Bali Bali Bali!

Today, I had exchanges in the morning. After my exchanges, Dyra invited me to go see "Social Network" with her in Cheonan. We decided to plan to go to the early evening showing, which meant that we would have to leave about an hour before the show. I took a nap before we were supposed to meet, bad idea! I slept too long and we missed the early evening show.

We decided to go to one of the nearby markets while we waited for the later show. We ate some street food, which included boiled fish, fried shrimp, and fried Korean dumplings. A lot of the street vendors in the markets have small enclosed spaces with a table and chairs for people to eat their food. The vendor we went to also had a TV with the Asian games on the channel. The Asian games are like the Olympics only on a smaller scale. There is a Korean swimmer who is doing very well, a few days ago he beat his Chinese rival in the event that he lost in the Beijing Olympics. There is a lot of excitement about this swimmer in Korea because he is doing very well. After eating our food and cheering for Korea with the store vendor, we went to a few of the small boutiques in the market.

After some shopping, we headed over to the theater for the movie. In Korea, the seats in the theater are assigned. We had to find the seat that matched our ticket. In Korea, most English movies are played in English with Korean subtitles. It is hard to find dubbed movies while they are in theaters. The movie was in English, which was great. It was hard for Dyra at times to understand some of the actors mumbling, but she liked the movie.

When the movie was over, we looked at our phones, and it was 11! We had an hour to make it back to campus. We hurried out of the theater, yelling to each other "Bali" which means "Hurry" in Korean. We got to the subway station, but we missed our train by five minutes! We had to wait until 11:40 to catch the subway, which is a twenty minute trip. We would be cutting it very close! At midnight, my dorm is locked, so you can't get in until morning. If locked out, you have two options: Tough it out by spending the night somewhere, or climbing into the second story window of the guys dorm tower that is left unlocked so people can get in. We didn't want to have to face either of these options. We met Bermet at the station, she was on her way back from Seoul. As we got closer to the station, we were reving up to dash out of the station. We grabbed a taxi and told the driver "Global Village, Bali Bali Bali!" He drove like he was in the Amazing Race, I think if I ever run the Amazing Race, he would be my ideal driver. He got us to the dorm just in time to run through the front door. It was quite an adventure rushing back to campus before curfew.