Visual Update

These days have been so full that it’s been difficult to keep up, even for me. Some notable things that have happened since I last posted–our first visit to a school, our first night on the town, lots of beautiful sightseeing around campus, and my first soccer game with the group showing off my mad falling down skills. Since it’s almost too much to talk about (I swear I’ll start posting more often!), here are some pictures.

First School Visit!

My group visited Sannam (all-)Girls’ High School. The ETA at this school was super energetic, and I get the feeling that my classroom will not quite look like that! Still, it was nice to see what things might look like in an actual school setting.

This seems to be a school motto, and it translates to something like, “Let’s prepare for your future dreams!” Talk about a guilt trip.

This one hammers that home a little bit. I’ve erased the girl’s name, but this says something to the effect of, “The time you spend now will make your life possible” or “will give you a life.” That was pretty humbling to see. Knowing that there’s a good chance I will go into a high school, it is crazy to think about how much pressure these kids are under, and by association, how much pressure I might be under. 0.0

 

First Night Out!

I didn’t get a ton of photos since we didn’t stay out long, but we had a really good time!

 

The drinking snacks our RAs helped us pick out. Much better than Maruchan, if I do say so myself.

 

The Beautiful Campus of Jungwon

Jungwon is kind of in the armpit of South Korea, as in, the middle of nowhere. Korea is kind of bookended on the north and the south by Seoul and Busan, so north of Seoul and the direct center of the country are not what one might classify as “hoppin’.” However, Jungwon does a pretty good job of making up for that by having a really nice campus that blends the natural world with the manmade one. It has a very Chinese style of architecture, but I like it anyway.

 

These cacti definitely belong here.

Swirly pigs are my favorite kind.

 

 

First Soccer Game with the Group

If you have known me at any point in the last 22 years, you probably know that I am super uncoordinated and have spent most of my time either being injured or recovering from an injury. That being said, here is the synopsis of our first soccer game together.

 

 

 

I’m an idiot, but I thank you all for putting up with me anyway. As always, feel free to leave a suggestion for a future post in the comments. 잘가요, 친구들~

 

 

 

Arrival and other shenanigans mostly related to arrival

It seems like I’ve been in Korea for ages now, and I keep having to remind myself that it really is only the third day. I left from our house on Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. and arrived in Korea on Sunday morning at 6 a.m. There was a 14-hour time difference, so that definitely had something to do with it, but by the time we arrived to school around 10 I had still been in transit for about…too many hours. It’s not important and I don’t want to think about it.

Anyway, after we got here, we had to load all of our luggage onto a pair of giant trucks. They were those really unstable looking tall ones that kind of look like bugs from the front, so this of course inspired a lot of confidence in my heart. We took the bus ride, which was about two hours, and arrived in 괴산 (written Goesan in English but pronounced more like Gwesan) around 10 in the morning. After the grueling task of unloading all of our luggage, we were excited for the chance to finally kick back and stretch out a little. Of course, it being me and me not having had a seizure yet (see last year’s arrival post for more details), my luck indicated that that rest would come 12 hours later than I wanted it. We ate lunch in the school cafeteria, and I didn’t think to take a photo of it, but it was pretty typical Korean fare of bulgogi, rice, kimchi, and soup. We had a few informational sessions and then took a tour of the campus. The campus is lovely, though it does lose some points for being the central point of the armpit blackhole of nothingness in the middle of Korea. But let’s not let that distract us. Here are some photos of me blocking the view of the things you actually would want to see.

Prettyyyyyyy. We also had a chance that night to pick up some things we forgot at the campus convenience store, which was pretty much most things. I ended up crashing around 8 (finally) and waking up…at 4. a.m. Why. Body. We talked about this.

Anyway, my day started then, but we didn’t actually have any activities scheduled until breakfast at 8. Awesome. I did some introspection in the form of Facebook stalking people for a while, showered, did more introspection. You know the drill.

We also had our placement exams yesterday for the Korean language courses.

The actual curriculum of Korea University’s language course goes up to level 6, but we are only being offered up to level 3 since most ETAs don’t speak Korean very well. I think I could flounder through level 3, but since we are calling that our “advanced” class, I’ll just stick with my level two books for now. Yesterday was chock full of workshops and talks and presentations and other things that required sitting still for long periods of time, and like a good sedentary person I obliged. After that, it was free reign! We had a small game night, and I joined in a few rounds, but I got an email shortly after arriving that the last step to completing my TEFL course was rejected again. I don’t think this is so much of a problem, as I have already resubmitted it, but cross your fingers for me!

Anyway, the shock of that helped me stay awake much longer than the night before. I hit the hay around 10:45 and managed to stay out until 6 this morning. Today was the day of our site visits, and my group got to drop by 산남고등학교, or Sannam High School. Here is their website and below is a photo of the school with most of my head and all of one hand.

It was really cool to see the students and the Fulbright teaching assistant in their natural habitats–well, natural enough, since they weren’t actually supposed to have class today but had class especially so we could watch them have class–and we got to play a game or two with them! I had two groups, but one was really a lot of fun. We took some photos which I will post if I get them.

This trip was also super eventful, since nothing can ever not go wrong with me for three days in a row, it seems. After the last group of students left, I skipped out of the classroom for a few moments to use the restroom. I was stopped by a couple of the students who wanted to know why we were there, which I happily explained, and the whole ordeal took no more than 5 minutes. Because of this, you can imagine my genuine surprise when I returned to the classroom and none of the people I recognized were there. In fact, no one was there, so it’s not just that I am kind of antisocial with new people. I happened to run into a teacher who actually knew what I was talking about when I asked her in sheepish Korean where the foreigners were and told her that I had just gone to the bathroom for a second and they had disappeared. She seemed to think this was hilarious. I did not think this was as hilarious as she did but Confucius said I should laugh too so I did. She found another English teacher who said she thought the group might have gone to the cafeteria. “Even if not,” she said, “I haven’t eaten, and you haven’t eaten, so we should eat.” Well, you can’t hardly argue with that logic. Luckily, though, my folks were there and were really shocked to see me and apologetic afterward. No big deal, guys. Just out here speaking Korean like a boss.

Anyway, also like a boss, I slept the entire way back home from the visit, and boy was it a good sleep. It was full-on drool and snore mode for the entire hour plus. And now here we are! All updated to today. Later we will meet our program director and will have our first one-on-one session with the program coordinators who have already been ETAs in the past. Some time in the near future, I want to explore town a little bit and sign up for a gym membership on campus. Super exciting stuff. A few notes about my position right now:

1. Still haven’t opened a new bank account, checked on my old one, or started a cell phone plan. Because adulting is hard. Thank god for wifi.

2. Korea feels something like I imagine A SOFT BREEZE IN THE FIERY BLAZES OF THE INFERNO feels right now. They were not playing around about this humidity.

3. I can’t believe how much I have missed Korea and how much different it will be from last time I was here. It feels like such an authentic experience in comparison, yet I see translation of so many of the elements from last time. I cannot wait to see what this year has in store for me, and I’m so excited that you all will be joining me for the ride! As always, let me know if you have suggestions for future posts or questions in the comments. 감사하고 사랑해요~

United Through it All–South Korea’s system for mourning, cheering, and everything else

South Korea has been most popular in the news lately due to the sinking of the ferry Sewol, which was carrying mostly high school students who mostly passed away in the wreck. I waited a bit to write this post because I felt that it was insensitive to begin tackling this issue any sooner, and even now, it is clear that the nation is not out of its state of mourning. Still, I think it’s important in understanding my experience in Korea to understand how this situation was very different than it would have been in the US.

If you aren’t up to speed on the Sewol incident, here is a pretty comprehensive article of the events: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27342967

Essentially, the disastrous outcome was the result of botched work on the part of the crew of the ferry. Not only did the crew tell the passengers to remain in place and not leave the ferry, but the captain of the ship was actually one of the first to get off the ferry along with several other crew members.

Since that time, as is to be expected, many Koreans have been holding candlelight vigils. Several heads of state have sent messages of condolences, including Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and even Kim Jong Un (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/24/asia-pacific/north-korea-finally-extends-condolences-sewol-sinking-third-mate-says-steering-gear-blame/#.U456epR0p68). But what has stricken me most during this whole incident is that, though there have been many protesters who want to see the crew of the ship face harsher charges than they currently do, there have been an equal or greater amount calling for the resignation of government officials who were not even notified of the incident until long after it began. This even resulted in the resignation of Korea’s former Prime Minister, Chung Hong-won.

The reasoning behind this is a Confucian principle that the leaders of a group should be the definition of that group. That is to say, a leader should take the blame when things go wrong, but they also get the credit when things go well. Leaders of a group get to leave first from work, and if they stay late, everyone stays late. Leaders of a group get to tell everyone else how much they should drink. Subordinates do not get to talk back to or question their leaders. So in a lot of ways, this system is efficient, but it can also be limiting in a lot of ways for all involved. In this case, the leaders of the group–that is, Koreans–have drawn a lot of blame for things going poorly, even though they were not involved at all. After the Prime Minister’s resignation, many called for the resignation of the President, even to the point of bringing portraits of their lost children to the President’s residence at the Blue House (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/korea-ferry-victims/1100404.html).

In this way, it is easy to see how things are much different than they would be had this incident occurred in the US. This kind of reaction is one that Americans can’t quite understand as a nation which doesn’t value collectivism like South Koreans do. This collectivism isn’t always negative though, as we can also see it with the upcoming World Cup. If you thought you were excited about the World Cup and you’re not Korean, then you’re wrong. These guys are crazy about the World Cup, even though as a nation they aren’t even really that crazy about soccer. It is easy to see, then, that Korean nationalism is one which is highly reactive to inside and outside stimuli. It is constantly being beaten inward and outward into shape, but for the most part, it retains a certain purity. That’s what I have really fallen in love with in Korea, and that is why even though I am excited to be home, I dread leaving this place. But I have two and a half more weeks, and I am planning to make the most of it!

Oh, as a side note, I ate dog soup. Yep. That happened. I’ll update soon!

It’s been a really long time since I posted…

Sorry about that! It’s been a really busy time, and we’re all realizing that we have to leave soon so we have been cramming ourselves down each other’s throats. So I will now bombard you with as many photos as I can and I will tell you more later.

First, I went on a vacation with my host parents. We took a trip down to Yeosu, which is usually about a four- or five-hour drive from Seoul. However, it was a national holiday that amounted to about five or six days, so EVERY KOREAN went on vacation, so the traffic was terrible, so the drive took seven hours. But me being one of those people who falls asleep every time I’m in a vehicle, I slept the entire time. It was really nice. We met up there with my host parents’ high school friend who spoke English really well, and otherwise we just explored. Here are some photos from then.

My host dad torturing me in the traditional Korean way:

My host mom and me trapped in a cart:

Me before I reincarnated:

Some traditional Korean ceramics, which according to Korean photo-taking culture you aren’t allowed to take a picture of without someone in it.

My host dad torturing me again, and being way too happy about it.

A traditional Korean game called Yut Nori, which it turns out I am really bad at.

Me inspecting the kimchi.

Grinding grain.

My mom and me in the bamboo forest in Damyang.

The awesome trees.

My host dad trying to be cool in the Korean folk village.

We found this dragon and did not understand why it is there but we took a picture with it anyway.

I just think this picture is cute…plant life is pretty rare in Seoul, so I was happy to see more of it in the south.

My host mom and me about to dig in to this really strong-smelling traditional market food. It was really good, but really…Korean.

Me in what my host parents told me was a “traditional marriage cart thing.”

The gang, trying to act cool.

My being tortured yet again.

The three of us standing in a traditional bathroom, whose septic system flows to directly under the building and…stays there. So we’re actually on top of hundreds-of-years-old poo.

My host mom is an adventurous photographer, and she was very far away in this photo. So we were just trying to make sure she could see us.

My host dad and me playing hacky sack. He won.

 

 

My study abroad program also took us on an island excursion. My friend has a really nice camera and is a good photographer, so I decided not to take too many pictures from that. However there are a lot of them on my Facebook, if you want to look there, which is here: https://www.facebook.com/rachelsasian/photos_all

My friend Ling and me enjoying the beach.

The view from our resort!

Us at a museum. We were bored.

The beeeeeaaaach. So nice.

My friends Jane and Sasha at the beach.

We were tired…

 

We also went to Namsan Tower, which is obligatory since I can see it from my apartment here. Namsan is famous for its donkatsu, or pork cutlet, and for its swirly potato things. Here we are waiting outside the donkatsu restaurant.

My sad attempt to get a picture of my apartment building from the cable car.

Namsan from the base of the tower!

Us waiting in line to get onto the actual tower. Ling is proud of this face.

The magical donkatsu!

And the magical swirly potato things!

Another of Ling’s gems.

The locks on Namsan. Lovers make locks to signify that their love for each other will last until the lock breaks.

The gang, still in line.

 

I also celebrated my birthday while here, and my class bought balloons and my teacher bought a cake!

It’s also a Korean tradition to eat seaweed soup on your birthday for breakfast, so my host mom made me some.

 

In return, for Korean Parents’ Day, I made them a little surprise!

And that basically gets you caught up to today. I will write another post ASAP! Thanks for reading. 🙂

The Phantom of the Opera is there…in Daegu!

I know it’s shocking, but I again did not take adequate photos for an interesting blog post. Be warned that I’m about to stroke my ego for probably way too long because that’s what we writers like to do. I apologize sincerely in advance.

A few days ago, I was wasting time on Facebook (another big surprise, I know) when I happened to notice that someone had posted a photo of the Korean poster for The Phantom of the Opera, advertising that the 25th anniversary cast was performing in Daegu, Korea’s third largest city. I won’t lie–I commented pretty quickly. Pretty soon we had collected a group of people dedicated to taking the pilgrimage, and we began plotting. When I say that we went back and forth on whether or not to go, I mean it with all seriousness. I also mean you would have done the same thing if you had been listening to our conversation, something like:

“We can just take KTX, it will only take a couple of hours to get there.”

“Yo, that’s like 40 bucks.”

“Yikes. Let’s take the slow train.”

“Oh cool, $20.”

“Four hours.”

“Standing room only.”

“Well we can buy a seat.”

“Then why don’t we just take KTX?”

“Yeah, let’s just do that.”

“But…40 bucks…”

Etcetera.

We ended up taking the slower train and leaving around 7:30 on Saturday morning. We arrived about 11:45 at Daegu station and went immediately to the arts center to buy our tickets. Fortunately people spoke English everywhere we went, which made us feel bad except when we could actually hear them talking about us in Korean. Apparently people think if your primary language is English then you must not be able to understand any other words at all. So we didn’t feel sorry for those people.

A word about Daegu–it is much different from Seoul. The accents are very different. There are fewer foreigners. The guys are bigger than the ones in Seoul–either that or they just don’t dress themselves to look like Seoul guys do. The fashion is overall…more lax. That includes the girls, too. I was wondering aloud that it seemed like the girls looked a lot different, and one of my friends pointed out that perhaps they have less plastic surgery there. This point was well-received. The people look shockingly Korean. One more point: the subway doesn’t have protective doors like the ones in Seoul, so I was having flashbacks to that one time in New York. And it seems like there’s not a lot to do there…says the girl from Kentucky.

Anyway, our next mission was to find coffee. This stood to be quite the challenge because one of my friends is not only a vegetarian but is also lactose intolerant like me as well as being allergic to gluten. Korea is a very difficult place for her to exist. Basically the only place with soy milk for coffee in Korea is Starbucks, so, no lie, we found the first white person we saw with coffee and got really excited because we assumed A–they had gotten it from Starbucks and B–they spoke English. As my Dutch friend said, “It was mildly racist of us.” Fortunately, aforementioned white man pointed us in the direction of a Starbucks, though his coffee was not from Starbucks and he did not, in fact, speak English as his first language. He seemed more amused than upset though.

By the time that mess was over, there were only 25 minutes until the start of the play, so we decided to walk back and take our seats. We made the mistake of letting me walk in first, which meant everyone gave me announcements in Korean. Fortunately I got the gist of it (turn off your cell phone, don’t leave until the intermission, etc.) and when the ushers saw my friends who were obviously not Korean they got the run-down in English.

The musical was, suffice it to say, incredible. I cannot stress enough how wonderful it was. As I told my friends later, I felt bad for paying as little as we did. It should have been worth much more. Such an incredible performance. I laughed, I cried, I got in trouble for laughing because it was at a grammar joke and none of the Koreans got it so my friends and I were the only ones laughing. All-in-all, a delightful experience.

Then came the downturn.

We had bought return train tickets while at the station the first time, and presumably because the weather has been nice and people have been taking trips to the south, there were literally no seats on any train back for the rest of the day. This is not one of those times when I say “literally” but actually mean “not literally.” I mean there were actually no seats. So we did the thing–we got standing room only tickets. The first hour of the train ride was spent shuffling around, trying to find a place that was fairly comfortable. We walked up and down the same car several times before settling in between cars, then somehow finding our way into the cafe car. That was the best place to sit because there was carpet, and luckily, there was room for us by the time we discovered this. In the meantime, my Dutch friend gave some poor Korean boy culture shock by standing apparently too close to his face. He was extremely uncomfortable until we began discussing the prospect of her moving. The second she turned her rear away his entire body relaxed. Dear Korean, sorry.

So fortunately for us we only had to sit in the floor for three hours. I joke about how bad it was, but in reality I didn’t mind so much. I think it added a lot to the experience, and especially if your ride is shorter than ours was, I definitely recommend the experience just for the bonding that comes when you realize there are only 30 minutes left so you might as well stay awake even though you are exhausted and delirious. When all was said and done, a good adventure was had by all. Here’s looking to the next one!

Sorry it’s been so long…

This has been my life, for a good part. And I have kept with the tradition of getting sick right at time for midterms. Luckily, I picked some good classes, so I only have two midterms and one paper…I think. I guess if the other professor wants me to do something, he’ll let me know eventually.

Otherwise, spring in Korea is beautiful but a little short. The cherry blossoms are exactly as beautiful as everyone claims they are, and literally every Korean will be very sure to tell you how beautiful they are and how you should go see all of them and how to get there and which are best on the exact days they will be blooming…etc. I guess I didn’t see enough of them, but I honestly didn’t expect that they would all fall off after a week. I did, however, get to go to Jamsil, which has a picturesque lake and a really nice trail. Oh, and Lotte World. So I’ll be going back.

All the same, speaking of weather, that was the first lesson we covered in my senior citizens’ English class! My friend Erica and I have started teaching at the Seoul Senior Citizens’ Center in Jong-ro, and our students are wonderful and hilarious. The maknae, or youngest, is 70, and he is always generously offering to take Erica and me out to lunch (and/)or drinking. Very nice of him, of course, but we always refuse. We have one female student, and she is the archetypical Korean halmoni, or grandmother. Here, everyone is your grandmother or grandfather or sister or brother or aunt or uncle. It is considered more respectful to call someone one of these names instead of simply calling chogiyo (you over there) or just talking to them. Anyway, I say she’s an archetype because she is always flirting with the men and telling Erica and me to be more confident and go find boyfriends…which is interesting advice given the subjects. I haven’t gotten pictures with these great folks yet because I don’t want to step over a line, but I have the feeling that at least a few of them are big fans of selfies.

So all of that to say, I need to get back to work. As always, leave any comments or suggestions for future posts below and I will respond as promptly as possible. 안녕히가십시오~

Cafes, Cat and Otherwise

As an ardent lover of eating, one of my favorite parts of Korean culture so far is the food. Like everything else, food is really cheap here. I had eaten Korean food before, but I was totally unprepared for how different restaurant culture is. A typical visit to a restaurant here actually starts outside, because most restaurants post their full menus outside with prices so you can know what you’re getting yourself into. This kind of preemptive competition helps drive prices down as well, because customers won’t even mess up the first time and go to a more expensive place. Since comparison is easier and more upfront, restaurants are more inclined to offer lower prices.

After you’ve selected a place, you will walk in and tell the wait staff how many people are with you. Most restaurants that I go to are pretty cheap, so it’s usually the owner who will do this. Most restaurant owners are older people who cook out of a normal-sized kitchen and bring the homemade food out ready to order. It’s a very cool, intimate way of dealing with food. Anyway, so after you sit, most people order immediately since the menus are outside and pretty much every Korean restaurant has the same things. Usually the server won’t follow you to the table, so you just have to yell your order across the restaurant. And they -never- write things down. It’s very, very rare. This usually doesn’t cause issue, but I have just eaten the wrong thing a couple of times thanks to a neglectful waiter.

The cool thing, though, is that side dishes are always available and always free and unlimited. To get more, you just yell at the worker. And water is always free too, though it is almost always self-serve. It’s very rare that people drink things with their meals other than water and alcohol, and even then, Korean people feel that drinking too much water will complicate digestion of food, so they don’t drink a lot of it.

Depending on what type of restaurant you go to, there will either be a kitchen in the back where someone cooks your food or there will be little grills at each table which you use to cook your own food. This will usually include a meat, garlic, and kimchi, which you roll up along with rice, bean sprouts, and sauce into a piece of lettuce.

The point of all of this is, I’m gaining weight.

Another phenomenon pretty unique to large Asian cities like Seoul is the cat/dog cafe. The concept there is that you go to this cafe, order a coffee, and then get to play with cats or dogs while you enjoy. It makes sense, since most apartments either don’t allow pets or are too small to have large pets or more than one. It’s a great stress reliever and excellent in case you really wanted your clothes to be totally coated with animal hair. (They have lint rollers, but it just doesn’t quite do the trick.) My friends and I recently visited a cat cafe where we met some lovely tabbies. Here’s the best cat beard shot I got there. 

 

Otherwise, I haven’t been up to a whole lot. Classes are picking up (kind of), and midterms will be coming up soon. I finally know enough Korean (and enough directions) that I can occasionally help taxi drivers find the apartment, and I have learned that usually if a person can’t speak English, they know some Chinese. So communication barriers have been dropping left and right! Also good news, the weather is beautiful here now. Barring today and yesterday, it has been the upper part of 65-70 degrees the last couple of weeks. The cherry blossoms are out, and they are beautiful. I’ll post pictures when I get around to taking them. Also good news is that I have begun teaching an English class to senior citizens along with one of my good friends. Look forward to the next couple of posts, where I’ll try to post pictures from that too!

 

 

A Quick Update

안녕하세요! I just wanted to give everybody a brief update on where I am and how I’m doing. It’s the fourth week of classes already (is this real life?), so I’m settled into my routines pretty well. I finally learned all of my classes and have begun to limit my adventures through the places I did not mean to be to about two or three times a week, which is honestly all I can hope for. I’ve been enjoying everything so far, and as far as everyday things, there’s not much that I wanted to do that I still haven’t done. I just can’t believe it’s almost April!

The main updates I have are on new friends I’ve made and, finally, the search for my birth mother. First of all, I have gotten in contact with a few really amazing people through programs I’m a part of. Yonsei has a language exchange buddy program, so I got to meet this cool guy named Kim Yooseung who is to be my exchange partner all semester.

So far, I’ve only said one sentence that was so bad that he laughed at me, so that’s good.

In other news, the agency I was adopted through has gotten enough information on my birth mother that they are finally going to be able to contact her. No news on whether or not she’ll take me up on the offer, but we are very close to knowing for sure. And I have a friend who has offered to interpret for us for free, so that’s another really exciting prospect! I will keep tabs posted on the blog as often as I can.

And here are other random pictures I took and what snarky things I have to say about them. Enjoy!

The first time I have cooked traditional Korean temple food, and potentially the last time I will ever cook traditional Korean temple food. It looks nice, though. Pictured above are, L to R, nokdujeon (a rice flour and vegetable mungbean pancake), kimchi, and shiitake mushrooms covered in vegetables and homemade sweet and sour sauce. Pretty tasty, not very filling.

 

My friend Sasha with the awesome Buddhist monk who helped us with the cooking. She was so sweet and such a fun person to talk to. She even told me my Korean was good and that I was really pretty! Which was shocking, since that day especially it was simply not true. Regardless, she made a fun time into an awesome one.

Sasha cooking mushrooms. This is especially funny because Sasha hates mushrooms.

My friend and fellow adoptee Mary werkin’ on the cutting board. She was like a pro! I tried cutting alongside her but my inadequacy overtook me, so I resorted to taking photos instead.

The meal we ate because we were still hungry from the temple food.

The dessert we received for free at the meal!

And, um…dessert number two.

My first trip to a bookstore in Korea, a complicated venture since I can’t read most of what was in there. I did notice this massive section of Tolstoy, though, and wondered why anyone who speaks English as a second language would want any one of these books which took up a substantial amount of shelf space. Why, Korea. Why.

Again, I ask–why?

One of many, many photos that my host mom took of me while we were out in Gangnam. I counted 21 which she sent to me, but since I’m not looking in a lot of them I’m sure there are more.

Another view of the bookstore. Yes, U can!

And one last message to my lovely readers:

What Korea Did for Me Today

Today, I ate Taco Bell. The Crunchwrap Supreme is, thankfully, just about the same. The tacos are smaller, though, as are the drinks. And the nachos are…well, there are nachos. Oh! And no Doritos Tacos. 😦

All you can it. Literally all you can it.

This sticker says “Zacpot,” which is hilarious. In the Korean language, the “j” sound is actually just a harder “z” sound, so they romanize it both ways. They just happened to pick kind of the wrong one here.

We visited a flea market (this is Korea, mind you, so it’s called a “free market”) in the Hongdae area. Hongdae (short for Hongik Daehakkyo or Hongik University) is known for its incredible art program, so many of the art students will make handmade trinkets to sell at this market every Saturday. Today was a beautiful day, so my host parents took me to do a little window (or table, as it were) shopping. These hats struck my fancy. I especially like the “Drunken Swag” and “HTML” hats.

There’s live music here all the time.

This restaurant is too good to even exist. Hotdogs…with coffee…with pie??? How did they know?!

And this guy was performing magic tricks for a good part of the afternoon. He was actually really good, and the host parents and I stayed way too long. Good thing we had just bought hotteok. The only problem was, the poor guy couldn’t really speak clearly and was a little on the awkward side. And he ate burning paper so his mouth was bleeding. And his pants were unzipped. Other than that, though, golden.

And here are my host mom and me! It may not look like we are outside of a cool, artsy, fun, folky public restroom, but I assure you that we are.

 

Hope you enjoyed!

An Update, and a Word About Korean Humor

It’s been pretty hectic lately, what with the start of classes and all. My first week, and after today my second, have passed without too much fanfare, and I’m somewhat happy and somewhat sad to say it seems like I’m ahead of the curve in all of my classes. I tested into level one Korean, even though I’m pretty sure I could have handled level two, since I’ve been acting as a default translator for most of the class so far because the teachers only speak Korean in class. Still, it’s good practice, and a good confidence booster. My history class is interesting but a little boring (at least one person has fallen asleep in every class so far) (not me yet but I’m not overconfident). My political science class is a bit like pulling teeth because I already know all of the theory we have discussed (thanks, Transy), and my Intro to Korean Studies class, as I have discovered, is primarily a literature class. So my schedule definitely could be a bit more challenging, but should make for a fun and (mostly) interesting semester.

As for outside-of-classroom things, everything is going swimmingly. I signed up for a language exchange club, and my buddy seems like a really cool guy even though we haven’t met face-to-face. The weather is getting warmer, and I’ve been meeting some really awesome people, both in my program and not. Honestly, my problem now is that I’m already anticipating with dread the approaching farewell date.

Another issue is, of course, there is still a pretty big language barrier between me and most of the country. The result of that is that even when I’m at the apartment and speaking to my host family in English, there’s not a lot I can watch on TV. Of course there’s a CNN affiliate here, but who wants to watch English TV in a foreign country? (And, for that matter, who wants to watch the news while they’re studying abroad?) Plus, even though I can usually understand dramas because they talk about predictable things, I told my host family that I don’t really love watching dramas, so now we never watch them because they are overly thoughtful. Due to all of these factors, I have seen at least 16 thousand million episodes of Running Man and 진짜 사나이, whose rough translation is something like “A Real Man.” (Problematic, I know.) Running Man is a show about seven (?) people and a guest who play games against each other in rotating teams. 진짜 사나이 is about celebrities doing military service (required of male Korean citizens), but both are shot as comedies. These shows are hilarious, but I honestly cannot tell you why. Korean humor is, thankfully, not as reliant on wordplay as Chinese humor is or on physical comedy as much as British comedy is. Actually, Korean humor relies a lot on ugly/average-looking people making fun of really attractive people, which may be why I find it so appealing. Korean humor is also really exacerbated by the fact that Korea’s background as a Confucian society means that most people don’t do anything loud or that makes them stand out. Comedians, on the other hand, are usually the loudest people in the place, and they also are the only ones willing to do weird stuff. For example, Koreans find cross-dressing hilarious. And the way they go about it, they’re usually right, because they always take care to go way over the top. The funniest part about this to me is that most Koreans are androgynous enough anyway that instead of looking like a cross-dresser, they usually just look like a kind of mis-proportioned guy/girl. Another theme which appears a lot on comedy shows is foreigners making cultural faux pas, which is equal parts funny, relatable, and helpful to me. Oh, and for some reason, they really like to wake each other up early on comedy shows. They also use a lot of music that I’m pretty sure they don’t have the rights to. Be heard a lot of Fall Out Boy, and right now I’m watching an episode of Running Man that is using the soundtrack from the Taiwanese film 不能说的秘密 (Secret). And every comedy show is heavily edited, with cutesy visual and sound effects and often with the dialogue written out. I would guess that one episode of any comedy show will use 15-20 different fonts, so whoever has that job must have a lot of fun. I’ve also tried to watch SNL Korea, but that one’s a little hard without subtitles. Anyway, Korean comedy shows are definitely a part of the culture worth experiencing, and it’s so easy with the Internet! When you get a minute, I recommend any episode of Running Man, a lot of which are available with subtitles at http://www.dramafever.com.

If you have any comments or recommendations, I’d love to hear them! Please leave them and any suggestions for future posts below in the comments section. 안녕히가세요!