried to make that work. I attempted a try at an ATM, but no dice. I then went to the customer service lady and stumbled through enough of the banking english she knew to get to a point where I could try to transfer money to my bank account in Korea. The first thing she asked me for was my passport, but of course I didn't have it.

Lesson #1: If doing anything important, ALWAYS bring your passport.

So if that wasn't fun enough, turns out I need my alien registration card also. Oh well, I will have that by like the end of next week I think and I should have enough snack food and PB and J to last that long anyways. If not I will pay back my friends if they buy my meals. The good news is though that I can definitely transfer money once I get that card. Hooray cash!

So we hopped on a bus after some totally bogus sightseeing (most of Daegu is shut down until people get off work around 4 or 5 o clock apparently). On the way home we found the stop we missed before so we got off to see if the global ATM was there. We found the bank and went inside, but those ATMs wouldn't work either. Oh well. I still have a solid plan with the whole money transfer thing.

The rest of the day was pretty normal, just a bunch of sitting around talking about god and whatnot. It's about 9:41 here and I'm exhausted. I've gotta hurry up and sleep with my mistress, Jet Lag.

Night night,
Aron Huckaba, International Vagabond

the first massive blog post (KOREA '09)!!

2009-03-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 3:27am
So I have finally made it safely to the Republic of South Korea. It seemed like it took forever, mostly because the flight was like 15 hours long. I wish I was exaggerating haha.

Before I even left the country, though, I got an awesome surprise. My aunt Lora had her baby, Olivia Valee Day, the day before. It was really fun, the family all came in and we waited in the hospital like all day for little Olivia. She was beautiful and my aunt was so proud. Her husband Sam was beaming and it was really a great moment to be able to share with them.

Feb. 22
The whole flight sequence all went really well. The first flight was to Atlanta on Sunday and it only took 40 minutes in the air to get there. The best part of the flight was the guy I was sitting next to. He was pretty much the story master. This guy was 22 years old and had already mastered the art of being your stereotypical southern-bred high school drop out. He looked like he was 40 though, which was kinda cool, to have a gap that huge in how old you are and how old you look. He told me how he had a wife (I think, he kept calling her his old lady) but he was seeing this other girl in Illinois. He said he had been working on a tugboat in Louisiana for 5 years and how he was about to get his pilot's license (boat, not plane). He made bank though, from what he said, he made $77,000 a year. He told me how his boss drove him to the girl-he-is-seeing's house but then abandoned him and how he had to pay some guy $400 to drive him to Nashville. I'm pretty sure he was hammered when he was telling me all this, because he smelled like a brewery so that made listening to all his crazy stories that much more fun. Too bad I didn't get a picture of the guy, but oh well. He told me so many crazy stories I don't even have room for them here. Anyways, the plane landed and I was off to the hotel to stay until my flight in the morning.

I stayed in the Best Western in College Park, which was really nice, but I'm pretty sure I could have got a smaller room. I didn't realize I had booked a king size bed, and I'm pretty sure the cab driver ripped me off. Anyone who takes cabs normally can help me if they know how much they usually cost but I'm pretty sure that an 8 minute ride shouldn't cost $15.00.

Feb. 23-24
Today I got up to a prestigious Best Western Continental breakfast. I ate enough croissants and bananas for a king's army. I went out to the airport afterwards using the hotel shuttle and got checked in with plenty of time before my flight boarded.

The flight itself was great, no turbulence, all smooth. However, 15 hours is a LONG time. At first it was all good because they had like 20 movies to pick from and a whole bunch of tv shows and stuff. I was set. I got to watch pineapple express and flash of genius, an episode of house and an episode of scrubs. Why not watch more you ask? About halfway through the flight, my movie playing capability turned off, but it was limited to me and the guy sitting next to me. We were the only ones on the plane it happened to.

It was ok though, because they had about 60 cds to pick from and a bunch of radio stations. I got to listen to a little bit of the newst coldplay album and a couple songs on the radio before that too cut out. Oh well. The rest of the 8 hours was spent either reading my biography on Einstein book (really really good book about him by the way) or playing games like bejeweled, zuma, insaniquarium, inflight trivia, and inflight poker. The cool thing about the poker and the trivia was that I was playing with passengers all over the airplane.

I somehow made it through the flight and navigated my way through baggage claim and back to check in to my final flight to Daegu. Some Korean professional soccer team was on the same flight and the flight was pretty empty. I was pretty oblivious to the flight itself, because I was asleep like the whole time. I was incredibly exhausted. The plane landed and I stumbled out to meet the chauffeur who was supposed to take me to Daegu University.

I slept the whole way there to and we made it to my dormitory. When I got there, a chinese guy was waiting for me who helped bring me up to my room. However, there was no:toilet paper, towels. I went down to the front desk and they gave me a handful of toilet paper but no towel, so a shower was out (thank god I took one before I left Atlanta). When I went back up to my room and started feeling dreadful about how the trip was going to go it was like I got a sign that said, "don't worry," because some people showed up who helped me get my internet set up and gave me an alarm clock (I didn't have any way to tell the time except my computer lol). They were so nice to me, and as an RA we never did that stuff for our international students, so I am eternally grateful for that ray of sunshine they brought into my life.

Being an international student is incredibly different than being a visitor or a traveller or a two-week-program student, and even more different than a native student. The language barrier so far is like the great wall of China. Before I left I studied the Rosetta Stone and some other ways to learn Korean, but I never really talked to anyone face to face. What no one tells you is, NOONE TALKS LIKE THAT lol. People still mumble, stutter, talk too fast (even for other koreans), don't pronounce words, and don't use correct grammar, just like we do. I know exactly how international students in America must feel though, because I know that the things I see aren't unique to Korea.

Feb. 25
Today I woke up on time without my alarm clock (looks like instead of the not enough sleep type of jet lag, my body thinks it has way too much sleep and I naturally am only sleeping like 5 hours) and got ready to meet my international student help people. I met Mr. Kang, my best help, and Mr. Lee, my "dean", and Patrick Travers, the international teacher's leader. They were all really super nice and gave me a ton of info and helpful advice.

Fun Daegu facts:
It was the first university in Korea
It is considered the best university around for education and special education type majors
It's the lead university in many government education programs
It has a braille museum and braille library (The architecture in the braille library is really pretty I think )

I went to Costco today and spent way too much money ha ha. Apparently Korean Costco is just as addictive as American Costco. I did buy a bunch of stuff which would keep me well nourished and everything while I'm here. Don't forget lots of Korean junk food too. I have such a sweet tooth. We made it back safely and that brings me to where I am now, sitting here blogging and jammin out.

Today wasn't all just enjoying the traveling and shopping, though, I got to have some real insights. I learned what a major international university values in its facilities and course offerings. I learned some things about the Korean people that I was previously unaware of. I learned they don't really like American people, mainly because of our military presence here. Apparently some things have happened (in a drunken stupor) which have really soured perceptions of Americans.
Also, Koreans have incredible disregard for safety on the road, so far as I have seen it. I've already seen a ton of drunk drivers, cab drivers disregarding all road rules, a lack of road police, and scooters EVERYWHERE. The worst part about the scooters is, though, that they seem to be the most dangerous. they go extremely fast on sidewalks and even the wrong way on regular streets. Korean roads are scarily dangerous.
I have met many many people already and have yet to meet a person at the university who wasn't polite and wanted to help me in some way. I don't know how many of you have been to a college in America, but that's a nice change.
Much to my liking, there are two other American students here (Phillip and Kayla). Phillip has already been here a semester and apparently knows like 6 languages, but I don't know any more than that because he is in Jordan for this week. Kayla is from Pennsylvania, is Catholic, is in a serious relationship, and is an international business major. She's really nice and it's her first time in Korea. She will only be here for 11 weeks, so for about half of this trip I will only have one other American friend.
There are many other english speaking people here, though, they just happen to be teachers. Two of them drove me and Kayla to Costco. They're a riot, and definitely offer a different perspective on Korean life: the foreigner trying to make a living.

Just so any interested peoples know, my official address is:

Aron Huckaba
International House (Room Number. #. 1503)
Daegu University
Jillyang, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk 712-714, South Korea

I won't be in room 1503 after March 12, so after then you can send stuff to room number 1702.

Well, don't know what else to say, and I'm sure it will hit me right as I sign off.

For now,
Aron Huckaba, International Vagabond