시원섭섭하다~

A fun Korean adjective meaning "to feel relieved while sad at the prospect of separating." What a great word to have that combines two very disparate feelings! This is basically the feeling that I have at the end of every semester here, not to mention at the end of every school year, and that I will have at the end of next year when I go back to the US! Relieved for finishing Sogang's levels, but sad to separate from all the friends I've become so close to over this year. A lot of my friends will actually be leaving after level 5, so I'll have to say plenty of goodbyes by February, very very 섭섭하다 (the second half of the word before). It's sad, thinking of how these people that you see every day and struggle through learning a new language together you'll be able to see only a few more times in your life afterwards, taking into account the fact that you live thousands of miles away (how many chances will I get to go to Japan??? and to visit their hometowns in Japan? Or China, or whatever country they may come from). Alas! The good friends are the ones I'll keep in touch with of course ^^, as I've kept in touch with Chikae, Min Jie, Rie, and Jonathan from last summer. It's surprising not too hard to pick up from where you last left off ^^.

Last weekend Henry, Kana, and I saw off Xue Qing, who will be back in China for 2 months before coming back to start college at Jungang University. We spent her last day just lazing around in one of those "all-in-one" bangs, that include wii games, karaoke, movies, and internet. I've gotta say, watching Pan's Labyrinth, a Spanish movie, with Korean subtitles was quite the experience (refresh my Spanish memory from high school while challenging my reading abilities).

Quite the unpleasant experience I had after we left that place to go to Outbeak Steakhouse, where we had dinner. While walking on the street in front of Xue Qing and Kana (Henry had stepped into a 7-11 to get money from the ATM), I heard them call me back (which I later found out was because Xue Qing had forgotten her bag at the all-in-one bang). Naturally, I turn around to walk back, but in the process I got in the way of a tall white woman who was walking behind me (but didn't bump into her). She yelled out "Get out of my way!" but didn't look at me--the way she said it was as if she was saying it into thin air, assuming that I couldn't understand English anyway. I guess it's because I'm Asian and she assumed I was Korean and couldn't understand English. The tone too was pretty rude, but my natural gut reaction was to just yell out "Sorry!" Only a few seconds later did I get really upset and wish I had told her out on it :\. It's pretty crazy what strong assumptions are made--if you're Korean/look Asian, you probably can't speak English. And on the other hand, if you speak English, you probably can't speak Korean--an experience I underwent today a few times--once when I was helping my friend buy clothes and after the lady explained stuff to me about the clothes and I explained it to my friend, she turned to her coworker and said in Korean "Awkward," and once more when I talked to my friend and told her I'd wait at the seats while she browsed around the clothes (in English) and the worker proceeded to tell me there were also seats "over there" in English. If only we could live without such negative assumptions :\.
Saying goodbye to Xue Qing on her last day!
Yummy food at Outback Steakhouse, which is also much more expensive than the States AND includes tax!
Mmm crab pasta :)
So on Sunday, Hiroko, Naoko (friends from Level 4 who are in my class now--we're working together on a presentation), and I went to World Cup Stadium, where there are 5 parks made from the landfill that was previously there. We took several pictures and explored the park, which was strangely beautiful despite the lifelessness of winter. It was a frigid day, but regardless, we endured and explored two of the parks!
Ice on the pond that was frozen over in 평화공원 Pyeonghwa (Peace) Park
Reeds! Some eerie prettiness about them blowing in the wind.
Dandelions! So pretty close up :). They're called 민들레 Minddeulleh.
The steps up to 하늘 공원 Haneul (Sky/Heaven) Park.
The view of Seoul from up there!
Hiroko walking along Heaven Park. Really looks like a sky trail or something related to heaven. I thought it was beautiful ^^.
Pretty looking...structures? Up at the top of Heaven Park ^^.
This scene just looks SO quietly peaceful. Like a scene right out of a painting :).
Sight of the Hangang River ^^.
Tuesday I met up with several friends who I studied with from Level 3! From left to right: Henry (who I met this time, didn't study with him in Level 3), Chikae (graduated from Level 6 and is teaching Japanese now), Rie (one of my best friends from last year who saw me off at the airport--so sweet and wonderful ^^, she graduated from Level 6 and is now back in Japan--she came for a short while to Korea with her mother), me, Li Yuan (we came back to study Level 4 again at the same time--she had taken a while off for her grad school, now she's about to work for Samsung), and then Min Jie (after Level 3, he changed to Yonsei, finished up through Level 7 and will enter Yonsei University as an undergraduate student in March) yay! Reunion :D!
^_^!
Okay, Christmas in Korea is PACKED outside (you can't see here) but Lotte World and COEX (a large mall south of the river) were jam-packed with people! There was literally almost no space to move, ESPECIALLY when we were trying to get back on the subway. If I ever spend another Christmas in Seoul--note to self, avoid public transportation!
Ice skating rink was packed. I probably should've taken a picture of the large crowds!
COEX Mall, outside.
Namdaemun at night, when it started to snow, yay for a sort of White Christmas! It was also surprisingly empty for Namdaemun!
I was not aware of this, but apparently ginseng shaped like body parts is supposed to be good for that body part--by extension, ginseng shaped like a person is expensive, because it's good for the whole body. I have to say though, this particular one is just creepy!!!
Hehe fun with being sort of artsy...ish. Left to right: Ming, Henry, Tim, and Elliy.
Oh funny looking mascots.
A (fake) tree near Namdaemun wishing us a Happy New Year! Korea's quite festive for an Asian country, but of course, it's nothing near the US.
And last, a (fake) fountain near the Myeongdong Station. Yay for festive lights!

Happy holidays everyone ^^. I'll be off to Jeju Island this weekend so expect the next post to be about that :).

설상가상...

"When it rains, it pours"

This is the 사자성어 四字成語 (four character Chinese proverb) that virtually has the same meaning as this English proverb--the literal meaning is "On top of snow is frost," that is, one bad thing happening on top of another. Which is why I'm posting a late post, sorry T_T! After dealing with that cough for about a month, I then somehow got tonsillitis, followed by smaller things, like my bag breaking and the screen of my old cell phone cracking. Go figure with the bad luck. But, as another Korean saying goes 인생은 새옹지마 (塞翁之馬)이다--you never know when life will turn around (literally "the old man at the border's horse"--behind which there is a folk tale)--turning in the cracked old cell phone actually got me a really nice new one with predictive text, finally a subway map calculator, and other cool functions, yay :D.

Unfortunately, getting tonsillitis put me out of school for two days, subsequently leading to days of catching up on work ahh. Life is also 산 넘어 산, mountain after mountain. And I expect more mountains after break, even though we're finally on break, phew! Just as I caught up too haha. But alas, now it's time for me to catch up on this blog ^^.

Getting sick in a different country has definitely helped me fend for myself more on that front. Also, when you get medicine in Korea, you get a LOT of medicine. At the point where I was taking the most medicine, I was taking a bag with a bunch of small nodules of medicine, two pills for some other symptoms, two pills for sore throat, and then a pill for tonsillitis, eesh. I think that's what we'd call overdose in America haha, but as Korean medicine isn't quite as potent as American, it makes sense too. At least I didn't have to get a shot every day I was sick like I did last summer when I had tonsillitis >_<. Going out with your friends just to explore the city is a lot of fun, especially when you just wander, or even check out places you have been to. You just see them in a different light. Namsan was very different to me with my friends this year than it was last summer--just something about the time of year maybe. Not to mention it was FREEZING! Brrr! I'm pretty sure it's about the same weather as NYC but for some reason I find myself less willing to stand it. Just being inside with the nice ondol (floor heating) is really cozy ^^. The roads up at Namsan Tower were also frozen somewhat, making the road very slippery and perilous. I wonder how many people have injured themselves there during the winter? Luckily the weather decided to warm up by this week, rather than stay several degrees below freezing. Alas, it gets cold again starting tomorrow, but hey, weather forecasts say we might have a White Christmas! :) I can't remember the last time there was one... Oh and another observation on how fast Seoul changes--I looked up a Thai restaurant a few weeks ago and there were good reviews for one that had moved from Itaewon to Apgujeong. So my friends and I took the hour commute down to Apgujeong only to meet with a fried chicken place in place of the Thai restaurant. Ridiculous how fast buildings come and go! Not to mention that on the street right outside my home, near Hyundai Department store, there's now a whole middle "island" area where there are bus stops and benches for the buses, something that a lot of areas in Seoul already have. But what amazed me was that it was all done in the span of maybe 2 weeks. That in New York would have taken at least a year I bet. Ah efficiency! Photo update time ^^. Myeongdong lit up, all ready for Christmas!
We went to a sushi buffet in Myeongdong, which cost W18,000, expensive for a meal, but not expensive for sushi. Naturally we ate as much as possible. Henry and I had a faux-eating competition. Normally I don't eat very much and there'd be no doubt that he'd outeat any of us but thanks to my love of sushi I was able to win by 2 plates ^^. Count 'em up--33 plates and a takoyaki place :). Of course, as is the feeling after going to any buffet and stuffing yourself--I never wanted to see food again after that hahaha.
The liveliness of Myeongdong all day round.
Sketchy looking road that leads up to Namsan. Totally looks like a murder scene, ahh!
Waiting for the cable car up to the top.
Namsan Tower once again--we'll be seeing this plenty of times. Always a nice place to frequent :).
Back down at the base of the mountain. It's interesting how much Seoul traffic can remind me so much of home (except for the fact that Seoul drivers like to take headstarts when red lights are about to turn green...)
Just having fun :). Xue Qing, Kana, and me.
Hehe, reflections in ornaments. Christmas spirit for the win!
Having dinner with Henry's mom. Delicious clam soup.
Mm mm the bacon tasted like American bacon too!
BIG shrimp.
Jenga in an Apgujeong Board Game bang.
Followed by Blokus.
And another thing we frequently do--just hang out at cafes. It's the cool thing to do in Seoul :). Also, gotta comment, Koreans really know how to make good cake :D. Mm mm my mouth just waters thinking about it.

All right, I'll add another post soon about the weekend/week that just happened :)!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

집에서 왔어요

"I came from home"

Ah the power of double-meanings in language. It's interesting how even the simplest sentences can have two meanings, the main one being one that you wouldn't think would derive from the first one. The sentences I'm referring to here are:

"어디서 왔어요?" - Where did you come from? (which when asked out of nowhere means "where are you from?")
"어떻게 왔어요?/어떻게 갔어요?" - How did you come here/go there? (often implies "why did you come here/why did you go there?")

The second one is a mistake I still make I think haha. So for example, if I go to the 7th floor where Kim 선생님, the teacher in charge of administration, is, he will usually ask the second question, implying "How may I help you?" but people will of course wonder why he's asking that question and answer something like "I came up the stairs" hahaha. In class this week, after saying I had gone to Noryangjin Fish Market before, the teacher asked me the second question, which I almost took to mean literally "How did you get there?" and after quickly stopping myself from giving a silly response of "I took the subway there" I answered the real question--why.

Of course, questions like these result in very funny responses. One of the things you learn in Level 1 is that the first sentence above means "Where are you from?" and not literally "Where did you come from? (just now)" The play that I mentioned a few posts ago that was presented at graduation showed Hans 씨 failing the Level 1 test while answering multiple questions, including the one above, to which he answered "I came from home!"

Funny enough, on the first day, when one of my classmates came into class, the teacher asked this question of "Where did you come from?" and quickly she responded "I came from home!" resulting in a sea of laughter from the class ^^. It's really an honest mistake to make! But of course, results in a funny reaction, followed by the teacher being very confused hahaha :).

So it's my thirtieth post! Wow! Weird to think that I've been in Korea for 30 weeks (including last summer)!

This week, I also began Level 5 at Sogang, which is quite a big leap from Level 4! There's a LOT more vocabulary to learn, a lot more grammar, and the format of class is completely changed. After an hour of writing, there's an hour of reading, an hour of speaking, and then an hour of video class. Unfortunately, it's only one episode of one drama and one movie that we'll be watching throughout the semester (about 10 minutes every other day) but in this way, I guess we'll learn tactics in how to watch these shows, not to mention lots of useful expressions that you wouldn't hear in the classroom! It's pretty amazing how much harder it is to understand two Korean people speaking to each other than it is a Korean person speaking to you. I guess there really is a lot of dumbing down when talking to foreigners...

Teachers are pretty good, though my writing teacher is pretty intimidating...if you're more than 5 minutes late you're counted as absent, eek! I've definitely taken to getting to class much earlier! Not to mention she talks *very* fast (which is good listening practice) and always has a very stoic expression. Gonna take some getting used to! For some reason I got placed into the Korea Foundation class with a few other kids. Definitely the most diverse class I've been in at Sogang, with kids from all kinds of exotic countries--I haven't found out exactly where each is from yet but it'll be interesting to learn where they are from and for what reason they came to Korea.

As for my reading, speaking, and video class, I have four classmates from last semester--Yuki, Naoko, Anastasiya, and Hiroko. Yay ^^. Aside from them, there's Jenny (from St. Louis, Missouri), Yu (from New Jersey, but born in Japan), Noomin (from Ulaanbataar, Mongolia), Miyuki (from Fukuoka, Japan), and Pei Wen (from Taichung, Taiwan). Definitely more diverse than last semester! I'm really surprised that 1) there are three Americans in our class and 2) there are no Chinese students in the class. My teacher's pretty fun--very lively, though she goes VERY fast through the material (basically, "okay let's talk about this! 끝! Next topic! We basically have between 1-5 minutes on each topic, eesh haha).

Currently getting over a cold, ah. Being sick in a foreign country is pretty miserable--no parents to nurse you or whatever, but that's part of growing up and living on my own ^^. Korea's definitely been putting me up to these challenges! And now being in level 5, describing my own symptoms and understanding the doctor/pharmacist's instructions isn't too bad at all! Now if only this darn cough would go away and my voice would come back...having basically two hours of speaking class (reading class also involves a lot of speaking) doesn't help my voice T_T!

Oh yeah, also completely miserable point of life right now: I can't remember what it's like to take a hot shower. It's been about a month or longer since I've done so...:(. I guess it's because the weather's getting colder, but not only is our bathroom (which is made of [stone?] tile) freezing, especially in the mornings, the water in our shower becomes lukewarm at best. A shower is no longer a part of the day I look forward to anymore! Alas!

As for things that actually happened this week, nothing much to say! Yesterday Henry, Xue Qing, and I tried delivery service for the first time, which was surprisingly very easy and cheap! It's pretty great to get everything wrapped VERY tightly in warm plates, not to mention when you're done, you just place the plates outside your door and it gets picked up by the delivery person later. Gotta try more of that! And today we celebrated Leng's birthday, an event that 구은미 선생님 came to too! Yay! :D
Yummy 부대찌개--a dish that's made of miscellaneous food (scallions, ham, macaroni, rice cakes, ramen, etc.) that was created around the Korean War when people would use the rations from American food along with the food they had to make this stew (which explains why there is ham and frankfurter sausage things). It's very interesting how much Korean food is made by mixing a lot of random foods (like bibimbap and this budae jjigae)
Henry and Xue Qing opening up the delivered food.
The (very refreshing) chicken that we had today for Leng's birthday.
The 죽 (congee) that was made from the leftovers.
Our class, including 구은미 선생님, who recently came back from her honeymoon in Hawaii!
EXTREMELY DELICIOUS CHEESECAKE :)!
Leng blowing out the candles (and making a wish!)

Until next week! :)