Whoa, I go to Korea and Blogger gets revamped

Not that any of you would know since nobody besides me posts anymore. Hey guys, sorry about the massive delay. I should really have posted 2 weeks ago, but I got kind of sidetracked with Starcraft events and other cool things I've been doing. I recently decided that at least once a week, I want to try to just go explore random parts of the city on my own. It's been pretty fun, especially since I've gotten good places to explore by watching a Korean show I like called Running Man. More on that later. Also, I've started keeping a blog on TeamLiquid, which is the most used site for everything Starcraft. Because I now have a medium to make long, ranting posts about Starcraft in a place where I don't feel like it's bothering you guys, my posts here will be less about just Starcraft and hopefully more about my IRL life (and thus perhaps slightly more condensed! (but don't count on it...)). Once I learn more about how the blog setup works on that site, I'll link to posts I've made if you guys want. Until then, best to get on with what's been happening!

First off, I got two of the things on my list of things I wish I had brought. It took a while, but I eventually ordered and waited for a frisbee to arrive. It turns out, it got here in about 5 days, then spent 2.5 weeks on the floor of the mail room (which is odd because usually packages do not get put in the mail room) until it was discovered by a girl who knew me and told me it was there. Success! I still haven't gotten to use it though because I've been going to Starcraft a lot. This weekend, I'm going to get some chances to throw around though, so that will be fun. I also acquired a compass. It came when I visited this big flea market in Seoul on one of my adventures. I've kept it on my person at all times since then. When I'm outside of the major metropolitan area, I can easily tell which way is north. The compass really comes in handy inside the main part of the city and at night though. I still do not have a pokewalker, but I also doubt that I will get one here.

Adventures:
I've been around to a lot of places in Seoul now. Once a week, I get the whole day off, so I like to just hop on the subway and hit a new destination. The best part is at the places I visit, I'm usually the only foreigner there which is pretty fun. It satisfies my hipsterness. Eventually, I'll get around to uploading pictures to facebook. Anyway, I've been to some cool places such as:
-A bridge in South Seoul that every 2 hours also has a fountain display from one side. I then walked back to my dorm from there which was a really long walk, taking just a couple minutes shy of 3 hours.
-A folk flea market which I spent WAYYY too much time at because it reminded me of walking around in a nicer version of my grandpa's shed. I also liked it because I knew Sunny had been there to film an episode of Running Man when she was a guest on the show. Anyway, I'm definitely going back there. I saw an old record of Never Gonna Give you Up and if it's still there next time, that thing is mine.
-Dream forest up in North Seoul where there's a big nature preserve. There's a good forest with good hiking and occasional views of the whole city. There's also an observatory which was unfortunately closed when I was there, but if I go back, I'm visiting it.
-SM entertainment building located southeast of the fountain bridge. The building is pretty boring actually, but I wanted to see it because SM is the label that Girls Generation is with, so you know....there was a chance I could run into Sunny >___>

Starcraft:
I gotta hit on this a little. Starcraft has been really fun. I'm starting to get to know the casters and they definitely remember me by now. I usually come alone, but they're more than willing to talk to me between games and I actually feel like I'm not troubling them, but that they're actually liking me. I've also been able to talk to a lot of people that come in for their first time for whatever reason. It's fun to tell them a bit about esports and what goes on. It feels like being an esports ambassador of sorts, I like it.

I've also found a couple guys here that play SC as well, so occasionally, the three of us will hit up a PC bang together. One guy is my skill level and the other guy is really good (Masters in KR server), but he still likes to play with us, so that's nice. The two of them both go together a lot when I'm going to GSL matches, but they always invite me along and I try to go whenever I don't have a GSL thing going on.

Food:
Because I know you guys are concerned. I found a restaurant here near the GSL studio that I have become a regular at. I eat really good meals there and they always know what I want to order when I come in. I've also started drinking this Vitamin C drink that Girls Generation advertises because it's good for me, it tastes good, and sometimes Sunny is on the bottle. It's a triple win!

Volunteering:
Our study group does this thing called the BACK project where we volunteer on Saturdays with North Korean refugees, teaching them English and going out and doing fun activities with them. In addition to that, we're allowed to be friends with them outside of class and do whatever we want because they're really also looking for friends as well as people to help them learn English. I'm the only guy in the group, plus I'm one of the oldest two people from our study group (then two of the North Korean guys are 25) so naturally I'm pretty popular. And it's nice to talk to them because they're all our age (between 19 and 25). There are two schools that participate in the thing. On the first weekend, only one girl came from one of the schools, and the other school had about 9 or 10 people coming. It sounded like the one girl was excited to come though because she wanted to make a lot of friends because she is the only one from her family here in South Korea. She came with her teacher who has since stopped coming because this program is designed to just be interaction between students. So anyway, this girl and I made good eye contact right away (sorry about the cheesy, slow build in) and then didn't talk much, but I heard her asking her teacher how to say a bunch of different questions in English. Eventually, after all the introductions and games were played, we had a bit of free time in which it turned out the North Koreans were to ask some of us for our contact info so we could become mentors for teaching them English and whatnot. Just to brag, I'm the only one that got more than one mentor, it's because I'm an older guy. But the nice part was as soon as this started, that girl ran up to me and used all the questions she had learned from her teacher on me to get my contact info. I've since been in fairly regular contact with her. She wasn't able to make it last weekend and now we don't see the group until the first weekend in November due to our group's busy schedule, but I'm hoping to possibly see her sometime before that. Who knows, maybe I'll ask her out sometime. I don't know if I should think about doing that just yet. It's going to be fun doing that for the coming weekends though. Also, the experience of teaching them English has been really fun and its making me consider coming back here to teach English even more (PLEASE OVERLOOK ALL GRAMMATICAL ERRORS I HAVE MADE WHEN THINKING ABOUT ME TEACHING ENGLISH).

Well now I have Korean class coming up in about 10 minutes, so I should be heading out. Fortunately, I got to cover everything I wanted to talk about. So I'll get pictures up on facebook and then hopefully I will get to talk to you guys individually eventually. Until then, peace out.