it’s been a while since i’ve posted. the big news was that i took a 2 week vacation in South Korea with my cousin back in February. it was lotsa fun even though i couldn’t speak or understand the language much at all. i can read the words (very slowly when i was there), but couldn’t understand most of what they meant. i picked up a couple books that i’ve been studying and can say some very basic stuff like 나는 한국어를 공부해요 (i study Korean), and 오늘은 날씨가 촣았어요 (the weather was good today). it’s pretty fun learning the language now 🙂 we mainly stayed in Seoul and then 5 or 6 days in Chuncheon. met a lot of people my cousin knew when he was there on his church mission. i’m glad he was fluent enough to communicate, otherwise i’d have a 2 week trip at the airport… we stayed with a great great family in Seoul. they kept us fed and warm and comfortable in their cozy house 🙂 i liked it there so much, that i’m going to try going back and live there for a while and attend Sogang University and take their Korean language program 🙂

some highlights of the trip:

• great nice people i met – they were all very kind and friendly 🙂
• got to meet up with one of my good chat friends and go swing dancing with her and her friends – swing dancing there is no different than here 🙂
• the food! i loved the food! well, most of it. only one thing was very very spicy, which i forgot the name of. the peanut butter roasted squid was a bit too squidy for my liking. the uncured bacon was probably my favorite, and everything else i liked was a very close second 🙂 OH! and 번데기 (beondegi) are not “salty raisins” and are NOT good :p
• Seoul was very crowded, dense, and more or less an endless sea of buildings. but it seemed cleaner than big cities i’m used to (San Francisco) and safer too

Some pics from the trip:

You can check out more on flickr