Vacation - Korean wedding

My co-teacher got married on Aug. 14th in Ilsan. The wedding mostly looked western because most people involved were wearing western wedding clothes, but the ceremony was different.



The wedding was held in this wedding hall on the 5th floor of this building:



The ceremony and dinner were at the same place. We sat at tables during the ceremony and ate afterwards. The buffet was good. I ate a lot of meat.



The most noticable differences between this wedding and a western wedding were the bride and groom didn't recite vows, the minister, or whatever he was, just talked for a long time. There was no exchange of rings and there was no kiss. There were some things with the mothers bowing to each other, and the bride and groom bowing to each family. Various people (friends of the groom, a bunch of kids, bride's grandmother) took turns singing in front of the bride and groom:



Those are just some of the things I noticed that were different. I can't really go into much more detail.

Vacation - Daegu and Busan

I took my vacation from August 6 - 17. I mostly just sat around at home, but I also went to Daegu and Busan for a couple days. I was planning to go Monday Aug. 9th, but decided to leave Sunday night since I had nothing better to do. Since I planned to stay at motels I didn't need to worry about hotel reservations. I got to Daegu station around 1:30am.



Monday I walked around Daegu a bit. I found this jewelry area near the station, but it seemed to be mostly just retail stores:



Later I met an old friend from GIA. She had just returned home to Daegu a couple weeks ago after studying Japanese in Tokyo the past year. She is the same person I met when I was in Tokyo last year:



Around midnight I went to Busan. I don't know anyone in Busan and there wasn't anything in particular I wanted to do, so I spent most of Tuesday just hanging out at Haeundae beach, which is where I spent most of my time last year in Busan.







The next day it rained most of the day. I rode the subway around with no destination in mind, which I like to do, something no one else seems to understand. And I went to Shinsegae department store in Centum City, which is the largest department store in the world, though it didn't hold my interest very long.

After that it had stopped raining and I went back to Haeundae beach. I had planned to stay another night in Busan, but it was supposed to rain the next day too, so I decided to go home that evening. I think I will probably go back there again either this month or next month.

4 months

I've been here four months now. My contract is 1/3 finished. I had kind of fallen into a routine, and time flew by so quickly. But it isn't a very good routine. Mostly just going to school, coming home and sitting around in the evening not doing much, and waiting for the weekend to come. I am not even sure what I did with my time the past four months. Only after being here this long have I started doing some of the things I want to do: I'm studying Korean more regularly, and I started kumdo last night.

I'm still not doing much jewelry work. Mostly because I haven't designed anything yet, so when I do feel like working I have nothing to work on. I used to do that when I was in the US too, but because I had lots of unfinished pieces I could always work on an unfinished piece when I didn't know what else to do.

starting kumdo

I had vacation from Aug 6-17. I'll write about that next time. Tonight and the past two nights I went to look at kumdo schools in my town. I decided I would start training at this school near Geumchon Station:
http://pajukumdo.co.kr/

I'll start tomorrow. I had been thinking I would do kumdo while I was in Korea even before I got here. I don't know why I waited so long. The first month I was here I was waiting to see how my money and expenses were. After that I was trying to decide if I wanted to spend money on a kumdo class or Korean language classes. I can't afford to do both and I didn't know what to do for a long time. But I am putting on weight, so I need to do something, and martial arts is my favorite kind of workout. I will keep studying Korean on my own and probably start going to a free Korean language class I found.