LAZY UPDATE #4

Wow...apologies for not writing anything for so long.  Lessons have officially started - as in, since we can't add any more classes to our schedule the teachers have finally started to teach some substantial material.  Which also means homework and studying have commenced.  I can imagine your faces right now.  What? Homework? Esther? STUDYING? Yes...sigh...it's true.  I have conformed to the Korean education system and am now anxious about staying ahead of classes.  My mum will be so proud.

On Sunday, a group of us decided to go to Namsan Tower/Seoul Tower to have a look around.  The weather was kind of cloudy that day, so we spent thirty minutes in the lobby of our dormitory apartment trying to figure out whether to go or not.  In the end we did, and we had fun.

When we got there, half of the group took the cable car up while the other half walked 30 minutes up the stairs.  Guess which group I was in?  That's right, because my legs were so tired from walking around on Saturday, I decided to kill them even further and take the stairs.  Honestly it wasn't that bad.  When you're with a large group of people, the atmosphere is so different than trudging up steep stairs by yourself. There were a lot of people there that day, and lots of activities going on such as a traditional Korean play, a man playing on the flutes and lots and lots of food stalls set up everywhere.

Namsan Tower is also famous for it's wall of love-locks.  For those who don't know, couples will buy locks from the shops up there (or take their own lock because it's cheaper) and write little messages on them.  They put the lock either on a tree or on the fence along the wall, and then throw the key away as a testament of their ever-lasting love.  We had a few couples in our group, but I think only one couple bought a lock.  The couple in my pictures isn't from our group, by the way.  They were a random couple which I asked to take photo of.  The girl was like "Oh? Why......???" but the guy was like "Sure!"  I ended up taking a photo for them on their camera as well.  Bless me and my great camera skills.

I'll give a short summary of what's happened this week, but unfortunately I didn't bring my camera around with me so no photos.

1. Monday: I attended a class called International Communications for the first time.  Even though the lecture is in Korean, the teaching materials are in English, and the professor also tries to throw in some English for the exchange students benefit every now and again.  Speaking of which, the professor took the exchange students out for coffee after class on Monday as a sort of orientation to his class, and also to get to know us.  There were three exchange students and another Korean girl who had returned last year from living in Canada for seven years, so we all kind of chatted for a bit.  Ji Eun, the Canadian girl, also happens to be in most of my classes which means I now have at least one friend in all my classes :)

2. Tuesday: Another first time class - 'pre-production'.  In this class, we're going to learn about making a short film and writing synopses.  Because I'm trying to learn about everything going on in media, I figured taking this class would help me with the behind-the-scenes camera and footage area.  I've always been interested in this kind of field anyway, so I love it.  On Tuesday night, Sonya (American-Korean exchange student) told us she had heard about this AMAZING spaghetti place near our dorms and that she had gone there at lunch time but was turned down because it was too full, so she wanted to go for dinner.  It ended up being as good as she said, and by the time we left there was a huge line waiting to get in.

3. Wednesday: At night time, I finally visited COEX.  I don't know if we actually went to the right place though, because COEX is supposed to be massive, right?  The place we went to was big, but it wasn't that big.  Either way, Sonya and her boyfriend wanted to buy a pair of Toms from Åland so we did.  


4. TODAY: I went shopping at Idae today.  I'm going to Hongdae tonight.  Happy tiiiiiimes :)


P.S.  There were a lot of children running around at Namsan Tower on Sunday, so I took some photos of them.  There's something about children which seriously tickles the insides of me and makes me all happy and joyful.  Plus they have amazing clothes and can pull off anything.

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.