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Breakfast was at 8:30am, so everyone woke up around 7. After getting dressed, I started to explore the hostel a little more. Dulce and I went up to the roof, it was a rainy day so the view was quite gloomy, but WE ARE IN KOREA so it didn't matter. When we turned around, we could see the Namsan Towera popular place to for couples to lock locks, we were really close to that area. It was really weird because we left America on Wednesday and arrived in Korea on Friday, basically missed all of Thursday, it took some getting used to.
Breakfast wasn't Korean style like I expected, some muffins, yogurt, and juice boxes. Still good though, later on we had an orientation. They introduced everyone one by one, in order of states that we came from and handed us a fan with our names written in hangul. After everyone was seated, we watched a traditional Korean performance.
A few presentations from U.S embassy and Diplomacy people., where we learned a little about what knowing multiple languages can do for us and the rules/ options available to us when abroad.
Once again, everything was quite useful, they also had several links and websites for us to look up later if we wanted to learn more. We were given chopsticks, usually given to kids to teach them the correct form of using chopsticks. We played a quick relay race with them to determine who got to get lunch first. (The race was to pick up shrimp crackers, actually quite difficult).
My team was third place (out of 5/6 groups) but we had two lefties using right hand chopsticks so I think we did pretty well.
Lunch was pretty good, kind of my first experience at a full Korean meal. I put way too much food on my plate though, you'd be surprised at how full you can get with just a few bites.
After lunch we met some of the other supporters, who took us out on missions. Each group went to a different area of Seoul, this was a way for us to know how to navigate the Seoul subway system. We had to load up the T-money card, ask a stranger for directions, and purchase a snack buy ourselves. The subway system is actually pretty easy to navigate, if you know where you're going. I ordered a waffle with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, we were given phrases to say so I wasn't totally unprepared.
I was pretty much drenched in sweat by the time we returned to the hostel. The weather is hot, yes, but I blame it on the amount of hills and all the walking we had to do. It was a fun day, I got to see a lot more of Seoul, tomorrow we meet host families.
