Hoop-dee-doo

Alright, it's been a couple days since I posted anything so I will try to remember what has happened. I have lost all track of time here...
The day before yesterday was spent being lazy. Susan (and the other 4 to go home) found out they would be leaving the next morning so she packed her things and got really excited to go home (I am now without a room-mate). I decided that I was going to re-teach myself how to do cartwheels and round-offs and as a result I am really sore. Too old for those things I guess. After dinner was the highlight of my day, I brought a hula hoop outside and was happily hooping when Linzay came out with a whole bunch of hoops and joined me! Since then it has been a hoop-a-thon and even a lot of the guys can keep it going. Mike came up with the brilliant idea to make a game of tag using the hula hoops and he named it Hoop-dee-doo. I guess that's just what happens after 2 weeks of quarantine with nothing to do and nowhere to go. To start the game we all have to scream "HOOP-DEE-DOOOO" and run at each other with our hoops trying to hoop our opponents.
Just as it was getting dark a van pulled up and stopped in front of the building. We all squinted in that direction until someone screamed "The girls are back!" I sprinted over to the van and saw Christine, we did the movie style run and hugged each other. It was a magical moment. It was so good to see all of them. I am really glad that they are back and are relatively unscathed from the experience. I still can't really imagine how alien it all must have felt. I'm glad they had each other.
Yesterday we finished our last doses of Tamiflu and are officially "un-quarantined" HOWEVER we are still stuck at Wando until Tuesday morning so things are basically the same minus the mass hysteria and mask wearing. Some of the villagers found out about our situation and were protesting at the bottom of the hill (damn foreigners bringing swine flu into their country!). That means that we're still not able to go down to the village. Sigh. After sleeping in and eating lunch we geared up to hike to the arboretum again. It was packed with families who were all very friendly, the little children are SO cute! We saw a group of guys playing a really interesting game, it had a net like in tennis and was basically volleyball only they touched the ball only with their feet. So soccer-volleyball. It looked fun. I had to use the bathroom and the only style of toilets they had were the squatty kind! I can now say that I've had a real Korean experience peeing into a squat toilet. Yay! Actually I don't like public toilets and hope I don't have to do that again.
After that we brought Christine back to the waterfall you can sit under and we all swam. It was cloudy and started to rain but still felt really refreshing and nice after our hike. When we got back a barbecue was already underway (it was Seth Goldman's bday after all). We showered and headed down to be greeted with Korean style potato salad, corn, rolls, shish kabobs (sp?), hot dogs, these cool rice tube things, shrimp on a stick, beer and soju. After eating, in true Korean style, they brought the karaoke machine outside and went out to buy fireworks. I spent most of the evening hula hooping with everyone, I can now go from my neck down to my waist and hoop with multiple hoops at the same time. I love it! I jokingly suggested that I should sing Super Freak since a lot of the people here think I am really shy and polite. So of course they wouldn't let me get away with not doing it. It was really funny since I don't actually know how the song goes except for the beginning and the chorus. I hula hooped throughout the entire song I might add :) I think it shocked a few people. Nice.
Today I think we will go on a long hike after lunch, tomorrow is our last day here and then we leave for our tour at 9am on Tuesday morning. I don't think I will have access to the internet during that time but I'm not sure. We get to go visit a green tea farm and do some shopping among other things. On Thursday we get to meet our Korean co-teachers to prepare for teaching which begins Friday! Once we get going this whole trip will go by super fast. We teach for 8 days (it's the elementary school group) and then we go on another cultural tour to Jeju island and Seoul. That is also when we will be having a farewell dinner with the governor of the province. Fun stuff. For those of you still reading: The Bridge of Apollodorus over the Danube was a roman bridge, the first to be built over the lower Danube. For more than a thousand years, it was the longest arch bridge in the world to have been built, in terms of both total and span length. The bridge was constructed by the Greek architect Apollodorus of Damascus.