NANTA.

Last weekend was packed with fun!! On Saturday morning, I woke up early and headed into Seoul for my Korean class. I missed my first class last week because I was sick, so I was extra excited about going!! The class is not what I was expecting at all. There are five students total, including me, and the teacher is really great! She’s super patient, which is a really good thing because for the entire three-hour class, SHE ONLY SPOKE KOREAN!! Wow! I was surprised and slightly overwhelmed. After a few minutes into the class, I was a little more comfortable when I realized that my classmates understood just about as much as I did. We helped each other out as best as we could and became fast friends. The teacher laughed a lot and was really helpful. The one thing I like about her is that she is EXTREMELY picky about our pronunciation. This is a good thing because I want to be corrected when I’m saying something wrong. I know that I won’t ever have a PERFECT Korean accent when I’m speaking, but I want to learn correctly so I can always be speaking my very best.

The class was split into three parts over the three hours, with two breaks in between. I think it gave our teacher some time to recharge a bit before coming back in to teach us more! Anyway, the class went really well. We’re moving through the textbook quite quickly, so that’s good, too! I learned pretty quickly that it’s going to benefit us a lot that our teacher is only speaking to us in Korean. This is going to force us to pay attention and pick up phrases from her much quicker than we would if we were able to speak English to her in class. I know that our teacher can speak English, because she would acknowledge when we made a connection between a Korean phrase and an English phrase. I think it’s really good that we’re learning in all Korean because it’s kind of fully immersing us in the language from the very beginning.

When my Korean class was over, I met up with Amanda and her best friend from Canada, Anita, for some lunch. We went to a traditional Korean restaurant with a lot of options so Anita could decide what Korean food she wanted to try. After lunch, we wandered over to a coffee shop and sat and talked for a few hours. Around mid-afternoon, we walked a few blocks to an open market on the street. We wandered in and out of some shops and went to a few of the tables where people had hand-made things. I bought a necklace and a ring, so I was really happy about that!

At around 6pm, I got on the subway and met up with Mi-Yeon. I was staying the night at her house, so I wanted to drop my bag off. We hung out at her house for a little while, and then went out in search of some dinner. We ended up meeting up with one of our friends from church, Khong, and had some BBQ. After dinner, we met up with Reuel and Wendy and went to a gelato place. DELICIOUS! At around 9:45pm, we headed to the theater…

There was a St. Patrick’s Day deal for foreigners, for a really popular stage show in Korea, called NANTA. Tickets are usually $50, but the St. Patrick’s Day deal was $30 per ticket, plus a few before-party with food and drinks. We jumped on that deal right away! We went to the before-party and hung out. I ended up running into a bunch of friends that I knew from different places, so that was pretty cool. We got some friends food and free drinks, which is always a plus! Finally, it was almost 11pm…time for the show to start!!

NANTA is a stage-show put on by only 5 people. The show is acting, singing, dancing around, comedy, beating on drums, and flashing lights…just incredible!! There’s a basic story line, and there’s a lot of humor thrown in. It’s really popular for foreigners because there’s barely any talking. They maybe only said three or four Korean phrases the entire show, and the rest was completely non-verbal. It was amazing!! They pull people from the audience, they throw things at you, they have you laughing the second you sit down. I didn’t have any expectations for the show because I didn’t know much about it. I was definitely surprised when it was over by how much I loved it! It was well-worth the $30 for sure!!

The show ended just after 1:00am, so we were all exhausted! It didn’t even seem like I had been to Korean class that same morning, so weird! Anyway, Reuel, Wendy, Mi-Yeon, and I all caught a taxi back to Mi-Yeon’s place. Because we were in Seoul, it would be an insane taxi ride back to Suwon, and all the public transportation (subways and buses) stop running after 11pm. Mi-Yeon was nice enough to open up her home to all three of us! The second we got home, we all crashed.

On Sunday morning, we all woke up pretty early, even before any of the alarms went off.  GO US!! We got ready for church in record timing, considering we were all sharing one bathroom! Something that we haven’t had to do in awhile….We hopped on the subway and headed into Gangnam. We went to Dos Tacos, our usual lunch, where we met Michelle and Arri. It was really great eating together with everyone because we all got to catch up with each other! When we finished eating, we went to the coffee shop and got our caffeine fill before church.

Church was great as usual! The worship was especially good, which is particularly awesome for me. During worship is when I feel most connected with God. After the service, I left the pack and headed home. I had tons of stuff to do, and needed to start clearing my to-do list. When I got home, though, my bed just looked so inviting….so sleeping is just what I did!