First few days and already foreigner syndrome's hitting

From an outside point of view, the stories I'm about to relate probably both sound like disaster AND make me look like an idiot haha. I've been experiencing many typical foreign mistakes or stupidisms (did I just make up a word? yes I did) but even so it's been lots of fun and all part of the learning experience! In a few weeks everything will be as easy as if I were still back in New York, hopefully. If you wanna skip all the boring stuff and read about my ridiculous foreigner experiences, skip down to after I talk about my first lunch in Seoul ;).

Airport procedure without my six-person family was fast and easy, a new experience for me. I met up with Jessica at the gate we were supposed to leave from and we talked about our excitement about Korea. Pretty crazy, the longest trip I'd ever take 1) away from my parents and 2) to a foreign country. Soon we got on the plane, ready for our long 13 hour flight to Tokyo followed by a 2 hour wait and another 2.5 hour flight to Seoul. The flight was pretty uneventful--we watched I Am Legend and Untraceable (makes the internet seem even creepier than it already is...) although it was interesting when we realized later that we didn't get the safety and emergency spiel in the beginning of the flight.

Narita Airport was really nice, but what do you NOT expect from Japan ^^?

Probably the best part of the wait was the yummy Miso Ramen I had :).

When we got to Incheon Airport we met my mom's friend's sisters, who we called 비앗따 이모 and 루샤 이모 (or Aunt Beatrice and Aunt Lucia). 비앗따 이모 doesn't speak much English which is good for my Korean practice but it's good to have 루샤 이모 there because she speaks English very well. We both spent the night at 비앗따 이모's home, which was REALLY nice. They live in Apgujeong, which is in Kangnam, the area south of the Han River that divides Seoul. A lot of rich people live in this area, which is why their house was so ballin', as Jessica described it :P. Probably the funniest part was the toilet, which had a heated seat and a million buttons. About the only Korean I understood on the toilet was 시트, which transliterates "seat." I'm very curious to know what a button labeled "seat" does...it also took me a while to figure out how to flush the toilet (turns out it was a normal flush lever). The 이모s ordered a LOT of food and we tried Chinese-Korean food for the first time, including 짜장면 jjajangmyeon, noodles with brown sauce and some sweet and sour pork-like stuff. We also had some really REALLY spicy chicken wings (not Korean). It was all very good, and VERY filling. Ah the status of being a guest in a Korean home. We took a walk with 비앗따 이모's husband around Apgujeong, who we call Uncle Kim, afterwards. Jessica basically ended up becoming best friends with 루샤 이모 and Uncle Kim, who finds her very very amusing hehe. We were pretty pooped after the walk and ended up sleeping at midnight, fairly effectively combating our jetlag. It was pretty sweet getting driven to school by 비앗따 이모 and Uncle Kim's driver the next day.

As first days usually go, my first day at Sogang was pretty hectic. It took forever to find Room 405, which actually turned out to be in a completely different building than the one where our room postings were put up. Now when I got into my class, my first thought was "what the hell have I gotten myself into?" I placed into Level 3 because I had done a bit of extra studying after finishing Korean 115 at Yale. I entered a class full of people who had gone through other semesters of Sogang before, and were clearly better at the language than I was. Listening required a lot of straining and even then I didn't understand half of the instructions and the sentences I formed in my speaking were pathetically short and required a lot of struggling and hesitation, compared to my classmates who could speak with fluidity and it seemed like there was nothing they couldn't understand. I found out that my writing teacher knows my Korean teacher, Angela 선생님 though! It was also very interesting to find out where everyone was from--most of the kids are Japanese, a lot are Chinese, and then you have scatterings of other people. In my class there's a guy from France, a girl from Romania, and a girl from Mongolia--quite interesting. I met some kids outside of class from the states too, including a guy from New York. I use the term "kid" loosely though, since Sogang is diverse not only in where the students are from but also in the age of the students. Pretty neat hearing Korean come out of any and every kind of person's mouth. Leaving class pretty downhearted, I saw Philip Gant and told him that I was feeling prettyyy disheartened about my being the worst student in the class, since he had done Level 3 last year and I was basically following his path. He told me not to worry and that I'd be caught up within two weeks. I'm trusting you here Philip...

Lunch was a nice change of pace since I met up with Yale friends and we ate, with Jonathan, the French friend I had made from class accompanying us. It's pretty great to eat my favorite cuisine for 3,000 to 4,000 won, approximately $3-$4.

Following my first lunch begins my ridiculous day. Basically, in my first two days experiencing Korea, I accomplished one thing a day. Yes, one thing.

I first started out by trying to search for my hasukjip, where I had left my luggage in the morning--but because a driver drove us to school, I didn't bother to note the direction we moved in...although by foot it takes five minutes to walk to Sogang. I began to wander after separating from the group, trying to dig through my memory for anything that would remind me of which way to walk. Leaving Sogang, I made a left, sure that the area looked familiar. At one point, I reached some stores that looked familiar but doubted myself and began to walk back towards the university. Jessica soon called me and said that she just found a hasukjip and would come to help me find mine. So I head back to the front entrance of Sogang and wait for her. In the meantime, I take some photos of a small park-like area near the school.

Soon Jessica arrives and we make a left, the direction that she remembers, but on the opposite side of the street than I was walking on. After walking a few blocks and checking some lots that may have looked familiar, we sat down and I decided to call Uncle Kim for directions. He gave us the directions from the front of the school so we began to make our way back. Of course, after navigating all those labyrinth lots, we had lost our sense of direction and decided to ask an ajumma (a word for middle-aged Korean women) on the street how to get back there. She told us and we understood enough to know which way to go. She then asked us if we were siblings, the first of MANY Koreans to ask us such, a funny question to ask an Asian boy and a Hispanic/White girl who look nothing alike. Regardless, we were bombed with the question a total of...five times so far? Following her directions, we reached the back of Sogang University. We waited about five minutes for the elevator (the elevators in Sogang are RIDICULOUSLY slow), left from the main lobby, and walked back to the front entrance, only to realize after following the directions that the hasukjip was across the street from the BACK entrance of the school that we had JUST entered. Good job, us, really. By then, it was already around 4PM (class had ended at 1PM and we were done with lunch maybe by 2:30ish). It takes me about an hour to find a place literally five minutes away the school. Here are some pictures of my hasukjip--it's small but very homey. And yes, that is a laundry bag with some laundry that I'm using as my pillow until I get one. Creative, I know.



Afterwards we decide to head to Apgujeong, back to 비앗따 이모's home to pick up Jessica's luggage so that she could move it into her hasukjip. Now Seoul's subway system is quite nicely laid out--with each line color-coded and each track telling the multiple stops that follow and the trains being equipped to tell both the next stop and which way to exit--much nicer than New York's subway system. It's not there that we err though. Silly us, when we get on the train we sit on the seats for the elderly, the disabled, and the pregnant. Good job once again. We wondered for the longest time why we were getting deadpan stares from the people on the train. And Jessica had thought it was just because she was foreign. We get off at Euljiro 3-Ga a little embarrassedly laughing at ourselves to change to the orange line and of course, we make another mistake. Instead of following the transfer signs, we end up taking an extremely long-winded path underground to try to find the 3 line, and it takes us about 20 minutes to transfer, four times the amount it took me the next day to find that line. Good job count? 3. This experience made me realize how hard it must be for non-New Yorkers to navigate the subway system...something I've really taken for granted.

We finally reach Apgujeong and of course, it has to start raining. Now it's 장마, the rainy season in Korea but before leaving we decided that we probably wouldn't need umbrellas because it was nice weather before. Bad idea. It starts to pour and by the time we get to 비앗따 이모's home, a good 15 minute walk from the station, we've basically taken a shower. Oh and of course, it takes us about 10 minutes to find Uncle Kim because we were on the completely wrong side of the apartment complex. Living in Korea lesson 1? Bring an umbrella everywhere, no matter how nice the day seems.

비앗따 이모 and Uncle Kim tell us to just stay the night again since the rain is too hard so we do so, collapsing from fatigue at about 8PM after eating another fully stuffing delicious dinner made by 비앗따 이모.

Then came Day Two. Classes went a bit better than the first day as I started to slowly get accustomed to hearing Korean constantly. After class though, I decided to check out my foot because the pain in a bone on my foot was acting up and it hadn't gone away for about a week. 루샤 이모 said she would take me to a hospital, even though I knew it was nothing serious. She told me to take the 110 Bus to Danguk University to meet her there. So I left around 3PM to take it. Of course, my ineptitude shines once again. I take the 110 Bus...but in the wrong direction. 루샤 이모 tells me that it'll take about half an hour. So in about half an hour, I listen to the stops (it's nice when the bus tells you the stops too, unlike in New York). Of course, my eagerness to hear "Danguk Daehakkyo" makes me perceive "Hanguk Ilbo" as such...not right AT ALL. My ineptitude shines once more as I try to figure out how to get off the bus. Observing the other people, I tried to play monkey see, monkey do. They swiped their cards on a scanner, but when I tried to do so a big X appeared. I didn't really expect it to work, considering I didn't pay with my transit card but rather with a 1000won bill. I walked to the front and the driver opened the door, asking if I needed the front door opened. I began to try to explain myself with a feeble 왜냐하면 (Korean for "because") but gave up and just embarrassedly walked out the front door...at the wrong stop. My good job count is skyrocketing off the charts already.

I call 루샤 이모 and tell her I took the bus in the wrong direction, realizing that only after checking the bus map. She tells me that she'll drive to pick me up in about 20 minutes. I wait the designated time and once she calls me, she tells me she doesn't see me, although I'm in front of the Hanguk Ilbo building. She tells me to look for the Somerset Hotel, which I can't seem to find. After about 15 minutes of confusion, 루샤 이모 tells me that she talked to some people and they told her that they had moved the location of the Hanguk Ilbo building and she was in its old spot. My luck just HAS to be that bad to get on the bus not only in the wrong direction, but to get off to meet at a spot that has been moved! I end up taking a taxi to meet 루샤 이모 at the Somerset Hotel and we finally get to the hospital around 5PM. Of course, I figure out nothing's wrong--there's just some tension between the tendons and muscle in my foot so I get some medication.

I part with 루샤 이모 and take the subway back to Sinchon. And of course, it rains as I take my 10 minute walk back to my hasukjip. What is this, Lesson 1 review? I eat dinner in my hasukjip and find out that my ajumma's cooking is quite good, yay! After dinner, I do a bit of homework and eventually meet up with Jessica to pick up an adapter and we end up hanging out in her hasukjip talking about our ridiculous first days experiences.

Today class was a bit better as I began to understand more and more. Maybe Philip is right and I will catch up...I hope. Made another friend--Min Jie (or Min Geol in Korean) who's from China and had lunch with him (a buffet of Korean food for 3000won--about $3, so happy!). It was pretty interesting being able to communicate in a language neither of us speaks fluently. It started to rain again after lunch but this time I actually brought an umbrella! Lesson 1? Passed.

I'm heading out to Yongsan soon to get some supplies I need for living and school and etc. We'll see how this day goes ;).

So, summary of my accomplishments?
Day 1: Found my hasukjip
Day 2: Found out nothing was wrong with my foot
Good job count? Too many

Impressive list, I know. But at least I've got the umbrella lesson down ;).