개울가에 올챙이 한 마리...

The lyrics to a children's song we learned in 발음 수업 pronunciation class "At the riverbank, one tadpole..."

개울가에 올챙이 한 마리
꼬물 꼬물 헤엄치다
뒷다리가 쏘옥 앞다리가 쏘옥
팔딱팔딱 개구리 됐네
꼬물 꼬물 꼬물 꼬물 꼬물 꼬물 헤엄치다
뒷다리가 쏘옥 앞다리가 쏘옥
팔딱팔딱 개구리 됐네

At the riverbank, a tadpole
Squirming, squirming, swims
Hind legs sso-ok (sound for shooting outwards)! front legs sso-ok!
Hopping and leaping, it becomes a frog!
Squirming (x6) it swims
Hind legs sso-ok! front legs sso-ok!
Hopping and leaping, it becomes a frog!

Cute song isn't it? ^^

Why I chose this line? I went with friends from class to Seoul National Zoo this Tuesday, which was entertaining, taught me a lot of animal names, and made me realize that a lot of animals in Korean end in the "ee" (이) sound, maybe because it sounds cute? Kind of like when we say "teddy" or add that "ee" sound to people's names to make it sound cuter? Just a thought :).

There were absolutely no clouds that day but the sun wasn't so strong either so there was a very tranquil, peaceful feeling what with the zoo being very empty (after all, it was a Tuesday afternoon, unlikely for there to be families) and with the sky being fully blue but somewhat foggy. Perfect day to go. We rounded off that day with a dolphin/seal show that was really fun.

Being the picture-taking freak I am, I of course have plenty of pictures to share, including some that I took of my friends to take advantage of the high-quality-ness of the lens :).
Seeing a magpie 까치 is good luck in Korea!
Something about the backs of my friends and the overall scene is very tranquil and beautiful.
Love taking "sun shining through the trees" pictures ^^.
Welcome to the Seoul Zoo!
Back to front: Leng, Kana, Naoko, Meng Ju, and Xue Qing. No idea why Xue Qing's making that expression hahaha.
Flamingoes! 홍학 Such vibrant feathers :).
Two giraffes 기린.
A rhinoceros, whose Korean name 코뿔소 I find very interesting, since it's literally "nose horn cow."
So peaceful...
This confused me SO much. I have no idea why there is a Pokemon on this diagram. I get that Mudkip is kind of supposed to be a tadpole...sort of, maybe??? But what???
I love this animal! It's the axolotl--a Mexican salamander that never grows up. Haha its expression. It stayed completely still the whole time we were staring at it.
Praying mantis! I always thought this insect was hilarious because after a female praying mantis is impregnated, it bites the head off of its mate, destroys the house, and dances on top of it (or so I heard from the Cosby Show...)
Whoo! What a tarantula!
Augh doesn't this look so creepy! I'm being a bit tricky though, because this is through a magnifying lens ^^.
Haha this toad looks so scary!
Cool looking frog, and not to be a nerd, but to follow up on the Pokemon picture before...this does look awfully a lot like Bulbasaur...
Love hedgehogs :).
Poor elephant. He just wants to leave ;_;
Leng
Xue Qing
Kana
Meng Ju
Seal handstand!
Seal dancing!
Slow dancing with the seal. Aww!
And the dolphins come out!
Sliding on to the surface.
An endangered species found in Africa I believe, doesn't it look like a pony?
Iguana!
And to round the day off we ate some yummy 닭갈비 (Korean-style barbecued chicken) mm mm delicious.

The next day, Henry and I attempted to put together a Thanksgiving dinner. A valiant effort, but unfortunately we didn't quite succeed T_T. First of all, a turkey would have cut us back 70,000W (almost $70) and probably would have been way too much for the number of guests we had, so instead we bought two chickens (that turned out to be much less than we expected after we removed all the bones and uneatable parts). That turned out pretty well actually. Our first batch of mashed potatoes went well, but due to trying to rush (after cooking for several hours), our second batch did not have enough time to boil and turned out much chunkier than we (or at least I) would have liked...the stuffing turned out pretty well and was improvised buying two garlic bread baguettes from Paris Baguette (har har) and mashing it up with chicken broth and onions (looks like a lot of our food became very mushy haha--but such is Thanksgiving!). What was supposed to become a green bean casserole basically became just our substitute gravy (as with chicken remains, we could not make any decent gravy at all and there was one can of green beans left at the market, not to mention we didn't have an oven to make a good casserole). All in all the meal ended up not tasting too bad but...

1) With only one burner in our kitchen, we ended up cooking a LONG time, not to mention reheating all the food we made, clearly not as tasty as just cooking it once
2) Without an oven, we weren't able to do roast anything, nor make a casserole. So no nice brownness.
3) 6 hours of cooking? So...tiring...

I didn't realize until then that almost no homes in Korea have ovens! No wonder there are so many bakeries here! I guess they monopolize the baked goods!
Cheers to Thanksgiving! (left to right: Henry, Xue Qing, Yu Lin, and Sean)
TOO MUCH POTATO LEFT OVER. And not enough chicken.

A few days ago, Henry had a mini-집들이 (a party you have when you invite people over to your place after you move in--usually it's pretty extravagant, but after all, we're students, and it was a hasukjip and not quite a house haha)
So we celebrated with cheesecake that Xue Qing bought that was delicious! To celebrate Henry's moving as well as Xue Qing's birthday in advance (as she will be in China while it's her birthday in January).
I've recently caught a cold (no fever though--just coughing and a slight stuffy nose, some losing of my voice) so I've taken to wearing this fun mask to prevent spread. Alas, tomorrow's the first day of school but I don't think I'll wear this...it would be pretty upsetting to have everyone thinking I have swine flu when it's just a cough lol. Not quite the first impression I wanna pass on.
Pretty view from the top of Henry's roof! Ah Sinchon, 24-7 neighborhood.
Just some fun from today--playing wii in Korean! Korea really does have rooms for everything!

All right, time to sleep for tomorrow. First day of level 5! :)

"결혼하자" "하지, 뭐"

"Let's get married." "Sure, why not?"

That's how our teacher described how her now husband proposed to her when we asked whether he got down on his knees and proposed in a romantic fashion haha. Not sure whether to believe her, considering she also told us she had many many boyfriends at the beginning of the year haha.

But before I get to the wedding, I'll recap a trip Henry, Kana, Xue Qing, and I took the day before it to Incheon. One great thing about vacations is taking advantage to go to farther places you probably wouldn't go otherwise. The place we chose was Incheon--on the northwestern coast of Korea and where the international airport is. Also where there is a Chinatown with authentic Chinese food, woo! (The main reason why we went there) We almost ended up not going because Henry's friend cancelled on us but in the end I convinced everyone to go anyway! When else would we have the chance to go again??? One thing about groups is that you just need someone to say "Let's do this!" and everyone will. I've definitely experienced a lot of that here. Not to mention after you go you really think "I'm so glad I came here!" Definitely what I felt about the Incheon trip.
Henry takes a picture of Xue Qing, Kana, and me in front of Chinatown.
Kana walks in the sunlight of Chinatown.
Delicious delicious food. Three plates of jajangmyeon 자장면 which is 炸醬麵 and one of jajang rice (because Henry is allergic to flour). One of sweet/sour/spicy shrimp, mapo tofu 麻婆豆腐, and spicy chicken. Mm mm!
And after stuffing ourselves we decided to do some sightseeing nearby.
Interesting structure.
Pretty!
Ahh how I love scenery!
So cold!!!
We're a fun bunch.
Because there was an exercise park nearby. By the way, in this exercise park there was this crazy (and by crazy I mean crazy strong) ajusshi doing all kinds of exercises and watching us amusedly.
And the pretty lights come on as it gets dark!
In front of the changing lights, with Kana looking like a ghost haha.
Trippy!
Pretty night scenery.
Superheroes!
Chinatown lit up at night!
Dumplings and jajangmyeon, the symbol of Chinatown?
After visiting the Incheon Chinatown, we then went to meet up with my old friends from Level 3 last year, Chikae and Min Jie! As well as Jonathan (who isn't in this picture though)!

Now as for the wedding, it was my first experience going to a Korean wedding! In fact, it's my first experience going to a wedding I can actually remember, since the only one I've been to in the US was my mom's friend's daughter's wedding, and I was really young then. Exciting stuff ^^, and VERY rushed! We met up at Seoul station at 9:50AM to catch the 10:20 train to Daegu 대구, in the center of Korea and its third largest city, as well as our teacher's hometown. After arriving, we took a taxi to Nine Well, a restaurant where we ate a pre-wedding lunch that was really delicious and consisted of a lot of small dishes that stuffed us...not to mention when the last dish came out we were told we only had 5 minutes left to eat before we had to leave for the wedding, ay! The service was at a place called "New York New York" (yay New York pride :D) and basically about 5 minutes after we got there the service already began! Our teacher looked beautiful as expected so of course our whole class went crazy with picture taking, especially during the kiss! Our class had prepared a song (half Chinese and half Japanese) to sing for our teacher together. Our classmate Yukiko had also prepared a slideshow to go along with it which was really touching! Unfortunately since they didn't have a projector or any screen there, we couldn't show it along with our singing, which would have been really nice! Ah well, our teacher will see it anyway :). While performing the song, we must have looked like preschoolers...maybe kindergarteners? Hahaha, with our swaying arms, and our clapping arms while moving from side to side, etc. Ahh, I'm gonna miss our class ^^. After that, we took pictures with her and then took pictures with her in a hanbok outfit with her newlywed husband. And because we had to catch a train at 3:55, we didn't eat at the reception. But at that point, it was already 3:45, so after a rushed attempt to get a taxi and the taxi driver speeding through Daegu to get us to the station on time, we got to Dong Daegu Station 동대구역 with two and a half minutes to dash to the train in our dress shoes and suits. And by 6PM we were back in Seoul. Felt like it all went by in a blur! Oh yeah, I've also realized how small Korea is from the fact that by train it took less than 2 hours to get to Daegu...about the same as a trip between New Haven and New York! Whew.

After a quick dinner, Xue Qing and I met up with Henry to just wander around the Cheonggyecheon 청계천 area (a beautiful manmade stream in the middle of Seoul that's fun to walk around and often has events). If you followed this blog from when I was here last summer, you'll see some pictures from it ^^. One thing I've really come to love to do with my free time is to just walk around a city and really explore it--connect the dots in the mental map in my mind. Not to mention, it's free! An interesting experience I often have is how my mental map of an area is skewed as I visit it at different times. It's a hard feeling to explain...but for example when I first went to visit Yale on a tour, it felt like a completely different area from when I actually began to attend it, and then it felt slightly different again as I went up to sophomore year and my center point became not Old Campus, but Morse. In a weird kind of way, my "north," or mental compass (?) re-orients itself. It's a hard feeling to explain...I'm sure I'll have a similar experience when I go back again. But for Seoul, because last year my center point was Sogang University (as I lived across from it, so I was very near Daeheung Station), it was very different from this year, where my center point is now Hyundai Department Store (very near my place, which is near Sinchon Station), so I've become very familiar with the "maze" near Sinchon Station (an area where there are a lot of restaurants and bars and which is flooded with people on the weekends) and the area near Daeheung Station has become more foreign to me. Last year, I once went with Andrew McTernan (a former Light Fellow) to Hongdae, an area that's only about 10-15 minutes from where I live now, and somehow we took about 40 minutes to an hour to get there. I didn't understand how we took so long but yesterday, as Henry, Xue Qing, and I went to a Kimbap Cheonguk 김밥천국 (a chain of kimbap stores that is like McDonald's of Korea, but probably more healthy, by a lot) near the Sinchon Rotary, it finally clicked in my head and the mental map was connected--duh, we had walked in a perpendicular direction to Hongdae, which is why it took so long, and why the road to Hongdae seemed to unfamiliar when I walked it this time!

Okay, that was a completely useless ramble, haha, so here are pictures from the wedding!
As we descend the stairs to take KTX. Xue Qing was excited to be taking the KTX for the first time so she said "take a picture!" (in Korean of course).
Half our class sitting at the other table.
An example of the yummy yummy food.
Kana, Yukiko, and Xue Qing with our teacher just before the service began!
구은미 선생님 walks with her father.
Bride and groom at the altar.
Parents of the groom.
Parents of the bride.
We prepare for our song.
Relatives maybe? Singing another song.
Bride and groom's families take a bow.
For some reason, the announcer had bride and groom do silly actions haha, I'm not sure why...
Then the groom picks up the bride and says "오늘밤 우리 사랑하자!" "Tonight, let's love!" Hahaha, I wasn't aware weddings were supposed to be funny like this ;P.
Just before the kiss...
And just after it!
Bride and groom walk down the aisle and friends and family shoot streamers!
Family picture.
구은미 선생님 tosses the bouquet~
Our class and our teacher's other students (including the ones she taught in Osaka) take a picture with our teacher!
In the traditional hanbok costumes.
^_^!
Back at Seoul Station...strange human figures walking around on the billboard...
Xue Qing and Henry with some cute figures in the City Hall subway station.
There was an art exhibit of lanterns (this part shows landmarks from all over the world) at Cheonggyecheon, but what's this guy doing here???
Pretty lanterns...and Halloween jack-o-lanterns, what???
Lanterns in the shape of the zodiac figures--the snake (Henry and me) and the horse (Xue Qing).
Umbrellas in the nice arrangement.
Yummy 떡 rice cakes given to us from our teacher's wedding.
깡페! Hoodlums!

One more week of vacation, then on to Level 5!