Lovely Break from Reality

This weekend was a lovely lovely break from reality! :P Or I guess a start of my new reality...either way it was wonderful.  The weekend started off with me staying up madd late on Friday to sleep in till 1130 on Saturday afternoon.  Now some of you may find this sluggish, HOWEVER this was the first time I was able to sleep in since I have been in Korea and it was such a lovely experience that word cannot descrive it! :P I woke up and immediately called my friend to ask her about plans that day as I laid in bed on the phone knowing I didn't need to be out and about until 2..oh the joys of not working Weekends! :)

I painted my nails, made some lunch, killed some fruitflies and got ready for the day ALL in my time.  I do not remember ever being so relaxed here and the awesome part is that this is the last week of school till Summer Vacation (1 week long break).  Another positive thing is that I found out in the entire month of August, I only have 10 teaching days due to summer vacation AND random Korean holidays.  Encourage my soul.com is how things seem to be looking :).

I headed into Seoul for a study, coffee and some hangout time and later that night went to a Jazz concert at church which was a lot of fun.  We grabbed some 김밥 (A Korean sushi but the cool thing is there is rarely fish in it which I don't like and so you can get the yummiest of rolls with beef and cheese and radish and mmm yummy) anyways we grabbed some of that and headed on our way to the Jazz concert thingy.  A friend and I started a little dance section at the back of the seating and it became a pretty hip happening place where people were joining us and people were taking videos of us (which may be used as blackmail in the future BUT in the moment it was a fun time).  After the concert the plan was to go get some ice cream before going home but ALL that changed in a blink of an eye.

In a random moment of decision making one of my friends (who has a car) decided we should go on a road trip to the mountains and stay the night.  With no change of clothes, makeup or anything for sleepovers we headed to 711 to get the requirements needed and some snack food and made the journey.  Oh my goodness was it ever beautiful.  Since we got there late into the night, we didn't see the glory of the scenery until we woke up this morning and WOAH.  I was breathless and encouraged to see all the mountains.  One of my friends and I went on a seat swing thing and just looked at the mountains while swinging and talking about how perfect the moment was.

Due to the fact that it was going to rain, the weather outside was overcast but cool, with fog on top of the mountains making for an even more beautiful ora.  My Korean friend than had the idea that we should go to this lake in the morning that is ONTOP of a mountain but as soon as we got there is started POURING and so we went inside a hotel and had coffee while watching the rain pour down.  It was an excellent opportunity for a quiet time and we enjoyed the beauty while being given perks of refills due to our foreigner status.  Everything felt perfect. 

After the mountains and beauty we drove back to Seoul while eating corn we got on the side of the road, a very common food to eat on the go here (the corn is so different here and yet scrumptious).  We left around 11am in order to get to church on time and we made it back safely as well as early, so I got introduced to the most amazing Korean food (not dessert) but FOOD I feel I may ever experience.  This food is called dak galbi and it is family style so you go out and there is a HUGE skillet burner that you all sit around and the servers come and put all this cabbage and diced chicken and rice cakes and sweet potatoe and onion with some delicious sauce onto the skillet and it is cooked for about 10 minutes, the servers (usually older lovely ladies) cook it in front of you and then you go to town and eat that stuff up...with lettuce or rice or solo. Oh man, I cannot even describe how good it was! MMMM! They also gave us free pop in a glass bottle which I was excited about! Oh was it ever amazing.

As you can tell food is a huge part of the culture, everyone wants to go out and eat or feed you or...craziness like that but it is all a joyous occasion and an opportunity to try new things.  My saying this week has been "When in Rome you must do as the Romans" and it has been going swell.

This weekend was honestly perfect and I CANNOT wait for the future weekends I will have.  As for now, I shall look forward to teaching the little kiddies tomorrow :).