I've been back two days, yet I haven't written a journal?! Shame on me, I know, I know. But that procrastination force is just too strong. And besides, school just started and you know what that means. xD

South Korea was great. Yeah, no North Korea excursions so don't keep on joking about that. xD The prices are kind of expensive, but the stuff is cool. We slept on tatamis a lot of the nights and the floor was warm/hot because of underground piping. How cool is that?

Outside iwas REALLY, REALLY COLD. Like -10 - - 15 degrees or something. I've never seen snow before so bear with me. Now that I'm back in Guangzhou, I can't feel the cold at all. We had to wrap up a lot and wear scarves over our noses and mouths; the wind was really harsh. The food was great though; we ate (duh) kimchi, seaweed, rice + stuff in a really hot bowl, stuff you put into this cooking pot to cook and yeah. It tasted great but after eating that for some time it gets kinda tiring.

The shops are just... normal. It's cool shopping around but you know how shopping is; the same everywhere really. We ate strawberries in milk with sugar a lot. xD We went with a tour, so our tour guide was really funny. She could speak cantonese and korean, and she told us, "When buying stuff, you must appease them. There are three prices for: koreans, foreigners, and the japanese." She went on to teach us how to speak some korean. "Pizza-yo," apparently, was "very expensive," "sa gae" is "cheaper," "o mai ye o" is "how much?" We were taught "aniang asaio" as is everyone - the greeting morning, afternoon, and night. We had a laughing riot with "yeep bo yo" which apparently means "pretty." The tour guide kept on saying she was "yeep bo yo" and Julia, the photographer, as pointed out by the five-year-old girl on the tour, "yeep bo yo nonono!" I think we can all guess what that means. >> It was a little mean, yes, but harmless teasing. xD Or did you know, "chocolate" said as "cho-co-lae" means "do you want to die?" in korean. Heh. And... yeah. Some cantonese words mean some hilarious things in Korean too." So the tour guide told us that we should walk around the shopkeeper pretending not to see her, and then turn around suddenly and say "a ga see (miss,) yeep bo yo!" And apparently she would be so flattered she'd lower the price of the piece of clothing you wanted to buy. xD Let's just say that didn't quite work out.

We went to the snow mountains to ski and snowboard. I so wanted to snowboard. But I didn't know how. xD So I played in that bowl thing in which you just sit in it and slide down the small slope of a mountain... -_- Yeah. It was really cool watching the professionals though. And really cold.

We also went to the hot springs. It was awesome. Well, there was the side with clothes on and the side with no clothes. I went the latter way because I forgot my swimwear. It was a bit weird at first but everyone (women only, get your minds out of the gutter) was walking around like that in there so... yeah. My mum and I went into the really hot pool, then the really cold one, then the really hot one... you get the idea. Apparently it's good for your skin.

And that's about it!

...No, I'm kidding, I took photos. xD No worries. I'll have some of them up tomorrow. It's getting late and I still haven't done any homework - sue me. I'll post the photos tomorrow.

-Joey