내일 보자

"See you tomorrow"

A line I can no longer say to my friends in Korea :(. So sad how much circumstance and location affects friendships! Alas, our time together has come to a close. It's pretty crazy--none of us ever thought it would be possible to become close with people from other countries with whom we don't even share a common mother tongue, but we did it, through Korean. It makes me really see the importance of language in understanding and building relationships. Our graduation meant that all of us were leaving each other, and although it's time to part, we'll never forget the good times!

As I said in my goodbye to my friends:

여러분 만나게 돼서 내 운이 진짜 좋은가 봐. 정말 인연이라고 믿어...지금 헤어지는 날인지 믿고 싶지 않아도 마침내 왔네...건강하게 살고 우리 다시 만나길 바래~전혀 잊지 말자~9개월동안 모두랑 지내다 보니 정이 엄청나게 쌓였어. 이렇게 친하게 지낼 수 있는 줄 몰랐는데 이제 얼마나 섭섭한지...안녕~ 사랑해~

It seems like I was very lucky to have met all of you. I really believe it was fate...although I don't want to believe that it's our day of separation, it's finally come...I hope for us to live healthily and meet again some day~let's never forget each other~spending time with you for 9 months has made you all very dear to me. I never knew that we could become so close and now it all feels so sad...goodbye~ love you all~

Corny, I know :), but over the nine months, I learned not only Korean, but how dear such friends can become by the day of separation. If only our world were smaller...

Here are some final pictures from Korea ^^:
Our class, everyone so dressed up!
Our silly play, based off the show "Roller Coaster" hehe (also, it was rehearsed in less than a day LOL).
Oh Sogang students ;D
Level 6!
Our class, with 박다래 선생님.
The other class, with 곽 선생님.
Kana, Kevin, and me :)!
Me and 박다래 선생님~
All of us who were in the play, with the ever-so popular 김형일 선생님 hehe.
박다래 선생님 showing off the gift we made and the flowers we got her :).
The food was actually good for once! :D Although it was a bit much...especially the chicken XD.
Me and the professor who I helped with editing some papers and whose daughter I helped with English.
Eating at On the Border with 오승은 선생님!
My best Korean friend 문정 Munjeong and me ^^.
My other Korean friends 경민 Kyungmin and 정민 Jungmin.
Last meal! 팔색 삼겹살 ^^
Celebrating Henry's birthday early because we'd all be gone when his birthday came--May 30th!
So many faces!
Congratulations on graduating Sogang!
The final crew!
And the final goodbye!

Now that I'm back in the States, I'm of course readjusting ^^. No extreme reverse culture shock has hit me yet but I can bring up a few things:

1) You know those automatic words like "mm," "no," or "uh," etc. Well I've gotten used to the Korean equivalents of those. So, while talking to my mother or father, I've recently accidentally said 아니 or 뭐 in the middle.

2) Instead of cellphone, I accidentally said "handphone" to my dad yesterday.

3) While my parents were driving me home, on the Chinese radio that my dad was listening to came up a song, which sounded horribly familiar, and then I realized it was 8282 by Da Vichi, but in Chinese! Oh, how pervasive Kpop is.

4) Only after coming back to the States did I realize how different the atmosphere is between New York City and Seoul! Especially my neighborhood, which looks much older and less modern. Very quaint, different from bustling Seoul; although parts of Seoul, like Sinchon, do remind me more of places closer to Grand Central for example.

5) When I was ordering food for the first time back here, I almost completely forgot how to, having not ordered in English for a very long time, so I hesitated for a while before placing my order hehe.

6) I almost completely forgot to pay tip at a restaurant haha.

7) Getting used again to swiping my metro card as opposed to scanning the T-card, and also getting used to not taking out my Metro Card to scan when I get out of the subway haha.

8) The dollar feels so foreign to me!

Well this is some stuff for now, I'll write more if I think up some ^_^.

It feels very surreal to be back home right now--but relaxing at the same time. Just a lot of busy work to do ^^.

I'll write my evaluation of Sogang in a separate post, as it falls into a bit of a different category ^^.

As a last note, I feel it's very nice that this is my 52nd post--52 weeks in a year. Captures very well my year in Korea :D (summer two years ago + fall/winter/spring this year).