Checkpoint!

It's been one month in korea and.......I'm really slipping....I haven't been exercising as much as I should be....and no updates in the blog which I promised that I would do. I'm having a lot of fun here, but my life is a little weird. Monday through Friday I'm at KAIST, a boring place with few friends. Then, friday afternoon I head to Seoul via a 1-2hr bus ride and stay there until sunday night. My life on the weekends is exciting, full of meeting friends, and exploring new places. During the weekdays I just spend the entire day in lab, sometimes until 2am just hanging around because its better than being in my dorm room. I kind of regret not exploring Daejeon more and biking around the city. On the on the bright side I'm really close to my labmates because I spend so much time with them. They give me rides to Seoul, buy me pizza, and offer to take me places. It might sound like I'm having just an OK time, but really I'm having such a blast. Even in lab, I have a lot of fun....totally different from my lab in Japan. The groupism here is pretty huge, and I'm reaping all the benefits from it.

Some differences with Japan
- People tend to speak pretty openly and don't beat around the bush.
- There are a lot of evangelists in Korea, who aren't afraid to confront Koreans or foreigners when trying to convert.
- It's dirty...like how I remember Bombay.
- Everything here is 2x cheaper, transportation is 5x cheaper (20 dollar KTX vs 100 dollar Shinkansen for the same distance)
- Couples everywhere, and they aren't afraid to be intimate in public, which is soooo different from "I won't hold hands with my fiance" Japan (only true of the young generation in both cases....the old generation is far more conservative)
- Food tastes good. and spicy. and more veggie stuff. mmmmmmm......

Similarities
- Onigiri (Seaweed/Rice triangle things stuffed with delicious goodness)
- To be added later

Now for a random comment:
Apparently non-students can't enter the KAIST campus by car at night because of robberies in the past. Not only that, KAIST's campus police is actually the Korean CIA instead of a normal PD. These two things make it impossible for people to deliver food at night. Solution?: drive up to a shady chain link/barbed wire fence near the girls dorm and exchange food/money through the fence. Now you might be thinking that this is pretty sketch, but pretty much everyone in KAIST does the same thing as there were several people waiting at the spot when we ordered pizza today.

Other random things I have done:
- Tried dog-meat (just 1 piece)......weird......
- Stayed at youth hostels and made random international friends
- Bought tickets for a Metallica/Tool concert on Aug. 15!!!!
- Went clubbing at a place called Hip Hop Bubi Bubi Club (Bubi Bubi means its a dance club...not a strip club)
- Studied korean vocab pretty diligently
- Learned how to sing some songs in korean

This weekend: Club Day in Seoul...which means I pay 10 dollars and I can get into any club free for the whole night (only happens once a month)
Meet more friends