Photo Update

 While I'm at it, here's a glimpse of what I've been doing and discovering around Busan, more or less in chronological order. I'm really spoiled to be in Busan; there is a good balance of things to do and accessibility. The photos are really random, but they capture some very precious memories for me. Enjoy!

Korea has no shortage of adorable places like these, which I have been so excited to discover. Even if they are expensive, it is nice just to know that one lives in a place charming enough to have little shops like these all over. Red Velvet is a cupcake shop and the image below is of a bakery. Both are in Nampo-dong, Busan. 

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Studying in Paris Baguette Café and playing with the mirrored ceiling.

A common scene for us.

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Despite our ridiculous rental gear and beginner vests,
skiing for the first time was quite fun. It wasn't even too cold!

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I was first told to check out this neighborhood, Gamcheon Cultural Village (감천 문화 마을) for a Korean class homework assignment, but enjoyed it so much that I ended up going back. It is a village in Busan that has been, and continues to be, decorated by artists. The people who live there do not seem to be wealthy, but the beautiful artsy vibe of their community draws plenty of "local tourism." There is even a scavenger hunt set up by the community center to find several specifically decorated areas within the village.

Walls are painted with arrows like this to designate the paths through the village.

Art works like these are installed along the paths

Some buildings are unoccupied and turned into scavenger hunt

destinations like this one. Here you could post a note on the wall.

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Having lots of fun in Taekwondo class

while waiting for the professor to arrive :)

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On the last day of first grade with some of the girls from our class.
So many wonderful memories in that classroom


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Making chocolates for our friends for Valentines Day

Catching Up

So, I have once again proven to you all that I am not so great at blogging. Thanks to the suggestions of Aunt Beverly and Gail ♥ I am finally getting around to telling you about Christmas and some other somewhat recent events.

So, everyone, 새해 복 많이 받으셨어요? Did you have a good New Years? (the Korean actually translates roughly to, "Did you receive a lot of New Years luck?").  New Years in Korea is celebrated twice, January 1 New Years and Lunar New Year.  I moved in with a new host family at the end of December, so it turned out that I spent Christmas with my first host family and both New Years with my second (current) family.

I was happy to be able to go to church on Christmas morning. I really, really enjoy going to church on Christmas Eve, but that wasn't possible at our church here. There was service in morning of the 25th, so my friends and I went. After that, I went home, had lunch, and went out with family for the day. We went shopping and to 노래방 (karaoke) and ate 호떡 (this) and saw a movie. And it seemed that the rest of the city had the same plan for the occasion. I got the impression from friends that most people here view Christmas as a day off school/work (we went to school as usual on the 24th and 26th) and that New Years is celebrated as more of a family holiday.

I left class early on New Years eve to have dinner with family (mom, dad, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, Grandma, and the exchange student who had lived in this house before me). We went to a rather fancy restaurant, ate a bunch of meat and kimchi (extremely delicious), and came home to play games. New Years was really, really fun. And in the new year, according to Korea, I'm 19 years old (still 17 according to the rest of the world, see Korean age system).

Today we ended "방학." "방학" means "school vacation," but it is not truly "school vacation" for most students. My school classmates had the opportunity (and several took it) go to school during vacation, which is still a "break"because they went for 5 hours, instead of 13. Other kids went to academies, did self-study, or got part-time jobs. I kept busy with Korean, Taekwondo, and Samulori (traditional drumming) classes (which are not held at our school) and played with the other exchange students. School started again for 2 weeks in February to end the school year and there was then another Spring vacation before we changed grades this past week. I missed my school friends during vacation, but it was really nice to have free time and the chance to explore the city.

We celebrated Lunar New Year (설날, Seollal) between February 9-11, which was an even bigger celebration than January 1st Lunar New Year. At that time there was another exchange student staying in our home for a few days because she was not able to travel with her host family to their celebration. In the morning the two of us dressed in our 한복 (hanbok, traditional clothes) and attended in the family's memorial ceremony for our father's parents. The women didn't actually do anything in that ceremony; we just waited until the men had carried it out. Then we disassembled the arrangement of foods that had been part of the ceremony and ate 떡국 (ddeok-guk, rice cake soup) because it is said that one must eat that at the Lunar New Year to age a year (this is where the Korean age system comes in). 

The children in our family then performed 세배 (saebae, Korean bowing). The tradition of saebae is that children bow to their elders and then the adults say some words to the children (like, "be happy and healthy in the new year") and then the children receive some 세뱃돈 (saebaet-don, bowing money). We also say "새해 복 많이 받으세요" as we bow. That means "Receive much good luck in the New Year." The exchange students all also had some chance to wear our hanbok and bow to our host Rotary clubs. Even though the New Year celebration days are over, we went to bow to a Rotary host club not long ago. We had to ride the bus from Taekwondo class and walk through a metro station while wearing hanbok to go to where we were bowing (the locker room at Taekwondo was the only logical place to change into our hanbok). That was funny and somewhat uncomfortable because the vast majority of Koreans don't usually wear hanbok (most kids our age don't even own one), so you can imagine the stares and surprised comments we (9 foreign teenagers) got while wearing ours. Not that we didn't look totally ridiculous trying to board a bus, climb metro station stairs, or even walk without tripping over our big poofy skirts. Nonetheless, I really do enjoy wearing my hanbok and this was a fun Seollal experience. 

So as far as what is happening really recently, school started again on Monday. I'm now in second grade high school (like 11th grade in America). It's good to be back in our school. School gives me something to do, forces me to study, provides a solid chance to speak Korean, and is just a really great place in general. So far, I like second grade much more than first grade. The classes are more interesting (perhaps because I can understand them more!!). We are learning, among other subjects, Japanese, Hanja (Chinese characters), and Korean literature (which has so far been sort of like history of Korean language/Linguistics and it's really fascinating to me).

Also, I got back from 서울 (Seoul, capital of S. Korea) a week ago. Some friends and I got the chance to spend a long weekend there. It was my first time in Seoul and I was amazed by the vastness of the city (suddenly Busan seems very small). We had a lovely time exploring Seoul and meeting up with people we know there. I got to see the Blue House (Korean equivalent of the White House), the Samsung Museum of Art, and the YG and SM buildings (for those familiar with K-Pop). We saw some (sort of) b-boys performing in Hongdae and we made a night trip to Namsan Tower. We also got to shop in Namdaemun and Myungdong. It was a great experience to go to Seoul, but we were very tired by Sunday afternoon. When we got back to Busan, we saying, "It's good to be home," "Isn't our metro system so simple?" and, "Wow, it's great to hear 사투리 (dialect) again." Seoul is fabulous, but Busan is home.

And thus marks half a year in Korea. I've been here for over six months, really almost seven. And I will return to America in just a few months. So much has happened, yet it still feels like there is so much left to do! The way I feel, the way a lot of exchange students feel right now, is a collection of emotions that is is hard to understand or explain. We miss our home countries and family and friends, but at the same time, our host countries and cities are also very much "home." We have family and friends and school and memories here. Actually, we kind of have totally separate lives in our host countries. I want to see my family and friends in America, but it is hard to think about leaving Busan and the family and friends I have here. I left America knowing I'd be back within a year. A return to Busan is a lot less predictable. It is hard to believe time could pass so quickly...It is hard to believe such an amazing year could ever even happen.

Me in my 한복 (hanbok, traditional Korean dress)
at 설날 (Seollal, Lunar New Year)

오랜만이죠?! It's been a while!

Well, hi there. First of all, sorry, this post is so overdue. Life is immensely busy and fun, so hopefully it's excusable.

I'm not quite sure where to begin, as it has been over two months since the last entry. Which means I've been in Korea for over 3 months! That's what I'm thinking about a lot lately, the fact that exchange is about a third over and where is the year going?? It's scary to think about it that way. In some ways it still feels like I just got here. 

To anyone reading this who may be considering going on exchange, may I offer one piece of advice? If you can avoid it, try not to have to do college applications half way across the world from your school and parents. That is my most recent and on-going excuse for being so undedicated to this blog. It's not impossible to apply from abroad, but it's hard, I'll say that.

Other than that, exchange is a dream. Yes, there are times when I just want to sleep or be alone or speak French. And there are times when stupid little things annoy me or I just want to give up for the day at 10AM because I can't even understand my math teacher's Konglish (...today). However, I promise you, I LOVE KOREA. Sometimes I forget for a delusional moment I'm a foreigner because I just feel so at-home here. I think almost every day that this is just where I am supposed to be right now. Like back when I thought my name was spelled ㄱㄹㅐㅅ (really unfortunately incorrect use of the Korean alphabet), God was watching me, thinking ahead 2 years, when He knew I'd be here. I just can't imagine being anywhere else right now.

So, what's new? Everything~ Some highlights of what has been keeping me busy in the past two months (definitely not a complete list):

• Korean Class (so glad to have this, really. Learning Korean would be slow without it). Now some of us are studying for the TOPIK (Korean language proficiency test), which will be in January and April. 
• Taekwondo Class - Yes, I'll admit it, I like this class. The idea of martial art is sooooo not my personality, but the class is fairly casual considering the content and we have college student teachers in addition to our amazing professor, which makes it all a lot more fun. It's also nice to have goals towards which to work which aren't "memorize the next 80 vocabulary words, quiz on Wednesday (ahem...that's tomorrow)." 
• Lantern festival in Jinju city...so beautiful. We decorated a lantern and sent it into the river.
• Saw a movie at the Busan International Film Festival. That was kind of a big deal, even if the movie was in Chinese (with subtitles, including English!). 
• K-Pop (Korean pop music) concert! This was so much fun, especially since my friend and I got our tickets less than 4 hours before the concert started (thanks a million to our Korean professor!) and still had fairly okay seats - disregarding the super crazy fangirls beside us. (If you know K-Pop, it was Teen Top, IU, 동방신기 (TVXQ), DJ DOC, Leessang, and 용감한 녀석들 (Brave Guys??)). It was a fun experience, but the fangirls, honestly, were frightening. I wouldn't be surprised if the girl behind lost us her voice indefinitely from that night. Anyhow, it was cool to see some super famous people there, albeit at a distance. 
• Fireworks festival. Oh. My. Goodness. Stunning. The organization behind this kind of event has got to be overwhelmingly detailed. It was just so beautiful. And then there was the crowd afterwards. We literally waited a half hour for people to clear so we could safely cross the street. And then we hung out for a while at a coffee shop and tried to ride the metro home. We gave up that idea after waiting in the metro station for maybe 45 minutes and still getting nowhere close to  being able to take a train, and rode a bus home, instead. The fireworks festival is that amazing.
• Saw a "Baritone Recital," at one point in which a bunch of middle- to senior-aged men started square dancing and then imitating Gangnam Style) on stage while singing a totally unfitting song. Cute~!!
• Experienced 수능 (sooneung; Korean infamously tough college entrance exam) day. It was a really big event; the schools were serving sticky rice cakes (because it's said that eating sticky foods will help you "stick" to the university you wish to attend) and the day before the test school ended in the morning, after having one class and then cheering on the third-years as they left school after their last real school day. My (host) brother took the test that next day (the 8th of November), so our family drove him to school in the morning. There were police officers and soldiers everywhere and traffic was fairly heavy. Outside of the school on one side of the street, all the test-takers were lined up, waiting to enter the school. On the other side of the street, controlled by police, there were crowds of students cheering for them. Apparently, there were police cars reserved for escorting test-takers who were running late to school. Also, to create a non-distracting testing environment, there were no airplanes taking off or landing that day. The sooneung is no SAT.
• Going on mini adventures with the other exchange students. This city has fabulous public transportation (no comment on the individual driving culture or lacking significance of red lights), so the exchange students end up having wonderful adventures because we can safely, quickly and easily go by ourselves almost anywhere in the city. It's super cool because we have found areas that we like and have nick-named and we come across little unique places, like vintage clothing stores, a shop that sells ice cream waffles and a café that serves amazing bubble (tapioca) teas. 
• Going to Jeju-do (Jeju Island) for 4 days later this week! I've heard it's gorgeous there~ Not sure what else to expect, except rain and cold weather. But I'll take photos!

I'm having fun. I'm so tired, but really, really happy. Exhausted bliss? Precisely. Especially since I slept for a half an hour on my desk with my Hello Kitty pillow blanket before school started this morning (I swear, I'm 17 (or 18, if you go by Korean age)). It seems that Korea can have this kind of effect on a person; suddenly it's totally normal for a high school student to have a teddy bear on her assignment book (guilty) or socks with bunny rabbits on them (...yep). Even some boys/men wear sweatshirts and socks with bear designs. Last week our social studies teacher wore a sweatshirt with a rubber duck design. And nobody seems take a person any less seriously for doing so. I digress...

Everything is going well here and I hope the same is true for all of you where you are. Anyhow, I really need to sleep now. Have a great day, night, morning, evening, etc, everybody!

잘 지내세요. Take care~

One Month!!

Hooray for 4 weeks in Korea!! But seriously, if the next 9 months are going to go by at this pace, I'm quite afraid to blink. 

It’s Sunday, which means there’s an entire week to talk about here. And a lot has happened! First, we (the exchange students) started Korean class! There are two classes, separated by those who use the Korean alphabet and have some prior knowledge of the language, and those who do not. I’m in the former category, and our class is quite small- only 4 students and the professor. One of our classmates is a student from China, which is fabulous because our only common language is Korean, so we have no choice but to make the most of what we learn in class together if we want to talk to him. He and I had a (simple) conversation while waiting for the bus after class, entirely in Korean (by necessity). It must have seemed so ridiculous-two foreigners speaking Korean-but the fact that we had no other choice was just so cool. 

It’s not like that in school. Almost everyone speaks more English than I do Korean, and several people will just automatically use English with me. But I so badly want to learn Korean and the best way to do so, of course, is to converse. That’s frustrating because it’s hard to have much of a conversation now with what I know and understand. It’s hard to start a conversation, next to impossible to join one, but somehow, quite easy to finish one. I’m impatient to get to the point at which speaking Korean comes naturally, but not quite sure how to reach that level of fluency. Sometimes I find myself thinking, ‘How can I ever figure out what my friends are saying if I simply don’t understand? I cannot just keep asking, “What are you saying?” And it’s not as if, without even having context clues, that sentence will suddenly make sense.’ Or maybe it is. Who knows. Babies learn languages like that, don’t they? But I’m 17 and this is my third language. That's why we have Korean class.  Anyhow, some of my homeroom classmates invited me to meet them for lunch yesterday at a buffet. Among the seven of us, we used maybe 20 plates and just as many cups. And I had mango salad!!! It has pretty much become a rule that if I have a chance to eat mango, I will because it’s such a rare (and usually quite expensive) opportunity here. I digress.

So, back to Korean class (we will also learn Taekwondo, but our uniforms have not come yet, so we didn’t have that class this week). Class ends around dinner time, so twice earlier this week, the exchange students ate out together. No, rewind. That sounds way too fancy. Actually, we wandered around the area near where we have class until we found a little tiny store selling various types of extremely cheap and equally unhealthy chicken. After eating dinner (which cost us around $1.50 each, on average), we were given strawberry soft serve ice cream by the man who runs the store. Yum, yummy yum!!  After the next day of class, we returned to the same place and he gave us not only ice cream, but samples of a very spicy something and fried chicken gizzard. It seems that as exciting as it was for us to find this nice guy selling cheap food, it was even more entertaining for him to see what he could get away with feeding a group of young, clueless foreigners. We have so much fun!

Earlier this week, we had another fun experience that I'm kind of dying to tell you about. The exchange students went to a puppy cafe! Do we have these in America? I'm actually not sure. It was on the second floor of a pet store and there were a bunch of dogs and a few cats there. We paid ₩8000 (just over $7) each to enter and then we could play with the animals and have smoothies and refreshments. Here's a photo of a dog that I really liked. My dad has two dogs of the same breed, so I was so happy to see this dog! It was a puppy...so cute :)

Today was a rainy day, so I stayed at home for the most part. I’ve been out and about almost constantly for the past week and a half at school, Korean class, and with friends, so for once I didn’t really feel like having any plans. And that was fine. My host brother isn’t feeling well, so he was home from academy and we just stayed together. We studied and watched TV and then we took a walk to look at houses in our area (we live in an apartment, so he was showing me other housing). This week, the exchange students start Taekwondo class, so I’ll let you know how that goes. But, I’m seriously tired now, so if you’ll excuse me, I might just go to sleep. Take care, everyone~

Update re: Nothing in Particular

Hello, everybody~

It's been a few days, so I'm writing this post, even though there's nothing specific I intend to talk about.

School is going well. It's still tiring and classes are becoming boring. But it's fun, anyway because of between-class time and friends.

This week the exchange students start Korean and Taekwondo classes. I am very excited for that, even though it means leaving school early. I am so ready to learn Korean more quickly. It's frustrating not being able to start or maintain a conversation, or know the vocabulary to comment on something. My problem is that I really enjoy learning grammar (that's probably a problem in more ways than one), but I never know which vocabulary words to learn. So, even if I know how to conjugate the verbs and create the structure of a sentence, my limited vocabulary only takes me so far. Hopefully Korean class will help. Also, I'm interested to try Taekwondo. As we have established, sports are not my strong point. However, I've never tried anything even close to martial art, so I'll keep you posted on that.

Today we ate a lot of "Western" food. 엄마 (host mom) and I went to Lotte Department Store for lunch and ate at a super cute Italian restaurant. It had a garden-y style: pink and green colors and chandeliers and fencing and "pavilions" and flowers and it was just so lovely. Charlotte and Olivia, if you are reading this, you would have adored the place! I really, really wanted to take a picture, but there were a ton of people there, so it seemed that it would be weird to do so. Restaurants and cafes here are often extremely well-decorated and creative. Like the cafes in dramas - they actually do look like that. We had two different kinds of spaghetti. So yummy. So familiar. For dinner our family went to Pizza Hut. They have those here. I have never even gone to Pizza Hut in America, though, so this was a totally new experience. In my French class this past school year, our teacher showed us photos of pizza from around the world (can't quite remember how that topic came up in class) and she pointed out Korean pizza to me, suggesting that I try it, as it seemed interesting. Indeed, interesting it is. There were options such as "bbq chicken pizza," "bulgogi (Korean beef recipe) pizza," pizza with "cheese bites" as the crust, pizza drizzled with creamy dressings, etc. Ah, here we go:  Google in Korean images of "pizza"(피자 - almost same pronunciation as "pizza"). Suddenly American pizza seems somewhat healthy. Hehe. Also worth noting, I used a fork twice today! They almost don't exist here, it seems. So, that means that in the past three weeks, I've used a fork exactly three times (the other time being in my first few days here when I tried to eat super slippery noodles with chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant and it just wasn't working, so my host father asked a waitress to give me a fork).
Well, that's a lot about food. Somehow I've been very hungry this weekend, even though I've mostly just been studying - Hooray for correspondence English class.

And now I'm tired. Sorry this wasn't more intriguing. Well, goodnight, good morning, good afternoon, whatever it is in your part of the world!

Korean High School!! ♥

Last Monday was my first day of Korean school! It was the beginning of the second semester (school starts in February here, I think). I am in first grade high school, which is the equivalent of 10th grade in the US. Since I'd be a senior in high school in the US, it's backwards sequentially, but academically, maybe not so much. 

School starts at 8AM. Sort of. That's when we have to be there. But we end up spending 30, 45 minutes socializing before the teacher comes in. Then we have class. I copy notes from the girl next to me and spend the time not understanding 95% of what the teacher says. It's very tiring, actually, not understanding. But school is interesting in so many other ways that I can't say I'm entirely bored yet. 

Korean education is not like American education. You probably guessed that. High school (and middle school) students study very diligently and stay at school until 9PM or so. They might go to academies after that and sleep at 1 or  2AM. (By the way, I don't do that. I'd expire). That's what it seems that most people think about when considering Korean school. So...

...Because of that preconception, the culture of the school is really, really surprising. It's not at all bad, just not what I had expected. It's very comfortable. One of my friends said, "Our houses are not our homes. [School] is our home." When you spend 13 hours each day at school, mostly in the same room, that feeling is likely very valid. And it shows. Girls (our school is separated by girls and boys, so our class is all girls) use the classroom essentially as a bedroom. They bring pillows, blankets, makeup kits, cell phone chargers, and flat irons to school. During class, 25-30% of the students are texting, applying makeup, or sleeping. And between classes is when it gets really interesting. For example, twice I've seen girls giving and receiving hair cuts in the classroom. Maybe trim is a better word, but you get the point. 

In school, we wear school uniforms (교복). Almost every middle and high school in Korea has a uniform. Since they are distinct by school, I won't put a picture of mine here. We also wear slippers in school. Not really slippers, but like this: 

....but mine are pink.

We have many classes, as well. For example, we have 4 different science teachers (who each teach a different type of science). However, there are only seven periods each day, so we study each subject 1-4 times per week. So far, the classes that I've understood the most are music, biology (yep, I'm shocked, too), social studies, and English class (Hehe... But it's mostly in Korean, anyway). 

Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, we haven't had a lot of homework yet. In fact my only homework so far has been memorizing math vocabulary and equations and getting a paper signed for class assignments next year. Hopefully I didn't just jinx the good fortune by mentioning it here. Anyway, there may be more homework later because the exchange students will start Korean language class soon. But these days I get home after 5PM and by the time we have dinner and clean up, I'm quite ready to sleep (I don't know Korean very well yet, so just being immersed all day is exhausting) . So, minimal homework is a blessing for now (By the way, I'm guessing that the reason for the lack of school homework is simply that students study really hard on their own, anyway. It seems that the other kids are doing self study after I leave school. That's why they stay there until 9PM). 

I really enjoy school. It's good to be with kids my age (well, sort of, they're 2 years younger, but it doesn't make too much of a difference) and to make friends and speak Korean. My classmates are very nice to me and they don't seem to get annoyed with my cluelessness of Korean or of their school. They share their notes, teach me their language, and hold my hand to show me around the school. And when I can't understand something, many of them speak English to some extent and can try to translate for me. The teachers are also super welcoming and supportive and tolerant of me, which is good, because I'd be lost otherwise. Lately, my math teacher has been giving me basic translations of her lessons so that I can follow along. So, basically what I want to say is that I'm happy and thoroughly enjoying school! 

Baseball!

Well, I don't know if I've ever used baseball and an exclamation point at the same time before. On Sunday evening, the some Rotary students and host parents went to the Busan Lotte Giants baseball game. It was very busy and fun - it would have been more fun if I hadn't been so tired, probably. Anyhow, I'll just post some photos and a very short video. I couldn't get any with me and the other exchange students onto my computer, though.

My host mom and me at the baseball game

People started to hand out orange plastic bags which we blew up
like balloons and tied around our ears.