miscellaneous activities

I don't remember what I posted about before, and I can't view the page, so I don't know where to start when I write these things. But, I want to try to stay in touch with friends at home as much as possible, so I write these random entries. School ended last week, and all of us who are staying just took the weekend easy. I got settled into my apartment that I'll live in for the year. Monday morning, our team split up. Half of us went to Tumen to help at a new business and half stayed here to volunteer at a coffee shop that just opened in Yanji. I went to Tumen first. It was some tiring work, but a lot of fun to work with a team and help out the factory. Getting a
better feel for Tumen was nice, too. It's a smaller city, so it has sort of a homey feel, I think. We stayed at a hotel together and had some fun team time while we were there. Yesterday, we came back to Yanji and switched places with the other half of our team. So, we have the easy job now...just hanging out at the cafe, talking to people, and helping serve when they're busy. Today, a group of tourists came through and I got to help cut fruit for about 10 bowls of pat bing su, which is an ice, fruit, and red bean dessert that is really popular in the summer here. This evening, we got to help with an evening English class and were treated to dinner by the teacher. That was a good experience.

Next week, I'm hoping to travel, but the train tickets are really hard to come by, especially for the sleepers, so we are waiting on our friend to help us get some tickets. He's been trying every day for almost a week now, so I hope if we're patient, we can go. Until then, I'll just be settling in and trying to spend some time language learning after the summer group leaves on Sunday and Monday morning.