"I love Korea," she said, over bokimbop and Budweiser.

And then I looked down into my take-out bowl of kimchi bokimbop and noticed that chunks were missing from my styrofoam take-out bowl, and now I am a little worried... I'm not sure if the kimbop shop I tried for the first time tonight does a lot of take-out, but the food is good, and if I'm puking tomorrow, I don't have to go to work. But I am still a bit worried.

I realized tonight that I hadn't written in a while. My apologies. I've been quite busy. I am working a full day now, which is 6.5 hours at the shortest, and 8 hours at the max, and while it's nothing compared to back home, I have quite taken to relaxing my time away in Korea.

My sister arrived in Korea a week and a half ago, and she and my brother in law are doing great up in Daejeon. I went to visit them this past weekend and they are in a great area of town. The restaurant district, actually. They have hundreds of restaurants (no exaggeration) to choose from within a 4 square block radius, and their apartment is enormous compared to mine. They have an efficiency/studio just like me, with one main living room and a bathroom. But they also have a rooftop terrace that only they can access! And a small storage closet, as well. The inside of their apartment is probably 300-350 square feet (compared to my total square feet of 102 - I measured mine), the storage area measures about 30 square feet, and the rooftop terrace is roughly 200 square feet. Their apartment is older than mine, but being in a great area of town with all that space is fabulous. Sure, I'm a 20 minute walk from downtown Gwangju, but to be right in the thick of things with a huge (by Korean standards) apartment would be even better.

I took the train up to Daejeon on Friday after work, which ended early because my awesome co-teacher, Brandi, took over my late class on Friday night from 7:30-9pm so I could catch an earlier train to Daejeon to be there in time for dinner. The taxi I took from the train station dropped me off in the middle of the 4-block area of restaurants, so I had to wait for my sister and b-i-l to come and get me to take me to their apartment. I was on the phone when they showed up, and it was a little bit of a tearful 'reunion', even though it's only been three months since I last saw them. And of course I'm a crier. But there we were, sisters, together, in Korea, both living here, working here, and enjoying the culture just a few hours apart. How insane is that? It's pretty stellar.

So we walked back to their apartment and then walked to Home Plus, a store a lot like Target only several stories high. I helped them find a few things they needed and then we headed back to their place again to wait for Amy to come so we could all get some dinner. We ended up going back to Amy's side of town for Sam Gyup Sol at this great place near her building. After dinner, we left Amy at her apartment and we headed back across town in a taxi to catch some Z's.

Saturday afternoon we all woke up and decided to go back over to Amy's part of town to check out the shopping scene. (There isn't much shopping in the restaurant district.) I got my hair cut (pictures to come later, compliments of Elizabeth), and then we walked over to Time World, a 14-story, insanely high class shopping mall. Every floor had something different, and every 'store' was mixed in with the others. There were no walls, except on the perimeter and for changing rooms. It was like walking into the Florida Mall and each floor having something different (women's clothes, men's clothes, children's clothes, shoes, accessories, makeup, etc.) and vendors each had floor space on that floor.

After leaving Time World (which had a pool on the 11th floor, along with a mini indoor golf course and a fitness club, and a rooftop garden with perimeter walls over 12' high so I felt somewhat safe, even with my height phobia), we met Amy and Maggie for dinner at a Korean restaurant where we sat in a booth. (I need to mention this because this is rare.)

Dinner was good, and we had bulgogi on the grill as well as ribs, and then we headed across the street to a Noreabang and sang out hearts out for a good hour and a half. (I have pictures, but have been asked not to post them, even though they are kosher.)

When we left, we headed back home to the restaurant district for another night of much needed rest.

On Sunday, we headed back over to Amy's area (she lives in a 'happening' part of town) where we met a few other people and all went out for lunch. We went to this awesome sushi place. Not liking sushi, I ordered tempura, which didn't come until everyone else had finished eating their sushi. (I did try some of the sushi at the restaurant after being told it was the best sushi any of them had ever tasted, and I must say, I did like it at that restaurant, and would eat it again. But only there. I think it was a Philadelphia roll. Mahchesaiyo.)

After lunch, I took a taxi to the train station to head home while the others went to check out this new store run by E-Mart (another store like Target) that sells wholesale items like Costco or Sam's Club, only Korea-based, and you don't need a membership. I'll have to check it out next time I'm in Daejeon.

I'm staying in Gwangju this weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to catch up on some blogging, although there's not too much to report as I've just been busy doing a whole lot of nothing lately, which is just how I like it. I love my new slower-paced life abroad, and while for some this is just a gap year or a place to rediscover the person that seems to have gotten lost inside them, I want this to be my life. Traveling, seeing the world, waking up in a foreign country, trekking on foreign soil, and watching sunsets from a rooftop in the middle of someplace I thought I'd never be... I've found my life.