July 24th

Chap. 3

**KNOCK KNOCK**

I opened the door to find 8 boys holding out Tupperwares full of brownies.

"Hiiiiiii!" they said as they entered my mother's house.

"I can't believe you guys actually came!" I said in awe.

"We told you we'd come!" James said.

"Well yeah but there's a difference between saying something and actually doing it..." I paused "Do you guys want something to drink?"

Chae looked at everyone before answering:

"No thanks, we're good!"

"Soooo? Do we start by packing your pictures and albums of us?" Juwon teased me.

"Who says I have any?" I teased him in return. "I'm just kidding, they're already packed. I started to pack things early in the morning. I also got an email from my university saying that I could come only for my exams."

My sisters were still sleeping but my mom was up, and though she didn't know how to speak Korean or English, she still tried to greet them. The boys even managed to introduce themselves in French, it was very cute.

We then headed for my room. I had already packed most of my stuff, the only things left were my boardgames and my plushies - I love boardgames so much I must have at least 20 different types of boardgames. We decided to play a game since I had already packed pretty much everything. We decided on teams to play "Time's up"; Min-Jun with Ha-Joon, James with Su-Jin, Si-woo with Ye-Jun, and finally, Chae, Juwon and myself. I was translating the words on the cards while I explained the game to the boys.

"So. What you have to do is to make your teammate guess the word that you have on the card. The goal is to have them figure out the most words possible before time runs out. There'll be three rounds. First round, you can use as many words as you want. Second round, you can only use one word. The words can't be too similar to the word you are trying to make people guess. For instance, if the word is teacher, you can't say that they teach. Third round, you must act out the word. If you don't know the word, you can skip it. The team with the youngest member starts."

Chae was translating in Korean to make sure the boys all understood.

Since I was the youngest one, Chae was the one who tried to make Juwon and I guess first.

I was really scared that language would be a barrier, but we still had lots of fun!

The funniest part was when we had to act out the cards. Juwon had to act like Cleopatra. I couldn't stop laughing. Ha-Joon and Min-Jun were the ones who won because they were so "in sync" with one another.

When it was time for us to eat, my sisters finally came down and introduced themselves in a shaky English. We always cooked fajitas when there were a lot of people coming, or raclette, but I wasn't sure whether they'd like raclette or not so fajitas seemed like the safest option.

I don't think the boys ever tried fajitas because their faces were so clueless when they saw the food. Despite that, they understood what to do quite easily. It's kind of similar to how you make spring rolls or other types of food like that, only you don't roll it. They seemed to like it, which was a huge relief. The boys went back to their hotel afterwards and I got back to my occupations.

I had planned to spend the little time that I had left in France with my mother, her boyfriend, and my sisters, say goodbye to my friends, and maybe spend a day with my father and my half-sister from his side.

The week went by without a hitch, and soon I found myself at the airport with the boys. I think I didn't really realize what moving to Korea really meant at that time. It was kind of like going on a vacation. We entered the plane, and I started to panic a little. I always hated the plane, I found it rather scary. What if we had an accident, you know?