Recent Photos!

"Hip Hop Fairy" - attempt at a costume - thank you for the lovely suggestion my dear roomie!

Club Mansion!!

HORSE HEAD!!!!!!!

This guy's costume is great. Love the gache.

SAMGYUPSAL so delicious.

독도, Halloween, and Love Notes

Hello!

I'm updating in less than two weeks this time!!

Midterms are over and thank goodness! I thought I was going to die. Not really, but I was seriously worried about my grades.

The Korean-Japanese Modern Relations exam was exceedingly specific and difficult, and as such the average grade was in the 70's. Awesome. In case you were all wondering, no, I was not a shining star and did not exceed the average. Guess I'll just have to work harder in the future! Luckily the midterm doesn't actually count that much in that class. Phew.

I got a solid A on my Korean language midterm, which is awesome because that's what I really have to accomplish while I'm here.

The Korean Traditional Music midterm was SUPER easy (seriously 5 short-answer questions and 20 multiple choice) and afterwards the professor unpacked a bunch of 뗙 and coffee that her husband had bought in Germany (but was made in Brazil[?]) so we had a little party. It was delicious and a lot of fun. She let me take an extra rice cake home with me, too. There were three types: injeolmi, mochi, and just like...a square-shaped one with stuff on it whose name I don't know. Anyways, yeah, easy midterm, and I think I'm the only person in the class who bothered learning the names of everything but it didn't matter because she didn't have it written in Hangul anyways (**grumble** that actually made it more difficult**).

On Sunday the 23 I had speaking practice in Insadong, and while I was there my friend Benjamin/Gunhee (can't decide which name I like better) told me about a thing called 독도보홍단 (Dokdo Bohongdan - basically Dokdo program) that allows 30 teams of one foreigner and one Korean native to go on a foreign relations trip to Dokdo, and island that is a disputed territory between Korea and Japan as a result of the fallout from the colonization of Korea by Japan and World War II (Japan's name for it is Takeshima). He told me that he wasn't sure when the deadline was.

On the 25th he called me to tell me that the deadline was THAT NIGHT at midnight and that I had to HURRYYYY and apply if I wanted to have even a chance (apparently hundreds of students applied for it already and were just barely going to squeeze in). He sent me the application and it was in the wrong format (US microsoft word can't handle Hangul sometimes) so he reformatted it and sent it again. I couldn't understand the Korean so he translated it and sent it again. I finally filled it out (the end was two essays) and then he had to translate it all back into Korean (including my essays) and then send it in. He finally emailed in everything by 11:45. It was a close call. He told me not to get my hopes up so I didn't, but on Saturday he called me with the news - WE GOT IN!!!! He made sure to let me know how intense the competition was and how most of his friends didn't get in at all. The trip is three days from November 13th to 15th and two nights, and they're giving us free clothes including shirts and shoes (...? shoes, why?) and there's a 6-hour orientation on November 5th. I'm so excited!! I told me Korean-Japanese Relations professor and he got REALLY excited and asked me to take a lot of pictures and make a presentation when I got back. I will have to take a lot of good notes so that I can remember all of it!

Another thing that follows is that after the trip I have to open up a social networking communication line talking about Dokdo to spread the word to other countries, which means I have to open a new blog, open another twitter, and also a tumblr to profess the facts and verités about the property claims issue of Dokdo island. It'll be fun - maybe I'll become a famous representative!! Just kidding. Also I'm worried that my Japanese friends will be mad at me.

Oh and the best part is that the trip - transportation, housing, food, lectures, clothing, etc. - is all FREE!!! It's like a $1,000 value. I'm so stoked.

Anyways, that's the big Dokdo news.

On Tuesday night (since my exams were finished) I decided to go out for just a little bit with my friends to celebrate. I ended up coming home at around 5 in the morning with absolutely no voice because I'd been singing noraebang on top of having a small cough. It was great. I met some new people and did some good bonding. Anyways...

...now onto - Halloween in Korea!

Traditionally, Halloween has never been celebrated in Korea until recently, and it's really just an excuse for stores to deck out their shelves with jack-o-lanterns and for college kids to dress up in crazy outfits and, of course, drink ridiculous amounts of soju, beer, "tekira" or "hwohdca/podca." I told Bomi and Dayoung about Halloween and they thought that bobbing for apples sounded hysterical, and when I mentioned trick-or-treating, Bomi exclaimed "I saw that in a movie once!" When I heard her say that I think my brain exploded. I went trick-or-treating every year from when I was a little kid in a flower costume 'til I was a high school junior in a Zombie Housewife costume (with the exception of when I was 15 and stayed in to study for my Chemistry exam and pass out the candy). When she said that it was probably the scariest moment of my Halloween. No lie. Anyways, for my halloween costume I had several ideas, one of which was being "sexy Ahjumma." To those of you who didn't know yet, Ahjumma style has a very particular je ne sais quoi to it - if you click this link you'll know what I mean. They're basically a stereotypical Korean middle-aged woman. My korean professor told our class that Korea has three genders - male, female, and ahjumma - just to illustrate my point. [Photo Courtesy of Eric Sellgren's photo blog.] I decided against it, however, because I'm growing a little tired of only having worn costumes with the adjective "sexy" at the beginning since my frosh year of high school, so I decided to be a fairy this year! Yes, I did bring fairy wings with me to Korea, don't ask me why.

Anyways when I told my roommate, a New Orleans native, that I was going to be a fairy she told me that it just wouldn't do, and that I'd have to be a hip-hop fairy. As a very non-swag person, I had to ask her what the heck that even meant and basically I ended up wearing a little white club dress with a white 59Fifty and my white nikes along with my lavender fairy wings and super awesome eye makeup. Much camwhoring ensued.

For Halloween, the Yonsei Global program threw a party at Club Mansion in Hongdae. It was pretty fun - the music was all techno/house music, though, so dancing involved a lot of jumping and weird hand gestures, but it was really fun. After that we took to the streets and roamed around finding awesome costumes and just having a good time. I finally ended up getting some AMAZING samgyupsal for a pretty cheap price and getting home around 5am. One of the best costumes of the night was this really kkangpae-looking dude wearing a traditional female hanbok and a fake giant braided hairpiece (gache) à la Chosun dynasty. So hilarious.

Anyways, that was all good and fun, and then I woke up early the next morning to meet my friends down at 10:30 at the Hyundai department store to grab a taxi together to go to 와우산 공원 (Wausan Park) to play some badminton. We never actually ended up playing badminton because all of the jangs were full, but I learned a lot of traditional Korean games and had a good time running around and trying out all of the cool Korean workout equipment (some of it was just hilarious and fun). That evening for dinner I had some cheap pizza and watched a comedy show on the giant LCD screen in the seating area and was actually shocked that I understood and was laughing at some of the jokes. SO COOL!!!!! AHHHH!!!

Anyways now I'm here on a Monday after my first class of the day and finishing up this post for you guys. Tonight I'm going and tutoring for the girl who asked me how to say breasts in English, and I'm anticipating it because last week her mother gave me permission to scold her, because she's been acting up lately. She's apparently been doing a lot better in her English class, though, so her mom is really pleased with me and thinks I'm awesome. The little girl likes me a LOT, evidence being that for the past two times I've been there she's written me a little note that says "I love Janet teacher!" with a picture of us together, and during the lesson she doodles pictures of us skipping and holding hands and playing on the playground. I'm not sure how to react but I think it's adorable. I just wish she would start drawing arms on the doodle of me. Hahah.

Anyways, that's all! I'll upload some pictures soon and give you updates on the Dokdo island trip later!!

Love,

Janet <3 <3 <3

Raw Meat

Hello there! I figure 12 days is enough time between blog posts. My promise to update more often has been interrupted by the fact that this week and half of next weeks is - **DUNDUNDUNNNN** - midterms time!

Midterms for Korean high school students meant no sleep, no life, no friends, no proper food, etc. (actually, pretty much every day during the school year meant that, I guess) but for college students it's a little more relaxed. Still, all the same, I have been significantly cut into my free time and haven't seen my friends really at all this week. My motto during this time has been "You Can Sleep When You Die." Thus, I have been quite self-alienated and am slowly dying a soul-crushing death. Luckily my last exam is on Tuesday, and on Sunday I'm taking a health-break (I'm gonna clean my room!) and so I will most likely survive unscathed.

The best part about taking an intensive Korean language course is that I get to take five separate tests for the class. Reading (the smallest and lowest point value: fluency, speed, pronunciation), Writing (grammar, conjugation, essay), Listening, Speaking (a sort of interview), and Reading Comprehension. I had two of them on Thursday the 20th and one today, and one last week on the 11th. Monday is the speaking exam and so on Saturday I'm going to Insadong and renting out a room at a cafe (yay free coffee) and practicing speaking for five hours with one of my friends (a native speaker). I'm actually more terrified of being judged by my friend than taking the actual test, haha.

Anyways, I'm rambling, and you don't care. I'll just briefly talk about what happened with my Korean/Japanese Relations exam, which was on Wednesday the 19th. Long story short, the exam started at 10:00; I woke up at 9:30...and then woke up again at 10:30. Never had I ever dressed and run to an exam so speedily as that morning (except for my infamous Freshman Year Final Chemistry Exam Debacle...but that's a different story). The exam had no study guide and the professor told us that we should study by "going over the readings and class notes" (the readings were over 600 pages and the classes were half taught by his grad student) and so I was really worried, but in the half-hour of remaining time I had to take the exam I was able to double check my work twice and I think I did pretty well.

My music exam is going to be lots of fun. I hate that I love the professor because while she's busy talking about her family and singing Arirang with us, she's not teaching us all of the material that needs to be on the exam. Yes, she did give us a powerpoint with everything we have to learn. No, she did not explain all of it, and yeah apparently I have at least 60 new vocab words to learn, most of which are just random instruments such as "big bamboo flute," "little bamboo flute," "tiny bamboo flute," "stone chimes," "brass chimes," "little brass chimes," etc. Not to mention there are like thirty types of song and dance and we have to memorize the names of the 12-song Gasa repertoire...blah blah blah I'm going crazy. Maybe I shouldn't take Sunday off after all.

Okay, phew. Sorry I'm just using this blog so far to talk about midterms (the memory of which is still fresh in the minds of many Wesleyan students). I will now move on to 생활, daily life.

On Saturday night of the 8th (last time I posted) I went to the fireworks festival at Yeoeuido Hangang Park. The fireworks were AMAZING. The crowd was so appreciative and there was much more ooh-ing and ahh-ing than in America. The fireworks were shaped like triangles, squares, flowers with actual petals, and - best of all - LITTLE FACES!! It was so cool! I had a great time, despite the huge crowds and nearly being trampled in the subway. After the fireworks I hung out around the Han River and got a sad phone call from my friend Changmin/Alex, who is being transferred to a new job near Oido. I will miss him very much, he was very welcoming and nice to me during my first few months here in Korea.

The next day I woke up extra early so that I could to on a super-exciting Korean Culture and Food festival. It ended up being the worst field trip of my life. They cut out the Green Tea Farm portion of the trip and replaced it with a trip to a Trot concert (which we only stayed for half an hour for) and the food at the actual food festival was average tasting and overpriced. We only got to explore the old fort for about 2 hours, which was not enough. Total I think we spent 10 hours on the road and 4 hours actually doing anything. It was horrible. The only good part of the day was the fact that I spent it getting to know my friend Annie a little better. She's really awesome and nice but won't let me take pictures of her. Oh well. You'll just have to imagine what she looks like, I guess.

On Tuesday the 11th I sent out about 9 postcards (my family got theirs, did my first batch of friends at Wes get theirs? :D)

And on the 12th I had dinner with Annie. It was, of course, donkatsu, at my favorite restaurant, Painter and Cook. We had pat bingsu afterward. It's getting a little cold these days for bingsu, but everywhere sells them basically until they run out of pat, and then they stop and start selling wintery things. It's gonna be interesting to see how all the ice cream shops keep up their interest during the winter.

I didn't really do much except for go to classes and prepare for exams for a while. On the night of the 17th (right before my K/J Relations exam) I went out to dinner and had an interesting experience with (yes, you guessed it!) a drunk Korean guy! I was sitting on a bench and he staggered over and sat next to me. My friends were looking at me as though to ask "do you know him?!" but my facial expression, which looked sort of like: O___O told them no. He then attempted to make conversation with me in poor English.

- Curtain Opens -

Man: You-uh...you is-uh...looking like....Suh-carlett Johannson! You know??

Me: **stunned silence** 스칼렛 조한손이 너무 예뻐요. 난 예쁘지 않아요. (Scarlett Johansson is too pretty, I'm not that pretty.)

Man: OOHHHHHH 한국말 잘 하시네요!! (OHHHH You speak Korean well!)

Me: No, I'm just average. **attempt to turn back to friends**

Man: **ignores my cold shoulder** You is-uh...movie liking? You go with me? What is you...uh...do you has....핸드폰? (cell phone)

Me: 전화걸기 바싼데요. (But making calls is expensive [polite rejection].)

Man: Is okay, I think, you-uh...you is-uh very pretty.

Me: ..........**looks to friends pleadingly**

Friends: 저리가세요. (Please go away.)

Man: 씨발...... (F-word) **stumbles away back to table of friends, who start laughing**

Me: Guys, do I look like Scarlett Johansson?

Friends: No.

**jovial laughter**

- End Scene -

Yeah, so apparently I look like Ms. Johansson to drunk Korean 30-year-olds. I don't know whether to be flattered or terrified. But it does explain a lot of the things that have happened to me so far in Korea. My friend had a worse encounter where she ended up being trapped in a Karaoke room with a guy who was trying to kiss her and she had to press the call button to get someone who worked there to save her. Luckily I'm not naïve enough to believe that a random Korean dude is going to walk up to me to ask for English lessons, so something like that will most likely never happen to me.

Oh, and to explain the title of this post, that night when I went out to dinner with my friends, they ordered some meat dish and it came out as literally a pile of shaved raw meat with a raw egg cracked on top. I asked where the gas range to cook it was and they laughed, mixed the egg into the meat, added some apple shavings and started eating it dipped in some sort of grey sauce. I was shocked, because since I was born I have been indoctrinated with the belief that if you don't wash your hands after picking up a package of hamburger in the meat section at the grocery store, you will get typhoid fever and die. After watching my friends eat it, however, I decided I'd try it, since apparently no one had died from the restaurant we were in as of yet. It was actually delicious. I do like rare steak so it kind of tasted like that. Except rarer. I kind of felt like a caveman. It was sort of fun, haha.

Anyways, that's all that's happened to me so far. I'll attach a few pictures of the outing to the food festival, but trust me my happy face in those pictures is only there because of the fact that I can't refuse to smile when a camera is pointed at me.

Love you guys!

I'll post again after midterms and all this stress is over!

Mwah,

Janet xoxo

(looks kind of like the other village I went to)

(best picture I've ever taken)

(you can kind of see the misery on my face in that last one lol)

I got married!

Don't be alarmed by the title - I really freaked out my mom when I called her and the first thing I told her was that I got married (that was the scariest silence of my life! - love you, Momma) but don't worry, I'll explain in a little bit.

First of all, hmmm...where did I leave off? Ahhh, yes...the totally authentic Korean experience of TGI Friday's.

But...let me reassure you, I am not wasting my time here in Korea. My following experiences were much more authentic than that. And they were AWESOME.

Aside from my very boring week of schoolwork, tutoring, schoolwork, more tutoring, and more schoolwork (and some vocab tests thrown into that) I really did absolutely nothing. On Friday I was supposed to meet with some Korean friends but they ditched me because one girl forgot she had a meeting with a professor and the other forgot it was her mom's birthday. (?!) Speaking of which, happy birthday, Mommy! I don't know how old you are now off the top of my head but I'm guessing you're around 35 now, right? Heehee.

Anyways, on Saturday, I had a grand adventure - 40 students and I hopped on a bus for a three-hour journey to a place called 외암리, Oeam Folk Village. It's a place sort of like Hale Farm & Village, except for all of the people there actually do live there and aren't actors. It's like stepping back in time. You're next to a mountain and surrounded by beautiful scenery, a creek and fields of flowers and grain. The weather was beautiful, sunny, and breezy that day, perfect conditions for a great day. The leader of the village was wearing a purple version of traditional Korean clothing and greeted us warmly, and told us that everyone in the village hoped that we would come back to visit again (they love visitors and have a thing called a farm-stay program, where you can go and live there and work on the farms for a few days - I really want to do it!!). Anyways, it's pretty hard to describe what it was like being among these 옛날 things and thatched roofs and traditional way of making 인절미 (injeolmi - soft rice cake) so I'll just post some pictures.

While I was there I got to use a mallet to pound rice for the 인절미, [1] eat the product of our labor, [2] drink cold sweet au naturale 식혜 (rice drink), [3] make a paper-craft mirror, [4] play some old games (a sort of horseshoe-like game with rings, one where you throw arrows into a pot, and a kind of tight-rope thing, along with a GIANT yutnori mat), [5] eat delicious food, and [6] make new friends.

[1] The 인절미! My friend Vi and I (the only person I knew at the beginning of the trip) both got to pound the rice with these giant mallets, and I am proud to say that she and I were the least pathetic of all of the girls there. We actually hit it with force rather than just letting the mallet fall onto the rice with a whimper. After all of the people who wanted to try finished, two men of the village stepped in and attacked that rice with fervor. It went from steamed grains to gooey lump in a matter of minutes. It was kind of amazing and a little scary (I imagine if anyone attacked the village, those two men could chase off and army with just those mallets.) They then covered the paste with soy bean powder and sliced it up into little tasty morsels. It was so yummy!

Delicious and fresh 인절미:

Adorable little boy eating with us whose father let me take a picture (yes, I am a creep):

[2] 식혜! Sweet rice drink!! They were selling it for $1.00 per bottle, which is pretty good, considering it's kind of hard to find it made from scratch, and this one was delicious (wayyy better than any can you can find in the subway). I tried not to think about the fact that maybe the tools to make it weren't sterilized to factory level, and drank all of it, and I didn't die so I now put all of my trust into that village.

[3] Paper-craft 거울! It was really fun - we used rice glue to put paper and pretty flowers onto a wooden oval-shaped thing, stuck a mirror in it, and hung a dangly thing from it, and an ahjumma came around and threw glitter all over it before it dried. She was really funny and was trying to teach us how to say all of the colors in Korean (I still only know half of them, but I'm learning!! Here's my finished product:

[4] 놀자! The games were pretty fun - I made it halfway across the tightrope before falling!! And along with the aiming game and the circle-horseshoes, they had a place where they would tie people down and hit them with paddles if they did something wrong. Another tour group of native Koreans tricked their friend into laying on it, and then they held him down and beat him (gently, of course) while they took pictures. It was hilarious.

Man being paddled:

My friend Vi on the tightrope:

[5] Delicious food! (a.k.a. The only thing I talk about in this blog)

I'll spare you all of the mouth-watering, delicious details and get to the main thing I wanted to say about the meal (which, on top of being huge and amazing and price-inclusive, was super tasty and authentic). The dessert was a soft version of a fruit called 깜 which is now in season in Korea. The leader of the village took a big net and picked one for each of us by himself and taught us how to eat it without getting too messy (I failed big-time and thus was unable to take a picture, but here is a picture of a tree covered in them!

[6] New friends! I made friends with a girl from Seattle name Christina, a girl from Singapore named Gabrielle (who reminds me a lot of my friend Gavin), a boy named Kyohei (or Hyangpyung in Korean) who is what is called a "permanent alien" of Japan - a Korean citizen living in Japan as a result of the colonial period, and Sumito, a Japanese guy who is 31 and married, but came to Korea to learn the language of his in-laws (yep, his wife is Korean). We now call ourselves "Fork Family" (the way Koreans pronounce "folk" is "fork").

Anyways, after all of these things, the crowning moment of the day came - my marriage.

The funny thing was that I actually married Sumito, the guy who is already married. They dressed me in the many-layered wedding hanbok and put my hair up into a VERY painful contraption and had me stand and do the ceremony while everyone took pictures and cooed at my beauty (haha just kidding). They had me standing in a really difficult position, too, but it was really fun, and everyone was making jokes about me being "the second wife" and asked Sumito what his wife would say when he got home. Anyways, here are the pictures:

Anywaysss, after all of that we had the long bus ride back to campus, during which Vi and I apparently fell asleep on each others' shoulders (AWWW!!) and woke up when the bus almost got hit by three other cars at an intersection and jolted to a stop. Awesome.

Monday was a holiday celebrating the independence of South Korea, so I had the day off from school (yay!) and then the rest of the days of the week, I (once again) just studied and tutored.

Friday morning, however, I got....**drumroll** A HAIRCUT!! It was fabulous. I tried to get a picture but it did not capture the beauty of my new hair. The lady thinned it like crazy so that now I don't look like a cocker spaniel. Winning.

Well, that's the end for now!! Tonight I'm going to the firework festival and tomorrow I'm taking a trip to the Jeollnam-do Food and Culture festival!! Updates to come!!

Miss ya, love ya!

*Mwah*

~Janet

P.S. I have ten postcards that I will be sending out soon!!!! If you don't get any this round, round two will be coming up!!