Orientation: Weekend!

Today is the start of an exciting weekend. However, it didn't start off well.

This morning, everyone had to do a medical checkup for the program. That means 300 people would have to take a urine, blood, vision, auditory, and blood pressure test as well as a chest x-ray and measurements. Everyone was split into groups and given different checkup times, but my group got the very last time slot possible :( When I arrived for the checkup along with everyone else in my group, they were already an hour behind, and it took us 3 hours to get the whole thing done. There were quite a few people who missed their trains to Seoul because of how bottlenecked it was (they told us beforehand we would be done by 2pm, but most people were done by 3pm) so they had to reschedule or lose their ticket's value (it's about $8).

Needless to say, some people were very disappointed in how long things took (keep in mind all 300 people have been fasting since 9pm yesterday until the end of their medical exam) and that they had to change or cancel their plans. We're hoping we can convince Caleb (our group leader--apparently he sucks at Rock Paper Scissors which is why we went last) to buy us pizza for our trouble.

After medical checkup, I went with some friends into town to try and get any sort of refund for their now missed train ticket. We stopped by the annual Jochiwon Peach Festival on the way and saw lots of booths, tried some peaches, took some cool photos, and watched a dance competition!

Welcome to the Peach Festival!

We each had this photo turned into a badge that we wore the rest of the day

You could take a pottery class

Whose peaches will be the best in show? Whose peaches will be MVP (Most Valuable Peach)?

The winning peaches.

Here's a video of one of the booths; it's a girl getting hit by her friends with water balloons:
http://youtu.be/f64M0Zgkvyo

Dance competition - Korean style!

Here's a video of the dance competitions. Koreans are fantastic dancers!
Does anyone know they song they're dancing to?:
http://youtu.be/K7xIP0cnc4Q

After hanging out at the peach festival, we headed off to the train station. When we got there, the people I was with found out they couldn't get a refund for their missed tickets, which is too bad :(

Afterwards, we went into downtown Jochiwon for supper (since the cafeteria was closed by this point). We were deciding what to eat, and we came up with sandwiches. Unfortunately, sandwiches aren't as big in Korea as North America, so we had little luck finding a reasonably priced sandwich. However, I remembered we have a Lotteria ("law-ttay-reeah") in town (a take on McDonald's by the Lotte corporation), so I asked some locals where it was and we went there. It was a little bit funny, a little bit embarrassing that we went to Lotteria because the stereotype is that North Americans only want hamburgers when they travel abroad. Well, I guess the stereotype is a bit true ;) We really wanted hamburgers :) So we got some! We even ordered in Korean to boot.

Mmm delicious stereotypes

Wait, it gets even better!

After Lotteria, we went to Dunkin' Donuts for dessert! Lol, tonight was a bit of a binge. We've been eating Korean cafeteria food all week, it's nice to have something familiar.

Totally worth it

Finally, on our way back from dinner, I stopped again at the peach festival to watch some more of the concert. This time, they were showcasing Korean Trot music, which is pretty folksy and very Korean. It's sort of like Japanese "Enka" style music if that rings a bell.

Here's a video of one of the night performances:
http://youtu.be/ohaA3ovJ3M4

And here's a video of one of the Trot performances:
http://youtu.be/uKjAXVTaDC0

Have a good night, wherever you are!