it's about time

My Korean class! Made up mostly of Japanese girls. Our teachers are the ones holding flowers.



Here's my Korean class in action! Playing a game on the last day...



During the graduation ceremony, one of the level one classes danced to "Nobody" by the Wondergirls...Like most of the Ewha program, this class was made up of almost all Japanese girls!


This is me with my Korean teachers! They were great. :)

It's been too long since I've updated regularly. I'm terrible at this blogging thing! Hopefully I'll be better now since I'm back at school. The 3-week Seoul vacation is over :(

(fun sidenote :( = ㅠㅠ in Korean. See how it looks like a few crying eyes? Anyway ㅠㅠ is literally pronounced as "yoo yoo," so when you want to show you're "upset" in Korean, or with other foreigners in Korea, it is common to simply start yelling "YOOO YOOO" which, incidently, makes "crank that" by soulja boy a MUCH more entertaining song. confusing sidenote 끝)

Anyway, the end of my class at Ewha was just as fun as the rest! I officially need to go on a diet. Too much Krispy Kreme. Not helped by the fact that I brought a dozen of them back for my host family.


Here is the Krispy Kreme in Myeongdong, which is 3 stories!!!!!!! The one in Sinchon is just one. That's where I spent most of my time the past 2 weeks...but I did visit this impressive one too. Krispy Kreme is surprisingly popular in Seoul (and in other big cities in Korea, too! Not Gyeongju, though)! I visited 3 different ones during my stay and I believe there are others to be found. Even more available than where I come from! and oh, so much better than Dunkin....


Another place I spent a lot of time (perhaps too much) is Myeongdong, the fashion district. Yes, I did some shopping during my 3 weeks in Seoul. There is also good shopping around where i lived near Ewha, but really, Myeongdong trumps all. Yoojin and I had a great time wandering around and shopping slooooowly, that's our style. And I made some very worthwhile purchases.

So that about sums up the 3- week Seoul stay... I am really going to miss Seoul, but I plan to go back often, so I think it will be okay! I had a lot of fun and learned a lot too.


Now, on to the next thing: BACK TO SCHOOL!
As of today, I am no longer on vacation. I'm currently sitting at my desk in the teachers' room, which has been changed since last year. I'm sitting across from where I was previously. Not sure why. There are many things about school that I can't quite explain, such as why I knew nothing about my schedule until midday today, and how there is still no exam schedule for this school year. This kind of fly by the seat of your pants scheduling would NOT fly in an American school, where exam schedules are literally planned years in advance. I've gotten more used to it, though, about as much as I could hope to having grown up in a culture where things are planned and planned to death...

That's about all I can handle writing about now. It's back to lesson planning for me...Overall, though, I'm not so happy about being back to school. That's just the way it is. I don't like the apparent lack of organization and the lack of communication with the foreign teachers- they don't really treat us like full people, and I suppose that in their eyes, we aren't. We're novelties. They'll be nice to us to get a smile, and appreciate when we go along with everything without making a fuss. But when they ask us if there's a problem, that isn't really what they're asking. They don't really want to hear it if we do have a problem, or if there is something that we want. It's too complicated. I don't really think the difficulty is linguistic here, it's cultural.

Really hard situation to explain. Kind of wish I hadn't started? It's not as negative an experience as I'm really making it out to be, it's just frustrating a lot of the time. Only one more semester, though...