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!