I'm finally updating you guys on the rest of week one in Busan...yay!

Before I just dive into the continuation of what we did last week, I thought I'd start by sharing a few pictures.

This is a picture of the 93 steps we have to climb multiple times a day. Whenever we want to go up to our room we have to use these, and of course we live on the fifth floor. It's so much fun!

These are pictures of our broken fan, before it was finally fixed yesterday. It basically laid on the floor for three or four days. I don't know why they left it on the floor; I guess they didn't know what else to do with it.

Here are some pictures of the downtown area, right below the university.

Anyways, here's what we did the rest of the week.

Wednesday:

We didn't really do much on Wednesday. We had Korean class, and a special lecture on Korean Politics. Then we spent the evening preparing for our storytelling, as well as working on our second mission. Our second task was dubbing "Hong Gil Dong," a story similar to Robin Hood; apparently, our voices will be used to make an American version of it. When we got the script, it had been translated, but most of the language was pretty uncommon, so I spent the night rewriting it.

Thursday:

Thursday was also a pretty normal day; we had class and we worked on our dubbing. The process was kind of tough; we had a lot of takes, and all of our buddies were in the room watching the whole thing. It was a lot of fun though.

The rest of the week:

Friday we went to Kyoungjoo, which is an awesome historical city, which is known for its artifacts from royal tombs. We had to leave kind of early, because it was so far away, which is why Corbin slept on the way.

First, we went to a museum, where we met our tour guide. I really liked our tour guide because he told us a lot of facts that we would never know by just reading a plaque. Before we went inside, we saw a bell that has been there for centuries; it was actually still rung every morning at 6 am until recently. They had to remake the bell numerous times until they were satisfied with the sound, which took over 300 years! Supposedly, they threw a newborn baby into the fire when they were making the mold. The baby cried for its mother, and that's why the sound quality is so beautiful today. Fortunately, the bell was analyzed for human remains, and the results were negative, but it does make for a good story.

After that, we went inside to take a quick tour of the museum, which was filled with artifacts from tombs found throughout Kyoungjoo. Next, we went to actually see some of the untouched tombs in the area. Before we saw them, we got to see a tower that was used for stargazing. See the window? That's actually the door; there used to be a ladder that was attached to it.

We went to a lotus field for ten minutes...literally. Then we spent the rest of the day at a temple, which we had to hike up a mountain to get to. That evening we worked on our group presentations; specifically on getting the Korean buddies to learn "Old McDonald Had A Farm." Old McDonald's farm had to become a zoo for our purposes. Our practice was really funny because Kanghoon couldn't get the beat down. Also, because Koreans have difficulty pronouncing the word zoo, it sounded like, "Old McDonald Had A Joo."

Saturday was spent at another temple...in the rain...where I fell down the stairs. It was so much fun. I think the funniest thing about me falling down the stairs was me saying, "could these stairs get any steeper?" I said it, set my left foot down on the first step, put my right foot down on the second, and it was all down hill from there. Besides that, we got to see an amazing buddha statue, but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of it. All the temples were really pretty, and it was worth the climb and the heat.

Saturday evening, everyone left for their homestay with their buddies. I was glad to spend my time watching some tv, eating, and talking. I really enjoyed staying with my buddy, Sujin, even though her parents didn't know any English. Her house and family felt comfortable which made me feel like I was at home. Sunday we went to Nampodong where we did some shopping, and got stared at by more people. We also got to see a Korean old man dance and do some taekwondo, which was very entertaining. I think we really enjoyed it because it took the attention off of us for a few minutes.