Busy week....

One week down.... seven to go. Not that I'm counting, I'm having so much fun here. I could stay for the entire summer, and then some if I could.... Been really busy meeting old friends and new. Hasn't left a lot of time for studying, but that doesn't matter because some of my friends barely speak any English and that is more than enough practice for me.

Classes are going well. Our teacher decided today that we're gonna have a research project that we have to present next week. We have to go around and interview 20-30 students around campus and town about our specific topic, then do a speech about our findings. Mine is about tattoos and piercings in Korea, and what today's youth of Korea think about them.

Back tracking a bit... The language partners are so cute and it's so much fun hanging out with them! I've hung out mostly with June (who is Mary's partner), YongHwa (Billy's partner), and YoungMin (Meredith's partner). I finally met mine on Friday and she's really sweet too! Her name is Sena, and she's younger than me which means I don't have to use formal speech with her. I told her she doesn't have to use it with me either, which has made things much simpler. With the other language partners, I always have to use the "yo" form, which gets kinda tiring so it's good I get to drop the "yo" when I talk to her.

Saturday morning we woke up early to go to Hwasung Fortress. I got to see a lot more of it than I did on my birthday two years ago when I was there. It was really pretty, and a couple of the other classes had photo assignments so we took a bunch of crazy photos as usual. That evening, I went to Norebang (karaoke) finally for the first time of the trip! But definitely not the last~ Went with Meredith, Mary, an English teacher Sheila that I met here, and another teacher from Minnesota who works at her school.

Sunday morning I went to MyungDong with Meredith and Mary. We spent the whole day shopping and eating. I bought earrings, a dress, and a top. Then after I went to DongDaeMun to see some Temple U friends, Christine and Joyce. Christine was leaving to go back to the US today, so I had to see her before she left! I took them to the Russian/Central Asian district, and we had some good Russian food for dinner. We had Russian dumplings and Chiz Bis (lamb).

Today after class I met with the RA girl I met my first night. We had lunch and then went to Ulljjang to do sticker photos. Yay for Korean practice! Her English definitely would not have been enough to sustain our conversation, but she's a really nice girl. We didn't make plans to hang out more yet, but I'm sure I'll see her again! After that I met Mary, June, and YongHwa. We just hung out doing homework and chatting. Billy, YoungMin, Meredith, and Chris P came around and we went to eat Jjajangmyun for dinner. I feel like a talk way to much about what I eat for each meal.... but I'm just happy to be able to get such a cheap bowl of good food in this country =D After dinner, we went back to Ulljjang to get more sticker photos! My favorite asian passtime, hah!

CLASS!

For the past couple of months family and friends have been asking me a lot if I feel safe going back to South Korea, or if the government will even send us there, with the current instability in North Korea. As someone with a bit of a "hakuna matata" outlook on life, I never seemed to worry much about that. The security briefing we had yesterday did nothing to change that.

They pretty much reaffirmed what we already knew, but we did get to learn about some general issues with the South Korean economy that I didn't know about before. First was a panel of people briefing us about what the US Embassy will do to help us during our stay here. Then some military guy came out and talked a bit about the strong relationship between the US military and Korean military. He said a bunch of non-politically correct stuff that military guy's are privy to say because it's not their job to sugar coat stuff. He pretty much said not to worry at all about the missiles that are on the news now. If they were aimed at us, they'd prolly hit Taiwan or the Philippines cause the range is too long.

After that, we were given freedom to wander around Seoul. A bunch of us found our way to ChungGyeChon, and walked along it for a bit. It's one of my most favorite places in Seoul. Afterwards, Meredith, Zury, Billy, Damon, and I went for some lunch around the area.

Then we began our mission of the day, which was to get my cellphone working, and to get new ones for the others. I think it took about an hour or two to figure everything out, but we finally got out of there and walked to the Han River, which we were only 15 minutes north of. It's a shame the river is so dirty, because I'm sure it must have been beautiful 50 or more years ago.

Meredith and I met up with SeRyun and Joyce for dinner in Shinsa-dong, which is a really cute area by Apgu-jung. It was a little bit pricy, but we had pretty good pho. It was really good to see Joyce again too after 5 months. She was my roommate in Japan. We got back to Suwon at 11pm exhausted from the heat, and not quite recovered from the jet lag.

Today was the first day of class, and it seemed to go quite well. The teacher seems really passionate, and really enjoys teaching. There's only 8 of us in the class, which is great. I'm happy I got placed in Professor Lee's class and that I belong in Intermediate B with the rest of these guys. Four hours flew by in no time, although I admit by the 4th hour I was looking at my watch quite often. But I can't help that, it's my ADD. I hope I can keep up with the work, 7 weeks of study... 2 big textbooks.... we'll see how it goes.

When class was over, a bunch of the language buddies who were unable to give their CLS people campus tours on Monday went around today and I got to tag along. The more I see of this campus, the more it reminds me of Korea University in terms of beauty and architecture, which makes me miss it there even more. My language buddy is in Mongolia for this entire week (no joke), so I won't be able to meet her until next week.

First couple of days

Sunday morning I woke up kind of kind of tired, but still quite hyper about being back in Korea. Some people suggested going up to Seoul for some shopping and cellphone hunting. I was going to go, but then my friend SeungIl randomly messaged me and asked if I wanted to go to a baseball game. Since I'd never gone before, I immediately said yes. Baseball games in Korea are so different than the US, not because of the way the players play, but the audience. There is so much audience participation, and it seems that every one in the crowd knows the right cheers for when each player comes out onto the field.

The two teams were the Seoul LG Twins and the Daegu Samsung Lions. It's funny that the teams are Twins and Lions but everyone's yelling out LG and Daegu... oh Korea. It seemed that LG was doomed at first, but they managed to pull at 6-5 win at the end. The game was really exciting, but I could only pay attention to about half of it because there was so much excitement in the stands. They were just as amusing to watch.

Afterwards, we went to Shincheon (not to be mistaken for Shinchon), which was pretty cool because I hadn't been to that area before and it seemed like a smaller version of Hongdae. We had some Kamja-tang (potatoe stew) for dinner. SeungIl said that the ability to eat Kamja-tang with chopsticks makes one an expert-chopstick user. I dunno about that! But I guess I'll take the compliment? It is quite difficult though because you gotta dig the meat out between the bones and cartilage.

Monday, we got up bright and early for orientation. Most people got to meet their Kyunghee student buddys that would be our language partners and university guides, but mine was busy and couldn't make it. They introduced our professors to us, and made a presentation about Kyunghee University. I was hoping to get Lee Junho as a professor because there are two intermediate sections. I heard many good things about him as a teacher, and he's also a Korea University professor (where I studied last time), so that's a plus!

After orientation was the dreaded placement test. It totally let all the air out of me, and probably everyone else in the room. More than half of us couldn't read the directions for each section let alone guess what the vocab said! We all thought that we would fail and end up in beginners. But I think the idea is that if you actually did well, you belonged in Advanced. But we didn't find that out til later, and kept complaining to the professor proctoring that it was way too hard. The speaking and writing parts I actually did quite well on.

When it was done, we went to get pictures taken for our school IDs. We met Lindsey and Helen's KHU buddys, and went with them for lunch. After that, we went to a cafe, and Jacqueline and her buddy JungYoon joined us. All of the buddys were from the foreign language department, and JungYoon's major was Russian, so I was quite excited to test out her skills.

At four, we received our textbooks, and me and Meredith went back to her room to attempt to study because we were really excited to get our books! Unfortunately, the minute I got to her room, I totally crashed. After half an hour, I woke up and went back to my room and slept til 2:30am. Now I'm just surfing the net because I can't sleep.

Today we will go to the US Embassy in Seoul for a debriefing. Hope I get to meet the ambassodor!

P.S. KyungHee Suwon campus is SOO beautiful.

An entire day of no sleep...

So on Friday morning we were on the bus and ready to go at 5am. Surprisingly, everyone was on time for this deadline. We arrived at the airport where we were supposed to check ourselves in, but there were issues with that, and they made a whole separate partition to sign in the group of 35. I just happened to be the first in line, so I went up there when they were ready. She said that somehow we were in groups, by alphabetical order, so for the first time, the end of the alphabet got to be first! Me, Zury, Jacqueline, Ezra, and James. R, S, S, V, W (not in that order). It's a good thing we got to the airport REALLY early, cause there would have been a lot of panic otherwise. Our flight didn't leave until 9am.

Actually, even our flight while everyone was on it, was a bit delayed by some storms in Cleveland. We got to San Francisco about a half hour late, and had to run to catch our flight to Korea which was set to leave in 40 minutes. Everyone made it on ok, but even that one was a little bit delayed. A delayed cross-country plane is no fun, a delayed cross-Pacific plane.... 12 hours in the air.... lets just say we were all really happy to arrive in Incheon. I think a slept a total of two hours somewhere along the whole flight. When we arrived, they all checked our temperature to make sure that we weren't bringing Swine Flu in. It was this thermometor that they put against our neck and it electronically read our temperature. I never saw that kind before.

Our in-country advisors came to meet us, and we got on the bus to go to Kyunghee University. The bus ride was a lot faster than I expected, especially since there was evening traffic and rain. Oh yeah, did I mention we came just in time for monsoon season? It should last til about mid-July, but I expected this since I was here two summers ago. But anyways, the bus ride was only about 1 hour and 15 mins, I think? After that, half of us went to go put our luggage away and go eat dinner, and the other half unpacked and just crashed. I decided I was in no position to go out because I was so tired at this point.

I got my stuff unpacked and called my family to let them know that I was still okay. After that, I tried to put my surge protector into the wall, and forgot that if it has 3 prongs, when I press the on switch, bad things happen. Needless to say, our power went out. Jacqueline (who is my roommate!) was in the shower, and I went down to the bottom floor to get the security guard to help us. I brought Meredith along, thinking our combined Korean would help us explain the situation. It didn't because she didn't say two words, and I had to do all of the talking. Everyone stared at her hoping she would be of help because she looked Korean, but that was clearly not the case. I went into the convenience store on the first floor of the dorm, and tried to find someone who could translate the word "electricity" for me because I forgot it. I eventually found two girls who had a dictionary and helped me. Thinking back, I probably should have brought my own down to talk to him. Eventually, he sort of understood what I said, and he came up and turned the power in the room back on. I thanked him and he went back downstairs.

After that, I took a shower and just crashed. Our shower is a bit weird because our whole bathroom is part of the shower. It's kind of confusing, and the faucet and shower head are on one lever that if we forget to switch back after a shower, we might go to wash our hands one day and end up a little more wet than we intended. I think for the most part we have everything figured out. The air conditioning doesn't work, and it is so humid outside. But I did make friends with the RA last night. I spoke to her mostly in Korean, which made me happy cause her English wasn't that good. She'd be a good person to practice with. So the RA told us the best way to get air circulation is to keep the door open at night. I dunno yet if we'll be doing that...

First Day!

Yesterday, my mom and I left the house at about 1pm to drive down to DC. We made it all the way down without much traffic, but got jammed up a bit once we got to the hotel. We're staying at the Renaissance M Street Hotel, and it's really nice here. I met a lot of the people that I've been talking to on facebook from the CLS group for the past couple of months and it felt a bit awkward at first to "re-meet" someone you sort of already met online.

Bernie, a friend of mine who I met at the Temple Japan campus in Tokyo was in Maryland visiting family, and we got to hang out a bit. We went to this Peruvian place for dinner, and it was absolutely delicious. After dinner, we met up with some of the other CLS participants and went to Georgetown to see the campus. It looks really nice there, and is quite close to our hotel.

Afterwards, Meng, Veronika, and I were walking Bernie back to the subway, and right after we dropped her off, this woman stopped us to ask for directions. We didn't know our way around too well, but she wanted to go to Georgetown, which is where we just came from, so we sort of knew how to direct her. She threw us off our groove a bit, and we overshot our hotel a bit on the way back. We finally got back to the hotel, and just crashed.

This morning we had breakfast at 8, and then a full day of orientation. Met a lot more of the last minute people whose planes didn't arrive until last night or this morning. One of the Turkey CLS groups are also with us in the hotel now, so we got to meet some of them at breakfast and morning orientations. They answered a lot of our questions, and seemed really interested in helping us find jobs after we finish CLS and graduate from college. That's really good, considering the economy and how hard it is to find a job as a liberal arts major. One of the panelists was actually from Philadelphia, and went to Girls High School. She's served in the Foreign Services for years, and now has a good job with Public Diplomacy.

NEXT MORNING WE LEAVE AT 5:00AM TO DULLES!

Critical Languages Scholarship

Back in March I was accepted to the Critical Languages Scholarship to study Korean in Suwon, South Korea. I spent my birthday there two years ago, and oddly enough will probably spend my birthday this year there again. It's a kinda boring town, with a nice fortress that's a World Heritage Site, but it's pretty close to Seoul so that's good.

Anyways, back to the scholarship.... it's a program that sends you for free to study a foreign language in hopes of improving the foreign language abilities of Americans. It's a great opportunity because I would not have been able to afford going back to Korea again. I'll be studying intermediate Korean there this time. Last time I studied there in the summer of 2007, it cost me about $10,000. It also helps that the exchange rate is better now than it was two years ago. Last time it was about 915 won to the dollar. Now it's about 1260 won to the dollar.

So if you're interested in applying for the scholarship for next year, here is the info: https://clscholarship.org/home.php

Tomorrow morning I leave for orientation in Washington DC for the trip, and then our flight is first thing Friday morning. I wonder what things will await me when I arrive back in Korea. Something always goes wrong at the very beginning of a trip, and I wonder if it'll happen in DC or Suwon. Last time I got to Korea, I lost my cell phone and got bed bugs on the very first day.