A Concert, A Class, A Conference

To quote Olan Rogers, it's been awhile since I told you a story.

Juan

Not much has been happening lately that's out of the ordinary, except for last Saturday. That was the day I got to go to a Kpop concert! Although, the Kpop part of it was amazing, the rest of it was pretty boring. The concert was part of a sports festival so we also had to sit through a really long parade of all the different participating cities showing off their talents and weird costumes. There were also a couple singers that I didn't like because they sang old people music that was kind of annoying. But when the last three bands sang (2AM, Ze:a, MBlaq) I will shamelessly admit that I freaked the heck out. There was a lot of screaming, very loud singing and clapping. The two Taiwanese guys with me, Juan and Guan Yu, kept looking at me like I was a little crazy, but I didn't care. I had dreamed of this day for almost three years. MBlaq is my absolute favorite Kpop band, so this was an incredible experience for me. It was definitely worth the couple hours worth of waiting to see them. It was even worth the fact that I was freezing the whole time in a t-shirt and shorts sitting in the rain.

On other things not so exciting, I'll start with some school stuff. The past couple weeks have been really boring because this week and next Monday are the midterm exams. So the week before we didn't really have classes, the students just studied on their own. So Coraline and I just slept, read, or chatted with our teachers. We asked if we could be exempt from the tests, seeing as we wouldn't understand any of it, but the principle said that we had to take the tests, so we did. Each test took me about thirty seconds, except math, which I actually tried to do well. Apparently I actually did better than some of my classmates on that one, which surprised me. I still don't really have any friends to speak of in my class, but I am a lot more comfortable with talking to them and asking them questions at this point. I'm also now a lot more familiar with the building and the way things work. And there was one class when all the other students were studying and my Korean teacher started folding some school newspapers. She had a huge stack so Coraline and I decided to help her. We spent about and hour and a half doing it and afterwards our teacher kept saying "Thank you, thank you, I love you!" It felt really good to actually do something in class for a change and show our teacher that we aren't opposed to work we just can't understand what she teaches.

But this Thursday we didn't have school on account of a holiday. I wish I could tell you what holiday it was, but I can't. And yes, I asked what it was, but no one could tell me in English. But we got a day off school so it was nice. I spent the day with all the exchange students here in Ansan, Jack, Kaytleen, Coraline, Juan and Benedikt. First we went out to lunch at Lotteria, which is the Korean version of McD's (even though they have that too). Seriously, they're exactly the same, except McDonald's fries are better. This time I decided I would try one of the Korean items on the menu and got a Bulgogi burger. It was really sweet and pretty strange, but it was really good. After that we went upstairs to the movie theater. We wanted to see a movie in English, as none of us speak Korean that well, and there were only two choices: Prisoners and Monsters University. Prisoners was playing to late, so we chose the latter. And when the movie started we were all disappointed because it was dubbed in Korean. We had expected it to just have subtitles because all the other English movies we had seen had done it that way. But I guess they actually take the time to dub animations. Thankfully it was easy enough to follow and I understood maybe about a fifth of what they said so it was good anyway. Afterwards we went out for ice cream at Baskin Robins and then went home. It was a nice relaxing day with friends.





Sunggyeol University

Hannah, Juan, Me, EunMi

To tell you what happened today I need to backtrack a week. Last Friday we had our first Korean class with the Rotary club. It was at Sunggyeol University in Anyang, about an hour away by subway from where I live. Last week wasn't really a class, we just introduced ourselves and met our teachers and figured out which class we would be in. This week we actually started learning Korean. I was put in the higher level class because there are still some people here who can't even read Korean so we were separated. At the beginning of the class we were pretty organized and our teachers (who are college students) figured out what level we're at.

But as it went on we didn't really follow the book anymore and most of us were trying to figure things out on our own and it was kinda crazy. I also felt like there should have been more classes of different levels. Me and two other people were listening to our teacher and thinking "we already know of this" while others in our class were thinking "this is way too much to take in". I did learn a couple new things, but that was only because I was talking to Hannah one on one while the teachers helped other people. After the class we all got together and were told that we were going to learn a dance for the district conference in November. I, of course, was not too happy with this, but not all the songs we chose were bad. We're going to dance to sections of about four songs for a total of ten minutes. The only song I was unhappy with was Gangnam Style. So, of course, that's the one we started with. It was the most horrible dance lesson ever. All we did was watch a mirrored version of the dance. We didn't have anyone break it down for us and show us how. We were also in a very cramped space and couldn't move properly. It was just terrible.

On a happier note, the coming couple of weeks are going to be wonderful. This Sunday I am going to go to a different church, one with an English service! Benedict and Kaytleen go there and told me that there are a lot of black people and a lot of Russians, so it should be fun. After that I'm going to go to Gyeonggi University in Suwon for the beginning of the ~Ing Conference. I'm not really sure what the conference is about, but I have a schedule and it's going to be a fun five days (yes five days). The things were are doing include going to the DMZ, seeing some traditional drum performances and seeing some parts of Seoul. And my birthday will be right in the middle of it, which will be cool. I also really look forward to meeting the Rotary students from other districts that are going. The weekend after the conference our district is going on our Seoul tour which will be awesome (except for the fact that we have to walk everywhere).

So, I'm sure a lot of you reading this know what my Wall of Stuff was, but for those of you who don't, when I was in America on one of the walls in my room I hung up anything that I possibly could, from movie tickets to postcards to clothing tags, to chronicle the my life, manifested in the things I received throughout the years. By the time I left it covered over half of my room walls. I would love to do the same thing here in Korea, but I'm going to be living in three different houses and I don't think my parents would appreciate it, so instead I have a sturdy Notebook of Stuff. The front cover is already almost full, so then I'll move to the back and then the inside. If it gets too crowded I'll probably just start layering things. It's going to be one heavy notebook by the end of the year, but it will be a great way to show everything that happened to be over the year piece by piece.

Even though things have been going well and I'm excited for the next month there are also quite a few things that have been hard. It's difficult for me not to have any close friends, or any Korean friends really at all. It's also incredibly frustrating when I have something important I need to tell my parents, but I don't know how. It's kind of like this: "The sun was trembling on the brink of the world, the shadows at their longest...". The sun is still out and the light is shining, but there are long shadows that pierce that happiness.

I have pointed out a few of the differences between America and Korea at various points throughout my blogs, but it's been very scattered and I'm sure I've left out a lot, so my next post is going to be a clear lists of differences. Hopefully I'll finish that in the next couple days. Until then!