Long week, couple wees actually

Hello everyone.

Tests are over, and they went well. I worried a little much about them, as I usually do. We had a writing test, a listening/reading comprehension test, and then a speaking test, with a subsequent mock interview in Korean.

Before I forget, I don't think I have talked about it yet; I'd like to introduce the Chimchilbang. It is this massive sauna/spa type place, where for a mere 8 dollars or so you can spend the night, and enjoy all sorts of different specialized rooms, like the ice room, which is pretty much just a giant freezer, the medium, and high temperature rooms, or ou can sleep in the giant bucket of warm clay balls. If all of this doesn't sound bizarre enough, you come into one of these at night and there countless Koreans sleeping on the ground, where ever they can, lying there heads on either books they have taken off the shelf or wooden blocks that serve as pillows. This is where we stayed when we went to Busan, and I was quite surprised to say the least.

Last weekend, I went on a retreat with a church that I have started to attend. I really needed to get out of the city after exams and everything, and it turned out to be a remarkably restorative trip. Here, I also came across something unlike anything I had ever seen before. When my friend Lucas and arrived at the retreat site, that looked like some gigantic post-nuclear-fallout fortress more than the typical cabin in the woods that at least I associate with the word "retreat" with, we came across loud chanting in front of a cemetery. Being the curious individual that I am, Lucas and I started climbing the hill that was the cemetery and there were Koreans praying passionately in front of gravestones, and yelling out the "Father", along with a group of people at the top in a dark hut chanting. I wasn't really frightened, just really thrown off; it was a really interesting experience. We later found out that it was an old prayer mountain turned cemetery. If anything, Koreans take their Christianity seriously, at least a lot of them do. However, our retreat was quite different, thankfully. The congregation has a lot of young people, foreigners, who are in Korea for certain amount of time much like myself. I met some great people there, a couple from Portland, a Korean pop-star (he is the praise team leader), and a bunch of music producers. I met some people that'll be hanging out with Beyonce when she hits up Seoul this month. I'm so jealous...not really, haha.

Then, this coming weekend, with this church, I'll be going on a trip to the DMZ (demilitarized zone), the really wide border between North and South Korea, thanks to some special connections, we'll get into a little of North Korea, and we are going to pray for those in North Korea on that ground.

I need to speak to the people organizing the trip to see if I can bring a camera man along, haha.

The documentary is going very well. And it has been confirmed. I will be appearing on Korean cable televison. I'm so excited. Before I get to that though, my class at school threw the people in our class a surprise belated Birthday party. It was really nice. Sogang's goal is to provide students with functional Korean skills and help create long-lasting relationships, and I really think they're doing well at reaching that goal everyday.

Yesterday, Friday, I got followed around by the cameras all day. It was a really exhausting day. But I love it! It started out in the morning with them filming miscellaneous living scenes, and then of course my daily wlk to school, and then all day at school. Then Lucas and I had our first legitimate performance yesterday, and it went great. So the camera's followed me to the South side of the city to go rehearse with Lucas for our gig. And along with all the following, I also had to do bunch of interviews whenever we could find a picturesque background.

The term at Sogang is halfway finished, and I am really looking forward to heading to Thailand next month during our break between terms. That's my next trip on my intermittent Asia tour. I am gonna go visit my brother for a couple of weeks, and since he has a trip of his own for about a week, I may head Malaysia, or just chill in Thailand. See you all in a week or so!