June 7th, 2008

It all started with a fine morning. I woke up at around 6:15 to get ready to head to school for SATs. I really didn’t want to take the SATs, but luckily mine was only an hour long because it was subject test. I dashed out of school as quickly as possible and headed down the gate. I hitched a ride from Tiffany Cho’s dad and headed home. Then I realized that it was June 7th…I sighed and remembered that my family, my brother’s friends and their parents, and I were going south to Andong, the countryside.

The bus ride from Seoul to Andong was 5 hours long. My bottom was aching from the uncomfortable seats and I was sweating from the scorching heat. I have been to Andong with my mom several times because my mom grew up there when she was very little. However, this trip I was not looking forward to. Unlike other trips to Andong where we spent the night at a hotel, we were planning to spend the night in the korean traditional house. From my knowledge, korean traditional houses were little shacks with tiny rooms that if you I lie down, I could touch from one end of the room, to the other end of the room. That’s how small it is.

Spending the night in the small room with 4 other kids was chaos. Yeah, I spent the whole night playing Monopoly with them, but that’s about it. We had nothing in there, just blankets. Sleeping there was the worst part of the trip. 5 big people in one room was terrible; we all barely had enough space. I thought I was going to suffocate in the room because there was no air ventiliation.

I did not take a shower because the bathroom looked dirty. The toilets were just potholes (there was a better bathroom next door), and there were thousands of little critters all over the floor. I panicked and just changed my clothes.

The next day, I was relieved that we were going home. However, I wasn’t that happy. I thought about the old days in Korea, where people had to live like that. It’s amazing how Koreans back then actually survived what I went through for only one night. Come to think of it, this was a great experience for me. Staying at the countryside was cool and I hope to visit Andong again.