Day 67

Day 67
Sun feb 22

I went to the body exhibit in Nowan. It only costed 10,000 won to get in ($6.65 usd) In the USA Body Worlds costs about 25 dollars. I don’t know if this was body worlds or not. The poster for the event was in Korean. They did have an advertisement poster up in the exhibit about body worlds in Canada. Anyway this exhibit is just like body worlds where they use plastination to preserve dead bodies. They had a lot of stuff on display and a lot of people were there. Most of the writing was in Korean so I couldn’t read what it said. Most of the body parts were in Korean and English so I knew what they were. It was very interesting. They had figures, body parts, fetuses at all stages of development. All sorts of stuff. It’s neat to see what the insides look like. (I seriously want to dissect a cadaver someday. I have to find a way to make it happen.) I tried to take pictures, but someone stopped me. I did get 2 photos though. A photo of a woman and a pregnant woman. I don’t know why it has to be so secret. I just wanted photos to remember my trip. Craziness.

Then I walked around Nowan and took a few photos.

Then I headed to Yeoudio Park. I walked around and took pictures. It’s a nice place. It would be a great place just to take a walk sometime. They have a traditional Korean forest with trees indigenous to Korea. I wanted to take pictures today but its winter and most of the trees don’t have any leaves. I’ll go back in springtime for good pictures. I also loved their clever name for one part of the park. It’s called “Grassy Field”. Great.

Then I headed out to Yiodo Full Gospel church for their young adult English worship service at 6:20. I laughed when I saw the ushers outside kicking a ball around while the service was going on inside. It was in the Education building on the 9th floor. I liked the service. The praise team and leaders are all Korean. I actually recognized one of the praise songs. They sang one of Eddie James’ songs “I am Free”. The pastor preached from John 11:38-40. The Title of the message was “take away that stone.” I’d say there might have been around 30 people in the service. People of all ages, not just young adults. My translator from last week was there. There were 3 other white people there. I met 2 of them. One was from Denmark and the other from Australia. They welcome the newcomers so I stood up and introduced myself. I said “Im Valerie, I teach English in Uijeongbu”. Everyone was surprised that I came such a long way to attend. After the service the pastor of the young adults wanted to meet with the newcomers. There was me and 2 other Koreans and another guy from the church. It was kinda like he was doing a short bible study with us. He was using a chapter out of “The Purpose Driven Life” chapter 2 “you are not an accident”. He wanted to know what that meant to us. I finally got out of there around 9pm.

I wasn’t planning on it lasting that long! I knew I wouldn’t make it back in time to take the bus back to Home Plus. I stopped in Itaewon to eat at McDonalds. I had a big Mac set. It’s not a combo over here. It’s a “Set”. Its only 4,900 so it’s reasonably priced. ($3.30 with today's exchange. The only good thing about a weak won is things cost a lot less when you convert to USD. The bad thing is when its converted to USD you don't have that much!)Then I went to Subway to get a sub to eat later. Then I headed home. I had to take a cab since it was too late to ride the bus. I paid 3200 won(2.16) for the cab ride. I hate how it’s always a different price. Some cab drivers take different routes and it ends up costing more. Yesterday it costed 4100. ($2.76)

I tried my sub later on and it was good. I had a roast beef sub. Their roast beef doesn’t look like ours. Ours is a brownish color and theirs looks more like ham. I was worried that it might taste different. I asked for “honey mustard” but they gave me regular mustard. Guess they don’t have honey mustard. Anyway I liked the sub. It was 4,300 ($2.90 usd) for a 6 inch. Maybe I should start the subway diet. I need to. And I’ll join a gym once I get settled in. I’m already getting plenty of exercise-tons of walking and stairs, but I need some weightlifting to get toned.

*currency conversion is bank rates...what you would get if you exchanged at a bank..rates are for Feb 23,2009 (they flucuate daily!)