진짜 별 거 아닌데요

"It really is nothing."

Done with Level 5, woo! This level has been constant work, what can I say? But it's finally done! I've heard Level 6 is a lot more speaking and less work, which will be nice. I'm always up for speaking practice ^^. I'm curious how having a less structured class will be like, but who knows? I might love it :). Video class is apparently very fun so I'll look forward to that--much nicer to have a new video every day than to watch the same clip over and over two days in a row haha.

These past few days have pretty much been catching up with old friends--Kana, Meng Ju, and I met up with 구은미 선생님, our level 4 speaking teacher for dinner at On The Border--expensive food! But very good! And as Koreans will often do, she insisted on paying the large part of the bill, such a sweet teacher :). We had lots of fun catching up with her--it's a pretty great thing when you're able to see a teacher in a casual context, it makes them so human and less...scary teacher-like haha!
Mm mm delicious Mexican food. It's pretty crazy how expensive foreign food is here though :(.
:D!
Level 4! Level 4!

Yesterday was graduation day--good-spirited as always and the kids who put on the play last semester showed it to the rest of the Sogang students (as graduation was not cancelled due to swine flu this semester so it wasn't only Level 4 students there).
Hiroko, Kevin, and Miyuki were the MCs for the graduation.
The speaker, a Level 7 student, gave a speech, likening learning at Sogang to a video game haha.
Dancing to 소원을 말해 봐 in the play.
Hans 씨!
The line from the title of this post. We learned in Level 3 the lines when giving a gift to be modest "Oh, it's not really anything." So Sagwa took out the gift and said "Oh! It really isn't anything." Hehehe, such a great line.
Another Level 3 line that was mentioned in a post from two summers ago: "둘이서 먹다가 하나가 죽어도 모를만큼 맛있어요" "It's so delicious that if two people were to eat it and one were to die the other wouldn't notice." This was reenacted here in the play haha.
"When Hans 씨 went to Level 5, he found it very difficult because the teachers talked very fast." These two teachers were my writing teacher and my speaking teacher, both of who talk relatively fast hehe. The first line:

"아시겠죠? 넘어갈게요." "You all understand, right? Let's move on."
"내가 성격이 급해서 말을 빨리 빨리 하니까 미안." "Because I have a very rushed personality I speak very fast. Sorry!"
After the graduation, we gave 오승은 선생님 our gift!
조재희 선생님 (our video teacher) with the flower we gave her.
Our class :D.
Eating at our favorite 팔색 삼겹살 restaurant for dinner :D.

And today Henry and I went down to Gangnam to meet Donghyuk, a Yale student who's in the military right now for two years. Always lots of fun catching up with friends :), and it's a nice feeling being able to converse with him in Korean rather naturally as when I was at Yale I would only speak with him in English--fun fun.
Crazy Jenga!

So I'll be heading to China for a week on Wednesday to visit my friend Ian, another Light Fellow, as well as two other friends who are studying there! See you guys in Level 6 :).