2nd day in Seoul

Today was a great day!! We started off in the morning by having a "business" meeting at the Fulbright building. I got 2 strawberry pastries and a strawberry banana smoothie from Tous Les Jours bakery and it was delicious!! ^^ The business meeting was bleh, but we found out about our host families!! I will be living with 2 English teachers, and their children are boys in 3rd and 6th grade. YAY! I am a little worried that we will only speak English at home, but hopefully we can also speak Korean, or they can help me study, as I'd really like to continue to learn it throughout the year here.

Then we went to the Ambassador's residence for a barbecue luncheon!! It was AMAZING! I ate SOOO much food. I had cheese & crackers (yum!), mac & cheese, baked beans, hamburger, lasagna, fresh fruit, doritos, chocolate mousse cake, an oatmeal raisin cookie, and an ice cream sandwich. Granted, this was over a period of 3 hours, but still, that's a lot of food!! I talked with some of the Embassy staff and they are really interesting. One guy (Jeff B) was within the Economics "cone" (dept) of the Foreign Service. I talked with him about some different responsibilities he's had regarding that, and also what it is like to have a spouse also in the FS. It rained on us, but it wasn't too bad.

Then, after much phone tag (using other ppl's cell phones), Stephanie and I got to meet up today!! I met her and 4 of her friends at 3:15 in Insadong. We walked around for a bit there. I bought some earrings. There was lots of neat stuff (but very touristy), that I might come back and get if I can't find it elsewhere in Korea. I particularly liked the pottery and the calligraphy/paintings. They weren't too expensive either. We stumbled upon a break dancing performance as we were walking along the stream that goes through downtown. It was amazing! (Both the stream and the dancing) There are many performances going on right now due to the Olympics and/or Liberation Day (national holiday) yesterday. They left around 6:30 and I had an hour to just walk around by myself before meeting up with Matt, Dojo, Dan, Jen H, and Jen's friend at 7:30 for the night tour of Seoul. Right across the street from where we bought our tickets EPIC HIGH WAS PERFORMING FOR A FREE CONCERT!! Right by the stream I had walked along earlier. (Epic High is a really popular pop music group right now in Korea) It was neat to hear even though I couldn't see them.

The bus tour was alright, but nothing fantastic. It was a "horror tour" which basically meant that when we stopped for a break in the middle to get soda, there were 2 ppl dressed up in Halloween costumes, but they weren't trying to scare us or anything. Seoul is really beautiful at night, but we mainly saw lots of bridges along the Han river.

After the tour we walked around for a bit, then I headed back while the rest of the group went out. I'm proud that I made it back ok all by myself!! (I mean, I didn't have far to go from where they left off, but who cares!)

My computer battery is about ready to die, and I need to get to bed, so more on Seoul and everything later.

Goodnight!