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! :)