Where to begin.........

So I haven't updated my blog for a whole week. Not due to lack of material but rather because I have been in a rut this past week.

I was hit with some pretty hard news that I didn't realize would leave me feeling so down. My best friends mom died unexpectedly last week............

........and so here I am on the other side of the world unable to comfort my friend or be by her side when she needs to cry and I feel awful, completely helpless!!!!!!!!!

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Well, I'm going back to school. Here is the crest of the university that I will attend in two short weeks. I have signed up for the Korean Language Course Evening program which runs Monday, Tuesday, Thursday from 6:30pm-9:00pm............it takes me an hour to get there (doorstep to doorstep) so it looks like I will be a busy gal.

I went for a walk on the campus last week and it was spectacular. It totally reminded me of being in university back home and I loved it. There was one major difference though. All the people on campus looked like they were dressed up to go to a wedding -- dresses, highheels, perfect make-up, the works!!! What ever happened to sweatpants people?!?!?!?!

Here I am standing at the front gate of Yonsei, super excited!!!! I can't wait to begin......

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Yup it's true, I changed my hair colour. On a whim last week I bought a bottle of hair dye. I spoke to the lady in Korean and asked for brown (hehe, since I have just recently learned my colours in Korean). BUT either she gave me the wrong colour or I didn't follow the directions because my hair turned BLACK!!!!!!!!!!! Yah the picture doesn't look too bad, but trust me it's horrible. When I woke up the next day I thought maybe that it was all just a bad dream (well I was hoping it was just a bad dream) Nope, it was still black the next day.

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I met up with some of Sung Hyun's friends on Friday night for some sushi. Well I am not a big fan of fish............and I am certainly not a big fan of raw fish.................but just recently I have started to like Japanese sushi. So what the heck..............sushi on Friday sounded like a good idea. I invited out two of my work friends and out we went.

What I thought would be a high class Japanese sushi restaurant with fancy rolls of fresh sushi on conveyer belts for your choosing, turned into something quite different.

Let's just say I learned that there is a big difference between Japanese and Korean sushi. The nights menu consisted of some cooked muscles, raw oysters, and other raw rubbery unrecongnizable goodness. AND THE BEST PART..............................OCTOPUS...................LIVE OCTOPUS

In the middle of the three dished are the oysters. To the right unknown? To the left unknown?

Here is a dish that is popular among the Koreans........................flat fish

Anne-marie and Sung Hyun hanging out at the smokers corner.

Oppsss........looks like I've got some seaweed stuck in my front tooth

Here is my lover sucking the octopus off the plate. Because it is still moving around it still has the ability to suction. In the next video, watch the octopus moving in Sung Hyun's mouth......uggghhh yuck!!!

So does anyone wanna know if I ate live octopus?? Click here to find out. Listen to Sung Hyun at the beginning say 'you can do it'

We ended the night by playing some drinking games at Jackson's house................FUN TIMES!!_______________________________________________________

VOLUNTEER TIME

Yesterday (Saturday) I spent 7 hours in the subway -- in case you're wondering I wasn't lost and I didn't take a tour of Seoul. A small group of us have decided to send a petition to the UN (United Nations) regarding China's violation of Human Rights when it comes to North Korean refugees.

Basically the North Koreans who come to China, escaping the opression of their country, are not classified as refugee status. Rather they are considered ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS and sent back to North Korea, for punshishment or even worse DEATH.

We have written up the proposal that we will send to the UN stating specifically what articles in the Human Rights Code China is violating. All we need now is a couple million signitures. So anyone out there would would like to help out please contact me (you could take the form to your work to get people to sign and then send it back to me, simple as that) ..........and you don't need to be in Korean to do this.

Here is my Korean partner in crime. He would get everyone's attention and give his big speech in Korean and I would pass around my clip board asking people to sign the petition. Yesterday we collected just over a 1000 signitures between 6 of us.

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Okay that was my week in a nutshell. I will do my best this coming week to update my blog when I can. Thanks for reading