LAZY UPDATE #12

This past week has been pretty packed with events, and I think it's only going to get even more busier now.  School's out for the summer holiday so everyone's going to be out and about now.  Seoul is raining cats and dogs at the moment.  I've never seen it rain so much for consecutive days before.  There's a typhoon coming according the forecast, but right now the weather is nice and breezy.  It was really sticky and humid before.

Last Friday was the last gathering of all the international students at CAU.  We went back to where we first started off in February, Mom's Touch, and just had a good time.  It was really strange to think back to four months ago when no one knew anyone, whereas now it was like we were all best friends.

Afterwards, a small group of us decided to walk out to the Han River.  It was about 2 am and no one wanted to go back to the dormitory yet, so we bought some drinks and some snacks and sat next to the water.  Music, laughing and crazy lack-of-sleep-induced dancing ensued.

Saturday was Randy's, an American friend, last night in Seoul, so we went out to Korean BBQ and another walk along the Han River.  I used to go hiking with Randy in the mornings when we first arrived, and during those times we became pretty good friends.  Hiking ceased as the weather got warmer, but we'll always have good memories.

On Tuesday, the day after my very last exam, I went to Incheon with a few friends to look at the 'Chinatown'.  My Korean friend told me it was government funded, which explains the lack of authenticity and plenty of Koreanized Chinese elements.  We discovered a shop which sold 豆浆 and 面条, and were so surprised to find out that the old grandpa owner, despite having been raised in Korea, could speak perfect Chinese! He even had the accent.

The actual place was pretty quiet when we arrived.  There were lots of stores selling Chinese souvenirs, different types of foods and there were a lot of lanterns hanging around.  In fact, the streets were decorated with a lot of red stuff.

Wednesday night was the last night my roommate was going to stay in the dormitory, so we went out to dinner in Myeongdong with another friend.  We went to this Indian place called 'Saffron', where everything they served was Halal, which mean my Muslim roommate could eat whatever she wanted there.  The food was quite nice, but I think it was a posh-ish kind of restaurant so the prices weren't that cheap.

My roommate moved out on Thursday, and for the whole day I was kind of depressed.  Luckily I had already organised to meet up with a friend from Ewha University for dinner.  We went to eat at this 'famous' naengmyeon place, except when we got there we were both highly disappointed.  To cheer ourselves up we went to have dessert at Holly's Coffee.

I met up with some of my classmates for dinner on Friday night.  These classmates were from the class I hated the most, but surprisingly the class where I made the most friends.  We had the best pasta I have ever eaten in Seoul, and then went to Hongdae for some shopping.  It was a fun night.

This was a very brief update because I'm sick at the moment, so my brain's not functioning properly.  I'll probably tell you what happened on Saturday morning after I get better.  Over and out.

LAZY UPDATE #10

Sorry for not updating for a long time.  Blogger was down for a a couple of days before and this week has been so. freaking. BUSY.  Like, really really busy.  But many exciting things have happened as well, and I am excited to write about them! It's been so long since I wrote my last post so I'm not going chronologically.  I'm just going to state the exciting things which happened during the last two weeks.

Firstly, I went bowling with my volleyball team last Saturday near our church.  I haven't been bowling in a long time, but I thought I was still pretty good at it.  Unfortunately, pride always comes before fall and I ended up being the ultimate loser amongst the whole group.  My scores were 32 and 41 - don't laugh.  But it was still a really fun night! I always appreciate the time I have with my volleyball team because it's a chance for me to practise my Korean.

We also went to Lotteria afterwards to eat 팥빙수 patbingsoo (shaved ice and other condiments).  It was the rule of the game - whichever team lost had to treat the other team to dessert.  My team lost spectacularly to the other team - they had the two best players out of the whole team (no...not a sore loser.  Honest! hehe) - so we bought the ice as well as some chips and ice-cream.

Another exciting which happened this week was my university's festival!  It was called LUCAUS (can't remember what it stands for) and it went for three days.  There were lots of booths around the campus selling things like beer, fruit, t-shirts and other things.  Unfortunately I didn't get to take any photos of the booths since I was normally rushing to class when I saw them.  But I did take photos of the most important part of the festival: the concerts at night time.

We had a lot of celebrities come for the night concerts like 김태우 Kim Tae Woo and No Brain, but the biggest and most popular star which came was 2NE1.  I just thought I'd bolden that word in case you missed it.  They're not the first celebrities I've seen since I came to Seoul, but definitely the ones which the most people know about it.  

The night concerts were really loud.  Each night I could hear it from my room in the dormitory, since the events are held in the sports ground right downstairs, but I attended the last one in person.  The atmosphere is pretty much like a real-live concert, with glowsticks and people jumping up and down to the songs.  After the concert a lot of people go drinking, but I didn't.  

I also dyed my hair for the very first time this week.  One of the people I sing with at church is a hairdresser, and he came highly recommended amongst my church friends, so I went to him in Gangnam.  I will be honest, as usual, and say that the colour which it turned out to be isn't what I wanted.  I actually wanted a dark red/purple colour and fully dye all of my hair, but right now it's highlighted red and gold.  It looks nice, but whenever I don't get what I was expecting in my mind I get a little iffy.  Maybe I'll change it later on, but I think I have to learn how to be patient with myself.  

BASEBALL GAME

I went to my first baseball game ever last night!  One of my professors is acquainted with the president of the Doosan Bears so he was able to get us some pretty nice tickets as well as giving us the opportunity to meet the president and see his headquarters underneath the stadium.  The Doosan Bears are one of Seoul's two baseball teams (LG Twins) and their home stadium is Jamsil Stadium, which is the one we went to last night.  The president gave our whole class (our professor took the whole class) baseball caps with the signature 'D' of Doosan as gifts which was nice. The one below is the women's style, but I actually prefer the men's style - navy, red and white - but I'm still happy.  It was free!! Hehe...

Baseball's not really big in Australia, so I've never been too eager about the sport, but it's so different when you're in the stadium.  There are so many team chants and songs that the fans know, and then for each individual player the music speaker thing plays a different introduction song.  It's hard not to get excited when you have a thousand people behind screaming and singing along.  I couldn't really make out what they were saying in some of the chants, but there were two which I ended up following along with:

"(name of player) 안타 anta!"  = 'whoever' hit!
"(name of player) 홈런 homreon!" = 'whoever' home run! 

There are also matching clap rhythm pattern ...things...which go with these cheers, but it's difficult to write out.  The best way to learn is to actually go to a game.  It's pretty easy to pick up.  

And no baseball game is complete with three things: cheerleaders, the one guy and 'thunder sticks'.  The cheerleaders came out during the break times when the teams were switching from batting to fielding, and they danced to a lot of the recent pop songs e.g. Girl's Day, C.N. Blue and Kan Mi Yeon.  I really would not want to be a cheerleader, personally, because it gets kind of cold at night time and all they were wearing were mini-tops and mini-skirts.  Anyway, the 'one guy' I'm talking about is this one guy, dressed in the team uniform, who has a whistle and leads all the fans to cheer by blowing on his whistle.  The fans obviously know what his whistle patterns indicate, because they would always burst into a song when the one guy blows his whistle a particular way.  He's also kind of the atmosphere maker during the match.  And thunder sticks are those two plastic sticks puffed up with airs, and when you hit them they make a loud, superficial clapping sound.  Very effective and hand-friendly.

LAZY UPDATE #9

I was looking at my calendar and counting back the days to Sports Day and I can't believe that it's only been a week and a half since that sunny, winning, tiring day.  I was having dinner with Amber (pastor) two nights ago, and we came upon the subject of time; when you're in another country, time doesn't seem to follow the rules.  It feels as though time stretches out for longer than it really is - one month can feel like six months, one week like three weeks.  It's also a problem when I do lazy udpates because I have to think for a while about what I actually did during the week, instead of just going Oh! I did this this and this.  Or is that just old age catching up with me?

So for the Friday and Saturday after Sports Day, I rested for two days straight.  My voice was pretty much gone and my body felt like it needed three million years of sleep.  On Friday I only had one class at night time, and on Saturday I stayed inside my room the whole day.  I had a team project due on Monday so I was working on it from morning till evening until I finally finished it.  The project was to re-write parts of an episode of Friends - my team doesn't really speak English so after we brainstormed together, they wrote the script in Korean and I had to translate it back into English and 'Friends-ize' it.

On Sunday after church we went to the Hi! Seoul International Festival.  There were lots and lots of people there - mainly foreigners- and there were stands from many different countries standing alongside each other. There was also a food street where each country had its own little tent serving the national or most popular food.

We had a public holiday on Tuesday because it was Buddha's Birthday (The Coming Of Buddha Day) - so no classes again! Looking back, I probably should have gone to a celebration parade of Buddha or something related to that public holiday just to see how Korean festivals work.  But I didn't, so I guess it's too late.  That night I had a celebration dinner with my volleyball team in a restaurant in Myeongdong.  We had barbeque (I think it's customary to have barbeque for every celebratory thing ever here ....) and then we went to this amazing coffee/chocolate shop nearby.  It was so much fun because they were ALL Korean (i.e. their English isn't fluent), which is a surprising difficult situation for me to find myself in since most of the friends I've made can speak English to a pretty high level.

On Thursday night I met up with a friend who I had only really met once, but because we both speak Cantonese it was like there was this cultural bond between us which made it easier to become friends.  She came to Korea to take a make-up course and she invited me to be her 'model' for the night.  Over the past few years I've developed an interest in make-up - not me putting it on my face, but how to use what for the right occasions and how to match it with an outfit (roiworld...cough) - so I was pretty excited when I saw the make-up classroom and everything.

I didn't have any classes on Friday because my night class was cancelled for the week, so I took the time to go shopping in Myeongdong.  I was originally looking for a pair of sport shoes a la the Korean-style New Balance type, but I couldn't find any which I liked so I ended up buying other stuff instead.  I also met up with Amber for dinner in Apgujeong for barbeque (!!! ^^ ) and then we went to this reeeally nice coffee shop around the area.  The prices were kind of ....pricey, but the atmosphere was so nice.

Saturday was the second cultural excursion for the international students.  We went to the DMZ and an exhibition museum near the Blue House.  The DMZ was .....okay.  It wasn't super exciting but I guess it's part of the whole "I went to Korea" thing - it's just one of the places you have to visit when you're in Korea.

After the excursion I went out with my church friends for dinner and noraebang, which was so much more fun.      I didn't take any photos though, unfortunately, but I did get to hear one of my friends (who's quite demure and sweet) rap for the first time!

Yesterday was one of my friend's birthday.  She and the other exchange students had gone clubbing on Saturday night to celebrate, but since I was out with my other friends (and clubbing really isn't my thing anyway) I promised I'd spend the afternoon with her on Sunday.  Since the weather was so beautiful, we went bike-riding along the Han River and stopped half way for some ice-cream.  For dinner we met up with some other people and went to Hongdae.

In other news, I've been feeling tired a lot lately.  I'm thinking it's because of my eating choices and lack of exercise.  I always makes plans to go to the gym in the morning or at night time, but then I never do because either I'm lazy or I have homework I was supposed to have finished before.  T_T

4진 4진 화이팅!

One of the bad things about living by myself is that I never do my laundry on time.  I always leave it to the very last day when I'm completely out of underwear, and then I find myself in the same situation - wanting to take a shower but having to wait two hours for washing and drying.

Anyway.

Today was Samil Church Sports Day! It was a long, long day, especially because I haven't been feeling too well lately (sore throat and coughing) but it was a lot of fun.  The weather was (extremely) sunny and the skies were blue and cloudless.  The most exciting part of the day was when my group WON THE VOLLEYBALL COMPETITION!!! We've been practising for almost a month so to win was a great feeling.  I'll just put some pictures up from today's events because I'm sunburnt and tired and don't really feel like saying anything else except 4진 4진 화이팅!

LAZY UPDATE #8 (Part 2)

Lazy Update #8 Part 1 is HERE

Continuing on...

Friday was pretty quiet during the daytime.  I didn't have much to do except wait for the ROYAL WEDDING.  Did you watch it? I know there are some people who were like "Stop broadcasting it already!" while others were really, really excited.  I wasn't either of them.  I just wanted to see what people were wearing and what the wedding gown would look like.  I actually missed the dress (but I saw it later) because I had to go to my class, where the professor invited us out for dinner and drinks instead.

Let me just say this: Koreans are masters of drinking.  Like, even the Germans would be beaten by Koreans because while Germans probably stop at their limit, Koreans go wayyy past their limit.

Anyway, we had Korean barbeque with lots of meat and vegetables whilst drinking.  I don't normally drink that much, so when the professor went 'Bottoms up!' on the first drink I almost cried.  It was a very interesting experience.  The lecturers back at home will be okay for a drink or two outside of classroom hours, but none of them would ever pay for a dinner and drinks, as well as invite the whole class back to their home some other day and even initiate a 'sleepover'.

Saturday was turning out to be the worst day ever until night time so I'll keep the recap of daytime events short.  The international team from Samil Church gathered together to practise for the connection party coming up on Sunday, and we rehearsed what we would do and also decorated the room.  At night time, I went out with a group of friends to watching Thor.  I was initially debating whether to go or not because of my mood and because the weather was really bad, but I'm soo glad I went.  The movie was pretty good, but the best part about the night was the company.

On Sunday, we had the International Samil Church Connection Party.  The party turned out to be a good success.  We had lots of new people come and it was fun to be able to show that Christians aren't just stick-to-the-Bible-party-poopers at all.  I had volunteered to be in the performance part of the party, so that meant I was signed up for modelling in the cultural fashion show.  I've never ever modelled before so it was kind of awkward when we were rehearsing, but luckily it got better when we actually had to walk in front of everyone.  The outfits were mainly Korean and African style, but there was one girl who wore a 'ninja-inspired-space-looking' outfit.

I left the party straight after it finished because I was meeting up with other friends to go to ice-skating and bowling in Lotte World! It was my first time in Lotte World, and after hearing so much about it and seeing it in dramas and variety shows, I'm glad I got to go there.  Ice skating was fun but tiring.  We didn't realise that we had to have gloves before we entered the ring, so there was a bunch of foreigners scrambling around for cash in front of the glove machine right next to the entrance.  Probably would have been a funny sight for the local people.  

After that we went bowling and then had some dinner.  The dinner was so yummy.  It was 보쌈 bo ssam - meat and lots and lots of vegetables.  Some of the guys didn't join us for dinner because they were doing something else (no idea what), so by the time they came to the restaurant we were almost finished.  They had to sit there waiting for us while watching us eat all that delicious food.  Poor boys.  

To end the day, a little group of us went to have Sangria and honey bread in the little cafe near our university campus.  It was the perfect way to round out the day.  Two of the girls had brought their Go, Stop! (Korean card game which you see every ahjumma playing in the dramas) cards so I finally learnt how to play.  It's pretty simple to learn up till the point system, to which I still have no idea how to count.  

LAZY UPDATE #6

Wow, I really haven't been updating very much, have I?  I seem to go through phases of wanting to post everything I do in my life on here and posting absolutely nothing, which is either because I'm lazy or because nothing has actually happened.  Well, this time (as like many other times) it's because I've been lazy.  It's also because I don't take any photos of where I go so I feel like I have nothing show.  Pictures make all the difference you know.

Last Saturday a small group of us went to watch a documentary screening of "63 Years On", which was organised by the House of Sharing.  It was about the role of comfort women during World War II and the organisation tries to raise awareness through screenings such as these as well as other public events like tours and protests.  For me, it was interesting because I've always had an interest in this area - child prostitution, human trafficking, corruption etc.  If I ever make it as a lawyer, this is the area I would really want to focus on.  Sure the torts cases are fun and they're easy money, but what's the point in studying law if you're not making a better world, right?

Afterwards we joined up with a lot of other people and went to 노래방 noraebang (karaoke) in Shinchon.  It isn't the first time I've been to karaoke before but it was the first time in Korea - how do I say this....it was interesting? I'm not someone who can open up and just sing in front of anyone so the whole night I was debating inside my head whether to sing or not, but we only had the room for two hours so by the time I wanted to sing we had to leave.  But it was still a lot of fun watching my friends sing (or try to sing....) to the classics and dance around the screen like it was a moshpit.

On Sunday I went to church and had one of the best days I'd during my week.  I always feel really safe when I'm at church.  I think it's because I know that they are people who have the same mindset as me, so I can loosen up a little and know that I don't have to be on my guard on all the time.  Anyway, I met two Chinese girls, Muse and Amanda (Guangzhou and Hong Kong respectively), and they joined us for Bible study and dinner.  It was reeeeeeally strange because we were mainly speaking Cantonese (another girl at church speaks Cantonese as well) among the four of us while the rest of our group - Amber (Korean), Chris (Korean-German) and Chance (American) - had no idea what was going on.  And seeing how we're in Seoul, I guess Cantonese is kind of weird.

I was supposed to see a movie with my friend on Sunday night as well, but we ended up going out on Monday instead because she was really busy.  We went out for dinner (tacos), watched Red Riding Hood (don't watch it) and then ended the night at Paris Baguette for coffee and cake.  Or rather, I ended the night with coffee and cake and she watched me eat it.

Yesterday I had lunch with Jooyoung, my buddy, and we had ........PHO! I was craving pho last week and had no idea that there was a little shop tucked away in one of the many streets near our school which served it.  The flavours are pretty similar, but their noodles taste a bit different.  Not weird, but different.  Afterwards I went to Apgujeong to try to find Rodeo Drive, the famous shopping area where everything is expensive.  I spent two hours walking around the same area because I didn't realise I actually had to go inside rather walking around outside.  I think I'll talk more about it when I go there with other people and actually have time to browse.

THE OTHER VALENTINES DAY

HAPPY WHITE DAY EVERYBODY!

White Day only exists (I think) in Japan and Korea, where males will give their female counterparts flowers, cake and chocolates.  It's different to Valentines Day because on V-Day (in Korea and Japan), girls give the presents to the guys.  I don't know why these two countries chose to be different from every other country in the world, but I think it's nice to have two 'love' days a year.  Gender equality and all that.

Yesterday I went to Samil Church for the first time, where one of the members gave out roses and chocolates to all the females in the congregation.  It was so sweet of him to think of all the girls, and it was funny because one of the girls thought someone else had bought the flowers and told the guy "Oh, so-and-so was so nice to buy flowers for us, what did you do?"  

To 'drown' my sorrows of not having a boyfriend, I went to Myeongdong tonight to do some shopping.  Okay, okay, that's a half - lie.  I have no sorrows about being single at all, but I did go shopping at Myeongdong.  It wasn't packed with couples as I expected, although I saw lots of business men carrying around flowers and a cake box probably rushing to get to their date/home and give them to his one and only love.  

LAZY UPDATE #3

It's amazing how fast time flies by here, and how comfortable I feel in Seoul when I compare it to when I was in Adelaide.  I remember when I was back from Hong Kong I wrote a post on how strange it felt to be 'home', because it didn't even feel like home.  When I'm walking around in Seoul, even though I'm not fluent in the language and I've never been here in my life, it feels like home. I know that you might think Oh, it's because you idolise the dramas and kpop singers, but that's not the reason why I like it here.  There's just a feeling of familiarity (no doubt due to the dramas) and ease when I look around here.

On Sunday I went  to Seoul International Baptist Church all by myself (no, I did not get lost).  The journey there was incredibly wet due to the persistent rain, which also made it extremely freezing.  I arrived there in the end though, with the help of three Filipino men who answered my questions in English.  The church was a mixture of foreign and local people.  I overheard a few conversations (yes, my speciality is pretending I'm absorbed in something else while actually listening intently) and a lot of the foreign people are English teachers.  It didn't really surprise me, because the only real jobs which foreign people who can't speak Korean can take part in are teaching jobs.  The pastor wasn't there that morning, so instead they had invited one of the church members to give his testimony which turned out to be really powerful.  If you ask me about it in person later on I'll tell you, but it's really too long to be written here.  I went back to the dormitory after church, but not before being trapped inside the subway station for half an hour....but that's a long story too.

Sunday night was when all the exchange students at CAU met up.  We went to a chicken place near the university and introduced ourselves to each other.  It was fun meeting all the new students.  It ended up being so loud in the restaurant that we were kind of yelling at each other across, even though we were sitting opposite each other on the table.  There was a lot of fried chicken, beer, and soju going on during the meet-up, which is pretty much the standard Korean meet-up I guess.  I left at around 10:30 because I was tired and wanted to sleep, but I think the others didn't leave until about 12:30 am.

Monday was a pretty long day.  I met up with my buddy an hour before our orientation to try and open a bank account, except it turns out that we can't open a bank account until we've been in the country for more than five days.  Or until the immigration office sends the word that we have officially entered the country.  Because I came on a Saturday, and public offices don't open on weekends (wow, I thought that was only Australia being lazy), my details hadn't gone through yet.  It was pretty disappointing, but what could I do? Absolutely nothing, so I went to buy food to eat before the orientation.  Orientation was informative but also long.  I did take a Korean-language test though, and now I'm going to register for the Intermediate Korean class. Yay, watching dramas paid off!

At night time, a group of us went out to 동대문 dongdaemun to eat dinner and have a look around.  We first went to a shopping complex called Doota, which is similar to the Mongkok shopping centres.  There are little stores of clothes, bags and shoes everywhere on each floor, each selling pretty similar stuff for similar (and high) prices.  We had only gone our separate ways in the mall - girls and boys group - for about ten minutes when the boys called us and said that they had seen all they needed.  I guess frills and laces aren't really their thing.  

We decided to walk to the older markets for the culture and food.  It was a twenty-minute walk, but I think because it was so cold that no one really noticed.  When we got there, all we could see were stalls and stalls of 순대 soondae (black sausages) and 족발 jokbal (pork hock) along with various other items which I don't know the names of.  We came upon this ahjumma selling pupa (yes, pupa.  Like larvae.  yes, larvae.), and bought a cup because some people were interested in tasting it.  It tasted like beans, but the texture was so .....ugh.  Not nice.  

Although we had eaten some street food beforehand, we were still hungry so we went into a little place where their speciality was 전 jeon.  It's kind of like a savoury pancake, and they make it with different ingredients like seafood or kimchi.  Apparently, the jeon and 막걸리 makgeolli (rice wine) are like peanut butter and jam (celery and cream cheese, cheese and crackers, yin and yang...) so five bottles of makgeolli were ordered and shared among the ten of us.  It was a fun night, but the dormitory curfew is 1 am so we came back by around 12.

And finally, yesterday!  Yesterday I spent the morning with three of the exchange students (one girl - Heidi and two guys - Gauthier and Pontus) looking at the fitness room behind our dorms and then introducing Modern Family to the two boys, who had never heard of the show before (because they're from Belgium and Sweden) and had thought that the show would be 'girly'.  I don't think so. The fitness room has a few machines inn it, some weights and yoga mats.  Heidi started teaching the two boys some moves in yoga, which then led to Pontus telling us that he was a former gymnast in Sweden! It's not longer just one new thing a day anymore here.  It's ten new things a minute.

After lunch, I went out to meet up with a friend who is studying at Ewha Girls University as an exchange student.  He (yes, he...they accept male exchange students for some reason) took me to a place in Yongsan were he needed to change his phone, and where I ended up renting my phone from as well.  We also ran into more exchange students from different universities, including a couple of girls who could speak Cantonese!  Like I said, ten new things.  After that we went to visit his university campus at Ewha.  The streets outside the campus are pretty much a girl haven -make up, clothes, shoes, bags, skin care, street food and coffee shops galore.

His university campus looked like something out of a fairytale.  The buildings were really historic-looking and looked even prettier because of the autumn-like surroundings.  He took me around the campus and showed me his dormitory.  It was nice, but my dormitories are nicer.  We met up with his sister and his friend for dinner, where we ate a buffet Korean barbeque.  It's very different to the buffet barbeque in Adelaide, where the meat they give you isn't really....nice.  Here the meat was the authentic fatty pork, beef, and pig skin.  We ate a lot tonight, but I haven't had meat in almost five days so it was nice to eat some again.

I really need to start updating more often.  This Lazy Update thing isn't really working because I write too much for each event - maybe I should change it to Congested Update?  I also need to start writing my personal devotions up again.  This isn't just supposed to be a diary of my physical life but also my spiritual life as well.

P.S. Oh! While we were walking around the streets outside Ewha, I saw 나르샤 Narsha, 서인영 Seo In Young and 선화 Sunhwa (from Secret) filming their variety show 'Heroes'.  They seemed to be doing some kind of cooking activity, but they were finishing up by the time I saw them.