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)
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