omg it's been too long

In didn't mean to take a week long break from this but I was pretty much internet deprived for the whole time.





Last weekend, I went to Daejon and had a family picture taken. Had this whole episode with my dad's family because when I'm around them, I get so uncomfortable and stressed out and just unhappy, and I told my mom about it. I'm wondering though if it's just my thing, because everyone else here seems to love their extended families even though they haven't seen them for like years. I see mine every few years, and I hate being around them. It just really makes me uncomfortable.








Came into Yonsei last Tuesday. Wasn't so bad. Rode out 5 hours on a big bus to start the touring. The touring part really blew. It was hot and sunny and hilly and none of the places were that interesting. But I mean, I guess it's good that I can at least say that I've been there. There were about 100 students that went on the field trip, and most of them are from NYC or LA. Like ridiculous amount of people. But they're all really cool.





Day/Night1: Went to a Korean folk village. At night, most of us went down to the karaoke rooms to sing our hearts out. A good 2/3 came down later (after drinking of course) and came unattractively shit-faced to the rooms. Left early with my roommate, Jungjoo, to pass out.





Day/Night2: This was a hard day. We were touring from 8 am- 5pm and by the time it ended, everyone was so 지겨워 of traveling and sightseeing. That night, my bus practiced for the skit which got 1st place ^^ Definintely a great bonding thing. We found a resturant nearby the hotel that would serve us alcohol (we were literally in the country. even the hotel) and drank the night away with soju. I'm proud to say everyone held in their alcohol very well :) yeahhhh, go bus 2! Definitely some drama went down, but don't need to get into that.





Day/Night3: Nothing interesting really happned this day. At night, our bus went out to samkyubsal and passed out early. Or at least I did.







Our dorms have SUCH strict rules. No eating in the dorms, no shoes in the dorms, no overnight visitors, no opposite sex members; if you're entering, you have to show ID, if you're leaving overnight, you have to sign out, etc etc. It goes on and on and on. The opposite sex one is pretty strict here too. Like I feel wrong just going near the boys dorms, seriously. This is why Koreans are so sexually frustrated.



I took my placement test today, too. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I didn't finish it (oh well) but most of the kids here can't speak a lick of Korean, so compared to them, I'm fluent. It's just weird, cause when I'm around kids at school, I feel so incompetent that I would say that I'm like almost beginner level. When I lived in Korea, I learned how to read and write very well, and so when I was taking that test, all of that was coming back to me. I was zipping through the questions. It just seems like after all these years of not really putting any of that to use, when I sat down to start testing, it just literally came out of nowhere. I'm kind of proud and a little more confident in my Korean.

Subway Sickness

I get motion sickness every time I step onto a subway here. I used to never get it, but for some reason, my one hour commutes to my tutee's houses are getting really painful. The motion sickness is usually accompanied by a mild headache. But my mom blames the polluted air on that. 

:(

tutee

I started tutoring on Tuesday. So far, I've met 4 out of the 6 kids I'll be tutoring this summer in conjunction with my Yonsei activities. It's going to be busy. 

My first session with the kid always makes me feel incompetent but I'd like to think that I'm assessing their English abilities. So there is a lot of digging through the bag, looking at story problems for the first time, etc. I did have a second session with one of the kids today, prepared with a lesson plan, and was relieved that this time it wasn't as easy as it was yesterday for him. Now, I feel like my tutoring is worth the money I'm receiving. 

Which is another thing. I brag a lot that I'm making bank, but I keep feeling guilty about how much I'm "charging" for each hour. It's a lot and I can't help feeling like I'm not worth that much money, that I'm not that qualified. But, then again, unless I'm confident, the kids won't be able to learn much from me. So I have to stray from that kind of thinking. 

I'm a bit bitter about my tutoring/Yonsei arrangements. The pro to doing Yonsei summer school at the same time is that I will be able to understand how to tutor my own kids in a language that they are not proficient in since I will be in their shoes, too, learning Korean. The con to it is I will be in class 9am-1pm, lunch, 1 hour commute to my tutees houses, tutor for 2-3 hours, 1 hour commute back, miss dinner with Yonsei friends (most likely), be lonely, and cry. 

Okay... exaggeration. But still, in a situation like this where there are lots of people to meet,  I'm a little hesitant to have to miss out on crucial socializing times like dinner. But, some sacrifices gotta be made, I guess. I should know that. 

Yonsei KLI starts next Tuesday ... 

and I'm getting eaten alive by mosquitos here. 

Man-Purse me.

I need to get over my Korean speaking self-consciousness. I am a lot better than I thought, but still, in most situations, I can't string together sentences confidently so it always ends up with me kind of mumbling the last few words. Argh. 

Yesterday, I went to 명동 (Myungdong) with Jina Lee, an Ohio friend. Myungdong is a gigantic outdoor shopping street with just tons and tons of cheap and expensive stores. There is a Forever 21 there that is THREE stories. Ridiculous. I tried my best to find a fobby fobby outfit. I succeeded but didn't take a picture of it, my b. 

I, just as predicted, look very American. People trying to sell things to me would be all "Oh, are you a foreign student?" and I would start to say no, but then realize I was now that I was in Korea. Some girl trying to sell me a dress was just all "Oh, are you from America? You have a great bod, this dress would look so good on you!" Psh, I fell for it (as I always will. Not the great bod part, but the slight persuasion) but came back an hour later to exchange it for something else. When I said I wanted to return it, one of the girls said exchanges weren't allowed on items on sale and immediately I go "Oh, okay. My b" but Jina fights for it, and eventually the girl allows it. Shows how persistent I am. 

Myungdong attracts a lot of Japanese tourists. 

After shopping for an exhausting 4 hours, we FINALLY found a place that sold 팥빙수 and seated ourselves by the window to people watch while we ate. We found an alarming amount of Korean males sporting man-purses. Observe:

Okay fine, so SOME of these guys could be holding their gf's purses, but still, no shame no shame. 

I did accomplish one thing yesterday that I will never try again. I wore my wedges out ALL day. I came home and about died. My whole body was aching, even my arms for some reason. No blisters, but wasn't worth it. 

Observations ... 

• In a lot of the subways/streets, there are a lot of old seniors working. They do manual labor like delivery or truck stuff, and the other day, I saw a grandma selling rice cakes in a tiny cart. She wore a large visor and kept her head down, while still her announcing goods. I felt so utterly miserable watching her. In a country that lacks government retirement care, it's the saddest thing when seniors who should be retired still working their asses off to survive. I was going to buy ricecakes from the lady, but I literally had zip money. 
• I showed my extended family some clips/pics of my life in America. In a clip from the JCA freshman boys appreciation dinner, we were all sitting in a circle playing "Mr Commissioner" and my aunt commented how it was the weirdest thing to see people who look so Korean speakin English. Like it's not at all what they expect to hear. I never thought how weird it really is that we all speak English like someone is dubbing over us. 
  

Gigantor Heels

My computer ISP is Korean, so now all websites are written in Korean. Cool fact. 

I went to Deajon this weekend. It's about two hours south of Seoul and where the majority of my extended family lives. I had a hard time with my jetlag there, could barely make it past 8 pm. It was a pretty boring trip, since all it was was seeing family, uncles/aunts/grandparents and a lot less of cousins. They're all busy with school. 

Friday... 

Milled around from 7am - 2pm with the family. Yeah, we've all been waking up at wrong hours of the day. I'm still waking up at 7 am. Took a train to Daejon, went to see both grandparents. Done. 

Saturday... 

One of my cousins took a weekend leave from the army (a required service for all Korean men) to take us out. He brought his friend and failed to introduce me and my brother to him the whole time, so I didn't feel like I could say anything to the guy. Of course, I could've just reached my hand over and introduced myself the American way... or bowed and introduced myself the Korean way... but I was too self-conscious. Besides, my cousins said he knew like no English. But whatever, he wasn't that interesting to begin with. Was quiet the whole time. 

We had lunch, then went to go see "Night at the Museum 2." It was actually pretty good, but I thought it was ironic that all these Korean people were watching it because the movie is more or less American/World history. I'm sure they all knew Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible, but Sacagawea? General Custer? Doubt it. 

Went to dinner with my cousins family and my family. Had my first drink of alcohol in front of adults/with adults. It was weird and slightly unsettling. My mom was whatever about it. Joking around that I was probably drowsy from the alcohol and actually commented that she was surprised I was drinking so 'hard' from the beginning. I didn't say much. 

Sunday... 

Took an early bus ride to Seoul with my aunts to attend a wedding. Wore one of my gigantor heels and didn't fail at it =) My mom's cousin's son was getting married; she told me she's never met the guy, but it didn't matter. All the rest of the extended-extended family was there. Kind of intruded and took my fair share of pics! I'm sure the actual photographer was like 'wth.' But I was still too self-conscious about getting up and taking pics... I stayed in the general vicinity of my seat and tried not to be too much of a disturbance. Maybe the fact that I didn't know the couple contributed a bit too. 

I'd say one of the better pictures. 

Observations continued... 

• A lot of Korean electronics sing. The rice cooker, the washer, the cellphone. 
• My goal is to learn Korean fashion this summer. It's mad cute. Case in point: http://www.nak21.com/html/mainm.html
• My gigantor heels are nothing compared to what these Korean women wear everyday, all day. They walk miles in 4-5 inch heels. Makes me falsely believe that I can do it too.... 

Getting here; Culture shock

So I decided to write a blog while I'm in Korea. It might double up as my diary for the trip, too. Being effective, yes I know. I might even continue this blog after I return to the US. We'll see. 

So it's 7 am here right now. I am trying with my utmost strength to defeat jet lag this year. Every year that I've been, I've had jet lag for always a week. It's not even like it tapers down. On the 7th day, my jet lag is miraculously gone and I can keep my eyes open after 8 pm, lol. But so far, because I kept my watch on Columbus time on the way here, I was able to somehow coordinate my sleeping schedule according to Korea time ( I could calculate it without getting confused). It was kind of amusing that for the entire 27 hour trip (leaving the house to arriving to the Korean hotel), it was all daylight. Okay, minus the last 3 hours of the trip, it was night. That can really do something to your senses... I guess that is why there is such thing as Seasonal Depression or something. 

Funny, crazy story. 

I was touring Seoul National University (the Harvard of Korea) cause my dad is a guest prof here. And for lunch, we went to one of the THREE cafeterias they have on campus. As my family sits down to eat, a big group across the aisle gets up leave and put their trays away. Just because they were so big, my attention gets quickly diverted in their direction and lo and behold, my freshman roommate, Sunita is among them. It was the weirdest, coincidental meeting because Sunita lives a good 30-40 minutes away from SNU. But, she said she was doing an internship at the school. We be meeting up soon. 

Observations about Korea (the mild culture shock)...

1. Koreans are innovative. On the highway, every few miles, there are a pair of red/blue police lights bolted to a pole to imitate the "flashing lights of a police car." Don't lie, when you're driving and you see those lights, you panic a little before slowing down. The only problem with this is I feel like drivers become really desensitized to the lights, like they don't even notice it. But maybe that is the point? So they won't know what the real thing is to the fakes. 
2. This is a stupid observations but demonstrates the rather risky behavior of Korean traffic. At four way intersections, the second the red light comes on, the respective green light goes on. In contrast, in America, the green light doesn't come on for a good 2 seconds after the red light comes on. Does this one make sense? I don't know, figure it out. 
3. Dunkin Doughnuts and and Outback Steakhouse are luxury coffee houses/restaurants here hahahahahaha. DD is low low in America. 
4. Last time I was in Korea, everyone on the subway was always texting away. It's a wonder how phones can get service on subways on the first place. But cell phone companies have figured that all out too. Now, the norm is to be watching TV on your cell phone. And every cell phone is equipped with a long antenna that in America, is extremely outdated. It'll come back in 5 years though, promise. 
5. Every girl gets dolled up in Korea. AHahaha. But I guess that's kind of true when you go to NYC or something, people really go all out when they just plan to get coffee. Maybe I just made that up. 
6. Bus/subway passes are now cards OR cell phone keychains. Pretty cool huh? 

I haven't had the nerve yet to take pictures of Korean's behaviors and such. My mom says that unlike Americans, Koreans don't care when their picture is taken by a stranger. I find this hard to believe so I haven't had the guts to whip out Big and start noisily taking pics. (Btw, I've named the small point-and-shoot 'Little' and my big DSLR as "Big." A slight mockery of Greek life heh) 

The Plan ... 

• Heading to Daejon for the weekend. The majority of my family lives down there. I'm not excited at all to see my grandparents. It's going to be a lot of fake smiling, sitting around while the rents/grents talk, and a lot of eating seafood. Always seafood. 
• I met up with my tutorees and their mom last night to discuss tutoring schedules. So far, six kids, $40 a pop, 1-3 times a week. Do the math. = MAKING BANK. I'm considering coming to Korea after college to teach for a year or two. I would be rich. Mad rich. 
• Yonsei Summer starts on the 23rd. 

Ima limit my picture usage on this. There are facebook albums for that.