November 11, 2012
This week’s minireport
Hey everyone,
It’s been almost a week, right? This week has been reasonably confusing for me; hence I haven’t had the time to put down my thoughts on paper. I’m thinking of possibly travelling on my own on the days that I don’t have classes next week. (Who knows, new experiences might do me good ^^)
This week I’ve been to the ‘Grand Children’s park’ for the second time. It was more amazing than it was last time, as my time limit was not so bad this time; and thankfully the weather was a lot better too. I went with a korean friend of mine, and we were both surprised to find that there were actually ‘wild’ animals in this park.
Usually when we go to see.. elephants or tigers, there is an entrance fee, right? Not for this park (as far as I managed to find). We just took our time walking around and relaxing, it was really nice ^^. However, taking the bus still scares me, even though I have to do it a lot lately if I want to get anywhere XD.
I actually had a lot more fun in the afternoon than in the evening, I was supposed to go to the station; then when I am there I get told to take another bus, as I am already tired from just walking around all day, in combination with the weather getting worse over the course of the day, didn’t help my mood much. Guess what? I actually ended up outside of Seoul. Not far, but still.. I actually was thinking to myself (before taking the other bus) “it won’t be that far, I’m hungry so I can eat close to the station…” but, nevertheless, the meeting was interesting.
Monday I went to my East Asian History classes, one of the hardest classes I’ve been having. Definitely. Firstly, I usually don’t sleep that early on Sunday (because, really?). And then Monday morning I try to pay attention, I honestly do, but just listening to this professor is difficult. His accent makes it hard as he doesn’t speak loudly or articulate, then when he doesn’t quite know what to say he says ‘ahh ahh ahh’ and then continues, whatever he is saying. For us it’s a challenge to just count how many times he loses his story during a class. Moreover, he also tends to turn the lights off to show us video’s while we’re all tired. Then when the lights go on again, it becomes even harder to focus..
Finally; our Korean teacher is teaching us, how to say when or what happened in the past. The funny part is that this is also a small exhibition of culture (I think), as a lot of exchange students asked themselves why we would learn the past first. Since usually we end up learning grammatical constructions such as ‘present continuous’ or ‘present perfect’ but, this is quite interesting too ^^. One of my friends was also surprised that we didn’t know how to tell time, or the days of the week yet (I secretly started studying the days of the week a while ago). But that is also happening now.
The Koreans even use both numerical systems to tell time, so confusing sometimes 
I’ve got to practice more with this, it’s a real challenge -.-. Tuesday, I met the jimjilbang, and well guys, I got to say; I wish I could make this place my second home. A jimjilbang is basically a sauna, you get a key which grants you access to two lockers, one for your clothes and one for your shoes. Also, you get awkwardly colored clothes that you can wear during your stay. Before going into the bath you have to wash your whole body first under one of the many showers. (I believe the Japanese people have a similar custom ^^) so it wasn’t that weird. Anyways, we went to the one in Hongdae (student district) and it was nice, it also had a gym, massage chairs and places to nap. (more on that later..)
Wednesday was reasonably uneventful, so I decided to go to Cheonggyecheon (the stream that a lot of couples go to) but this time I went with a group of around 100 people I did not know beforehand. I read about it on the internet, two hours before the meeting was scheduled, but I still managed to be 20 minutes early. The stream was beautifully decorated, and the people were friendly.
After this I went to Itaewon to visit a friend, sadly, the people at her workplace left late, so we slept at.. guess what.. another jimjilbang! So awesome. We arrived there at 2 am, did the usual sauna things, and then went to sleep in the ‘nap room’ to get up only three hours since we both had to be at school at 9. So after a quick breakfast, we went back ‘home’.
I had my ‘Special topics in Asian studies’ class, which was nice this time. It’s one of the classes I enjoy going to, even though it starts at 9:15, my earliest class that week XD. After this, I went to work, and even though I’d sort of forgotten about the Korean speech contest, someone still managed to convince me to join. I know my Korean skill only extends to having basic conversations in Korean, and understanding around 50% of what they talk about, I still entered. I hope I did a good job, even though my ‘speech’ was reasonably short. We got a really cute phone accessory as a participation prize though ^^. I couldn’t have done this without the help of my friends who were translating what I wanted to say though ;).
Today I don’t have much of a plan, I just got to meet up with one of the groups I have a presentation for… and just.. relax? I suppose. It’s going to be an interesting weekend. I might go to the movies for the first time!
Don’t forget to tell me how you guys are doing!
-Kirti
Experiences in South Korea, 2012 / 2013 