한병더!

"One more bottle!"

Well don't we sound like alcoholics? I'll get back to this line later ;).

So I've been really bad at taking pictures during the week...mainly because I don't want to carry my large camera bag and schoolbag, which would be super bulky...but then if we do stuff after class I miss the opportunity to take fun pictures with my class! Alas, I'll eventually bring my camera. I just wish I had a simple point and shoot as well :(.

This week was a lot of hanging out with my class friends--yay for bonding! I don't know why, but for some reason, girls outnumber guys by so much when it comes to interest in foreign language learning. I wonder if there's a reason for that--are girls' brains more wired for language? I also notice that especially from Japan, the vast majority are girls--and I think that has to do with a lot of Japanese women being housewives, so I guess if their husbands are out at work in Korea, they have lots of time to spend so they might as well take Korean classes? Maybe? Just a theory. That combined with the fact that my class has only four guys (myself, 아키히로 Akihiro, 장명 Zhang Ming, and 향양 Xiang Yang) means that I often am the only guy in a group of many girls, because Akihiro is much older than most of us and Zhang Ming and Xiang Yang seem to just like to go home right after class. It's a bit awkward, but I'll live XD.

There's this girl in my class 설청 Xue Qing who completely tricked me when we first met lol. I often take people's words at face value when I first meet them, especially if they just seem like a sweet, innocent girl, but after getting to know her I should have realized she was lying to me in the first place...she told me she was born in '83 (the normal way of telling your age in Korea) and despite her looking really young, I just said okay and went ahead with calling her 누나 nuna (older sister in Korean for a guy). This Thursday, when I was hanging out with 렝 Leng and 카나 Kana, they mentioned something about her being a '91 and I was like "wait, wait, wasn't she born in '83?" and they cracked up. Haha, fail on my part -.-! So finally, I'm not the youngest one in my Sogang class (not that I've been at Sogang for many semesters, but we Yale students tend to be the youngest ones in the class).

Okay, just for ease, I'm going to just provide a list here of the people in my class:
Naoko 나오코 (Japan)
Kana 카나 (Japan)
Yukiko 유키코 (Japan)
Yuki 유키 (Japan)
Zhang Ming 장명 (China)
Xiang Yang 향양 (China)
Meng Ju 명주 (Taiwan)
Anastasiya 아나쓰타샤 (Russia)
Leng 렝 (Thailand)
Xue Qing 설청 (China)
Akihiro 아키히로 (Japan)
Muriel 뮈리엘 (Belgium)
Hiroko 히로코 (Japan)
Keiko 케이코 (Japan)
Bai Hua 백화 (China)

Phew, what a big class.

On Friday, we went to this yummy 칼국수 kalguksu (a type of noodle) place that Heeseung (a Light Fellow from the summer) recommended to me and had gone to with Meng Ju. Sadly, I didn't have a camera :(, but hopefully next time--or I'll upload some of Meng Ju's pictures later. There were 9 of us (and I was the only guy of course) but we were lucky because there was no line (apparently there usually is). Mm mm, definitely gotta go there again!

Friday night was spent hanging out with Dong Hwa, who I had met through Bob when we went to Lotte World, Margaret, and Yuna, as well as some of their other friends. After eating, we went to watch this English play that was written by a Korean at Sogang--a very interesting experience. Some of the Korean-accented English was hard for me to understand, and although I didn't enjoy the first play that much (which was about five people riding a train and participating in this lottery that leads them to fight with each other) but the second one (about an interview to get into an imaginary largest corporation in Korea) I thought was extremely well-acted and that the actors' English was much more comprehensible. Very fun experience :).
Unfortunately I only got a picture of the first one (my camera does a pretty loud click so I was worried it would distract people).

Afterward we went to a 노래방--seriously, I can't believe I'd gone a month in Korea without having gone karaokeing! Well, finally, I did.
Margaret and 기철 Ki CheolKi Cheol and Mirabel 정연Mirabel and Dong Hwa

Oh and Mirabel is an AMAZING singer. Like WOW I wish I had a recording or video. Apparently she's aspiring to be in musicals and wants to go to the US to study. I was told by the others that her voice was amazing and even then I was really blown back when I heard her sing Korean songs just like the Korean singers and then proceed to sound like Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson, etc. Just, WOW.

And now moving on to Saturday, my cousin Sylvia visited me! :D She and her friend Karen are touring Asia and since they were dropping by Korea we decided to meet up. I took them to my oh so favorite sundubu place and we wandered around Sinchon afterwards, wondering why so many random college students were running around in red or blue and yelling, singing songs, parading throughout Sinchon's narrow streets.
Well, we found our answer when Sneha's Yonsei mentor Jaeha recognized me and convinced my cousin, her friend, and me to join him and the rest of the students!
Karen, my cousin Sylvia, and Jaeha.

What an experience for my cousin and her friend to have while just touring Asia haha. Apparently it was the last day of the Yonsei-Korea University games (Yonsei being blue, Korea red) so it's a tradition for them to run through the streets and sing songs and...create trains (which are very much like conga lines) and "beg for food" (consisting of standing in front of restaurants as a large group and yelling set phrases--which I wish I could understand...but it's often hard to understand screaming in unison...). I did get 사장님! (Manager of a business, like a restaurant) and after being given food or more often, beer or soju, 한병더! hence the title of this entry.
So of course, there was drunken debauchery and general tomfoolery haha. After the festivities, Sylvia, Karen, and I met up with Sneha and we went to a (really nice o_o!) cafe to hang out.
The decor was very fancy looking, almost like a Victorian era place (maybe expensive decor would explain why coffee is so expensive in Korea...). Going to the cafe also made me feel like I was hitting another plateau in language learning >.<. When we entered the cafe, I did not have a clue at all what our waiter said, and after asking him to repeat it and not knowing what he said, of course, I just took the all-purpose (well, not really) answer "네" yes. So we were seated on the second floor, and he asked us if we wanted a 제떨이 (ashtray, a word I always remember because it sounds like Jet Li) and looked super confused when I said no. Eventually, we realized he was probably asking us if we wanted to sit in the smoking section. Oh language fails. Yesterday, which was Sunday, I met with my cousin and Karen once more and took them to this yummy Korean barbecue buffet (mind you, despite getting food poisoning last time, I still decided to come here again haha--but mostly because it was probably my fault for not grilling the food enough). Mm mmmmmm. It's funny how we always find the fat that melts off and the oil that evaporates into the air so gross...yet the food so good T_T.
And because Korean cafes are irresistible we went to Caffe Pascucci, a Korean chain, afterwards. Of course, Koreans always make cute little images like this on their coffee ^^. I was sad when I didn't have my camera at this other cafe I went to where they drew a bear face on the coffee!
And more examples of the luxuriousness of cafes.
Bye Sylvia and Karen! See you back in the States :).
Lastly, some more fun Korean stuff. The first picture is an Indian restaurant, with which there are many wrong things...1) Aladdin is misspelled 2) The logo is DEFINITELY exactly the same as Disney's Aladdin and 3) Aladdin is DEFINITELY not Indian...hahahaha. The second picture...well, I don't even need to explain.

And on an unrelated note--RIP to Annie Le :(. Very shocking news to hear, especially from abroad...

저는 중국이랑 태국계 미국 사람이에요

"I'm a Chinese-Thai-American"

I walk into class on the first day and immediately a kid looks at me and asks "Zhongguoren?" That is, "Chinese?" (or "Are you Chinese?" shortened to a single word) I laughed and explained that I was a Chinese American, and that I could speak a little bit of Mandarin but that the Chinese that I spoke with my father was Cantonese.

It's a pretty interesting experience learning Korean in Korea as neither a Chinese or Japanese person (as most Sogang students are) or even another type of Asian, and not as a 재미 교포 chaemi kyopo (a Korean American) but as "another type of Asian American." Being in Sogang class, people will assume I'm an Asian learning Korean. Once they learn that I'm American, they will assume that I'm a kyopo. On the streets, when they hear that I don't speak Korean fluently, they will think I'm a kyopo. So these days, I've adopted explaining to people from the first time I meet them that I am American but not Korean-American.

Not to mention, people are much more impressed by your Korean if you're not Asian. I was eating samgyupsal with my friend Greg, who is white, and also from New York. After the ajumma brought us our food, she sat down and said to my friend "Wow, you speak Korean really well!" After a bit of conversation with her, he pointed to me and said to her "You know he's not Korean either?" and I said "Yeah, I'm Chinese American." The ajumma gave a dismissive "uh huh" and turned back to him to continue talking. I've gotten used to it so I'm not really offended, but I think it's interesting how the coolness factor of knowing a certain language varies not really by ethnicity, but rather by race.

I also had my first experience at a 찜질방 jjimjilbang (Korean sauna) the other day with Sneha and two of her friends Janelle and Tessa. Amusingly, as we were walking to the 찜질방, we passed a bar called
That would be "Osama" haha. I think it was a Japanese bar since there were Japanese words above the sign, but it was amusing haha. As with many Korean facilities, there are separate floors for males and females to go to first, in order to change and bathe in the 목욕탕. I haven't quite and I don't know if I will work up the courage to bathe naked with random Koreans (let alone with friends)--maybe it's because I'm American that I'm not so comfortable with being naked in front of everyone haha. Regardless, after changing I went to the sauna area to meet up with Sneha and co. and we sat in several sauna rooms. I don't know how much I actually like sitting in a sauna and sweating profusely, but it's a nice bonding experience to just relax with other people in an environment that's made for relaxing and release. I was considering taking pictures but worried how my camera would react to extreme temperature changes ^^.

Yesterday I met my first language partner yay! Apparently it's not sketchy here in Korea to meet people through the internet so I've been using www.hanlingo.com , a language exchange website to meet language partners. Her name was 문정 Moon Jeong and she was very sweet ^^, very eager to help me with my Korean. She's currently attending an English hagwon (schools designed to teach specific subjects, such as English) and is a beginning English speaker, so it'll be interesting helping her with her English :).

So my teachers seem pretty fun and sweet. 신효원 Shin Hyo Won 선생님 is my writing teacher--she seems nice, although I'm not fully sure what to make of her yet. 구은미 Ku Eun Mi 선생님 is my listening and speaking teacher--she's very fun. Sarcastic and has the flair of a young teacher and has a great sense of humor. My reading teacher is 최연재 Choe Yeon Jae 선생님 who seems very sweet and motherly. I'm a little upset at the class size though, which is 16. It'd be nice if the number were lower so that there'd be some focus ㅠ_ㅠ. As usual, most of the class is Chinese or Japanese, but there is one woman from Russia, one from Belgium, a girl from Taiwan, and a girl from Thailand. If our class were smaller it'd be make for easier bonding...but hopefully that'll develop over time.

Okay and now some picture time ^^. Last week Bob and I (mostly Bob) attempted some cooking! 순두부, a silken tofu stew and 계란찜, a steamed egg dish. They turned out pretty well :), though the 순두부 was lacking a bit of flavor. Someone once told me that the reason 순두부 tastes good is MSG...maybe that's what we were missing hahaha. But the next time we'll probably experiment with other things (maybe using gochujang--spicy pepper paste instead of chili powder), for example.
The ingredients!
Bob minces the garlic and scallions.
The ingredients after being prepared.
Added the chili powder, tofu, clams, and some seaweed-flavored water.
Mmm check that steam as more ingredients were added.
And the final product!
Here's the 반찬 banchan (side dishes) that we put next to it, like a real Korean meal :D.
And the whole setup!
And that was 계란찜 from the next morning with two yummy oranges next to it. I realize that I really don't have much fruit here T_T.

더워 더워 더워

"Hot hot hot" being the title meaning. I'm really glad that I decided to come in Korea for the fall, winter, and spring (yay experiencing the other seasons!) considering that summer here is unbearably hot...and rainy, a very unpleasant combo. With lack of classes still going on (thank God they're starting next week--I've been horribly bored) part of me wants to hang out with the friends I have made so far, but part of me wants to just stay in when the sun is beating and making everything unpleasant...well, at least fall is arriving soon :). So because of that I don't have much to say for this week.

Looking back at my last post title is pretty ironic, because these past two days I've had food poisoning and did end up throwing up twice >_<. Very unpleasant experience--possibly from not grilling some meat enough at one of those Korean BBQ places, or something else, I don't really know. But I'm recovering now! Mm what did I do this week? Saw some friends who were just in Korea for the week--my friend Silvia who I haven't seen for about two years and for anyone who knows Sei in Morse College, I saw her too :)! She had just arrived in from Taiwan also on the Light Fellowship! We ended up eating at a delicious 순두부 place which I mentioned in this blog from last summer too. I always enjoy it when the waiters arrange the 반찬 in such a colorful manner haha:
Afterwards was yummy 팥빙수. Personally I like it unmixed or anything but other people like to mash it up:
Personally I think the mashed-up one looks like vomit ;) (hm, I should probably stop having a vomit-themed blog).
Blast from the past--Chikae and Greg from last year, yay! We were talking about how Asian people really drink like no water. In a picture from early on in my blog I have a picture of Korean cups, which are at least 3 times smaller than American cups. Greg and I could not fathom how Koreans, who 1) eat spicy foods 2) eat salty foods 3) live in a hot environment and 4) drink a lot, can live on such little water...Chikae (who is Japanese) thought it was amusing that our cups in America are so much bigger haha. And of course, at the restaurant, Greg and I had to get up at least 5 times to refill our cups while she didn't get up even once. Of course, maybe we need to drink so much water because we're spoiled on such large cups of water. Hm.
After eating here we went to a pizza place, but not for the pizza haha. It was the only place I've ever seen that actually had W2,000 coffee, with most places serving coffee for between W4,000-6,000, which might as well be a meal! Ridiculous how much coffee is, but I can't argue that sitting at a cafe with friends while talking or studying for a final is lots of fun because cafe atmospheres here are great :). I have to admit, though, that seeing the brick walls and tabasco sauce and parmesan cheese made me really itch to have a pizza. Alas, I've still gotta wait for my money to go through :(, but once it does I'll feel less guilty about spending money on random things haha.
Waffles seem to be really really popular here, and I don't blame them--I miss waffles and pancakes so much and as soon as I get my money I'll be willing to spend it on these yummy but delicious dishes :). Of course, there are also the W1000 ones in the subway which are delicious as well. Mmm, now I feel like I've gotta get some haha. I was talking with my friends about how it would be great if there were an IHOP here and how they would make so much money! Well, my friends and I decided to search "IHOP Seoul" on google. Well we got this:

"I had an wonderful time at the IHOP Seoul Meeting. I really felt Jesus actually touch my heart, and this feeling was shared with many of my friends who were there also. ...

After searching a bit more, we found out that IHOP here is the "International House of Prayer." Boo, isn't it the INTERNATIONAL house of pancakes? Totally should be in Seoul :(.

Alas, maybe I'll try "One Tree Hill" (I really do wonder if that's ripped off the TV show name...), a new place down the street that was not here last summer that serves pancakes and waffles.

Wow, this was probably one of the most mundane and boring posts I've written. Sorry everyone, let's hope next week is more eventful ㅠ.ㅠ (Korean smileys are fun).

토할 것 같다...

First of all, forgive any blurry photos--the focus on my lens is unfortunately broken :( so I can't focus that well.

I think I'll start using Korean in my titles for this blog :). The line above was said by one of the Korean girls, Yuna, who I went with to Lotte World with, one of the largest indoor amusement parks in the world, when we rode one of those "tea cup" like rides haha (phew, what an embedded sentence). It means "I think I'm going to throw up" xP.

But I'll get back to Lotte World later! Not much happened this week--lots of settling down. I finally have a cell phone yay! And Bob and I got shelves delivered to us! So no more piles of clothes lying on the floor where the ants can get to them u_u. We spent hours on Saturday walking around Namdaemun Market, trying to find shelves, and people looked at us like we were crazy when we asked if they knew where we could buy shelves haha. The next day, we went to a 재활용 (recycling) center, which is apparently like Salvation Army...and found out it was closed T_T. But shortly after that, we went to Ahyeon Market and lo and behold, tons and tons of shelves (that all looked the same, not to mention)! Now we know where to go if we need furniture :).

On Sunday Bob, Dana, and I celebrated Sneha's birthday, another Yalie who's living here for a year! Bob got this adorable monkey cake for her, of whose destruction you can watch in picture sequence :D!

진짜 인정없네...hahaha. In other words, how cruel! :P But it was delicious :D.

Also a hilarious discovery made by Bob

If you look at the girl in the green shirt, that would be 리엔 (which sounds like "LeAnn" to me) from CHINA. Look at the book she's holding--not only is it RED, but it says MARX on it. Hahaha oh Sogang. How we love you.

I also had my first experience at a DVD bang yesterday. The concepts of bangs (pronounced bahng) is actually pretty cool. They're private rooms where you get to do a multitude things with friends--examples being noraebangs, for karaoke, board game bangs, to play board games, and as mentioned, DVD bangs, to watch movies with friends on a big screen. The couches you get to lie down on are actually pretty luxurious and reallyyyy comfortable! It's pretty great. Now you just have to erase from your mind the fact that some people use DVD bangs to hook up in and then you can enjoy your movie :P. Sneha, Dana, Bob, and I watched "Seducing Mr. Perfect" which apparently became famous for its usage of each character responding to each other in their respective languages (so the protagonist female, played by Uhm Jung-Hwa, speaks in Korean while the protagonist male, played by Daniel Henney--a famous half Korean, half British actor, responds in English, because he can't speak Korean). Personally I think it's an odd concept, and it's sort of weird that an actor can make it big in Korean cinema despite not speaking a word of Korean...a bit hegemonistic in my opinion. Dana and I were ranting about the fact that he doesn't speak Korean and is super arrogant in the movie, basically being in the movie only for being a pretty face haha.

But anyway, on Tuesday, I went to Lotte World, as I mentioned, with Bob, four of his friends that he met on Sogang's Gyeongju trip, and two of those friends' friends.
Meet Margaret 마가렛, Yuna 윤아, Hyeonmi 현미, William 윌리엄, Semun 세문, Donghwa 동화, and Bob 로버트!

Despite Lotte World being an indoor amusement park, we all still sweated like pigs when waiting in lines, which were often not very well air-conditioned...all lines should totally have seats in them--that would at least make the experience somewhat more comfortable :). What's also funny is that in Lotte World soooo many people were wearing these silly bunny ears or bows that they were selling, including the guys too haha.
이쁘죠? It's pretty isn't it? Hahaha. It's interesting what's more "acceptable" in different cultures, in that you won't be made fun of for it.
It's also great to see nuns having fun in an amusement park as well :D. Not to mention this nun's amazing visor. So if you read my previous posts from last summer, you'll know there's a whole culture of middle-aged Korean women called "ajummas 아줌마." Ajummas are well-known for having a distinct style of dress, including permed hair, a flowery shirt, bright pants, and VISORS. Now this nun has a particularly intense visor haha, one of the more intense ones I've seen for sure.
More wonderful examples of Engrish--Drunken Basket hahaha. That was the name of the teacup ride we took. And I guess it's a fairly apt name. After all, the spinning made Yuna say the line that's the namesake of this post hahaha.

All in all, although I'd have to say Lotte World cannot match up to Six Flags, I definitely had a lot of fun, plus it was awesome meeting Korean people, yay :D! Let's take a moment, though, and note the similarities between Lotte World's design and Disney World hahaha.
Design, blueness, the lights that come up at night, and...two characters that look strangely like raccoon versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse (note the bow on the female squirrel)? Hahaha oh Korea :).

Back to the East

And I'm back in Korea! :D Thank you lots to the Light Fellowship!

So it's been a long year since I last updated, and looking back on my posts, I realize how silly I sound when I blog haha. But that's okay, I'm sure I'll look back on this year's posts too and laugh at myself.

And now I'm really here, for a whole 9 months too. Phew, that's pretty ridiculous--it'll be triple the time I was here last year, not to mention the longest I've been away from home, by far, but I'm sure I'll learn a lot of life lessons, and of course, greatly improve my Korean (hopefully :D). I've also found out recently that the Department of Defense rates Korean as the hardest language for English speakers for learn (a Category V language, which includes no other language in their list), requiring 75 to 88 weeks to learn to proficiency (not even fluency).

Wonderful.

What have I gotten myself into? Well, I solace myself with the thought that after Korean, any future languages I learn will be a walk in the park :), maybe. I had my interview today for placement into Sogang University's language program and I absolutely blew it. Just before it, I had lunch with my friend 민걸 who I hadn't seen since last summer (he doesn't speak English) and I felt really really confident about my Korean after talking to him. But I entered the room and absolutely froze and sweated profusely (gross, I know) from nervousness! Not only did I completely blank out on responding but the way I formed my sentences were so horribly poor that I felt like I belonged in Level 1! Well, at least I can't fall back into Level 3 since I graduated from it. So I placed into Level 4, despite doing a second year of Korean after doing Level 3 while studying Level 4 with Angela 선생님's help. Ah well, I guess at least I'll know all the material. I also have to get used to speaking in Korean again (gosh three months working in a baby lab and not speaking a word of Korean to anyone can really deteriorate your ability!). Hopefully these two weeks I have before classes start will gear me up for class at least, if not a chance to advance to Level 5 (which may be too scary anyway).

But backtracking a bit, I should probably give some background. My flight was pretty awesome--I had the wonderful luck of having 3 seats all to myself (a couple was next to me, but they moved to other seats--did I offend them? I don't know). So I lay down over all of them and slept for a good 6 or 7 hours, effectively conquering my jetlag (or so I think =]).

I'm staying in an apartment near Hyundai Department Store with another Light Fellow, Bob, whose blog you can read here: http://bobinseoul.blogspot.com

It's pretty nice! Fairly spacious, with all the amenities that we really need. I'll take some pictures and upload them some time soon. Only problem is for some reason we have a lot of ants. We don't even know where they're coming from, considering we don't have any food. Oh well, better than cockroaches or mosquitoes. Hopefully they'll go away and we won't have to call an exterminator...I don't even know how we would begin to explain wanting an exterminator in Korean hahahaha.

Setting up my bank account was pretty ridiculous, considering there's SO much bank terminology I barely understand in English, let alone in Korean. But at least I understood the most important points and I did a lot of smiling and nodding :). I don't know if even a year here will allow me to understand bank jargon (in any language ;]). Next up is getting my cell phone plan...which will require me to get an alien registration card first. Great. Official business and logistics never cease to be the bane of my existence!

Well, it's time for me to meet up with Heeseung, Tiffany (two girls from my Korean 132/142 class) and our first semester TA Sally for dinner! Yay!

Edit: Okay here are some pictures of my room with Bob. As you can see, it's much larger than my 하숙집 last year :).

Random lonely plant that the last tenants left behind...
탈모 means hair loss, so I guess we're near a hair loss health clinic or something XD.

Lotsa luggage strewn around--we're getting shelves soon!

And because Engrish is amazing: this seems to be a photocopy from an English-learning book that Bob found (I guess it was left behind by the last tenants). You can click the picture to see the awesome conversation and see that despite all the normal comparisons, the last one just had to be "AIDS and the Common Cold"!

And some more Engrish for fun :D.