Back in the swing of things...

It was wonderful to be back in America for a month, but it has also been good to get back to normal life and routines. I didn't take nearly as many pictures in Indiana as I do in Seoul, so here are a few random highlights, although this certainly isn't a comprehensive overview. 

I always forget how much I love American beef. In Korea, I usually eat Australian beef. It's good, but not quite the same.... 

It was great to get to catch up with all of my friends and family. I got to wine and dine my grandpa at Bob Evans one morning. 

Thanks to wonderful stores like Hobby Lobby, I was able to reconnect with my inner craftster. 

Isn't it amazing? There's lots of pepperoni, REAL cheese, and it didn't cost $35!!

I made some Korean food for my family, but I'm not sure if they enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the American food. 

It was amazing to walk into a shoe store, and know that they would carry my size. I stocked up for the year. 

I also reconnected with my past self. I guess this is proof that I've never liked mornings, and probably never will. I look just about like that now when I wake up. 

I did go through quite a bit of culture shock when I was back. I guess it makes sense, going from scenes like this: 

and this: 

to this:

My flight back was a little round-about... My flight from Chicago to Tokyo was delayed by almost 24 hours. I got on the phone, and after an hour and a half figured out a different way to get home. This was the good news. The bad news is that I now had a layover in Munich, Germany. It was almost 9 hours to fly from Chicago to Munich, then another 10 1/2 hours from Munich to Seoul. I was so incredibly happy to make it back to my apartment after all of that. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it until a few days later. But it was nice to not have to try to pull large suitcases up the big hill outside of my apartment. 

Things have been plunging ahead at work as well. The new semester starts on Friday, so we've been doing lots of meeting and preparing. It's going to be quite a busy semester. I'm teaching at least five different courses, possibly six different ones. It should be an adventure. We had a welcoming ceremony for the incoming Freshmen last week. The foreign faculty had to sing a welcome song in Korean. It was pretty terrible... They also made us put on academic robes and hoods and mortarboard hats and process through the auditorium and sit on a stage. As we were all donning our regalia, there were lots of Harry Potter jokes flying around the room....

Finally, just to leave off with a little bit of the whimsical randomness of Korea, here is a karaoke room mascot and the American Santa from the Santa display at my school...

Chinese Lantern Festival

It's been really great to spend time with all of my friends and family while I've been back in America. I've had lots of great conversations, good food, and just time to hang out and not do much of anything. I've also experienced some culture shock being back in the US, but that is a subject for another time. All of this stuff has been wonderful, but it isn't very blog-worthy... So there hasn't been much posting. However, on Thursday and Friday, I got to participate in the Chinese Lantern Festival that my church does for the international  student community at Purdue. 

On Thursday, a group of us took over the church gym and set up tables and chairs, and as many decorations as we could find in Indiana. 

There was a stage and a white board for the games and entertainment that would occur throughout the evening. 

Chopsticks play a very vital role in our celebration. Not only are they used to eat all of the food, there is a chopsticks contest. It involves picking up dried beans and dropping them into a cup. This is timed, and the fastest person is usually quite fast. I think it was something like 30 dried beans in about 16 seconds? It's crazy. 

There were so many people there. We set up chairs for over 150 people, and there were barely any empty seats to be had. It was pretty cool!

One of my primary duties on the night of the actual Lantern Festival was to serve food for a few tables. There were the very interesting appetizer combinations of potato chips and kimchi on the tables when the guests sat down. We also served bows of rice, thin noodles with pork and cabbage, beef and broccoli, a spicy tofu dish, General Tso's Chicken, and homemade pork dumplings. At the end of the meal, we also served traditional Chinese sweet dumplings. It was delicious food, and there were good friends to share it with. I assure you, they are good friends, despite the face that John is making in this picture. 

Most of the students were Chinese, but there were people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds there as well. We played games based on American idioms for the students to earn points for their table. Each table also had a lucky red envelope with $5 taped to the bottom of one chair. 

I know how much I love being able to celebrate Western holidays with Western traditions while I'm in Korea, so it was really wonderful to be able to help provide a small taste of home to a lot of Chinese students who are studying in America.