Life This Week in South Korea: Oct 9-15, 2023

I know I’m all out of order here, but if I wait to catch up to The Big Picture before I start writing current posts, I’ll NEVER CATCH UP. So please bear with the back-and-forth timeline for a bit. Think of this as a well-played k-drama – they are masters at the back-and-forth timeline:

MONDAY, OCT 9

The last day of a 3-day weekend – today is Hangeul Day, which is Korea’s day to honor their handwriting system developed in the 1400s (Asia is so old compared to the US!!!) by King SeJong. Prior to Hangeul, they were using all or mostly Chinese to read and write…but if you’ve studied Chinese, it is a VERY complex language with over 100,000 characters, not to mention all the different tones and ooh, something else, ha ha – anyway, suffice it to say it is quite difficult to learn. This made it very difficult for people of lesser means to ever learn to read or write, as they were working, not in school. And this kept the common man down. Well, King SeJogn decided everyone deserved to know how to read and write, and that by everyone learning, it would raise the whole level of Korean society. King seems like a good guy.

So he developed an entirely new alphabet that is supposedly mathematically genius (though I don’t really understand that part), where each letter somehow represents the sound used to speak it.

Some of them are a bit of a stretch, but I think I can see where he was going with it.

Anyway, the “new” (1400’s) Korean alphabet, with its 24 letters, made up of 14 consonants and 10 vowels (plus some combinations made from these starter letters), is a LOT easier to learn than the Chinese alphabet.

From the alphabet their new language was created…and it worked well. More people could read and write than ever before, so Yay, King Sejong.

Side story, and I know only the tip of the iceberg of Korean history but I’m finding it fascinating…during much of the 1900s when Korea (when it was still Korea vs South and North) was colonized by the Japanese, they nearly lost their language and alphabet. The Japanese tried to abolish the language altogether, insisting schools teach only Japanese, and I guess any Korean caught speaking their native language would be…punished? Imprisoned? Killed? One of the above 🙁 They even set out to change everyone’s Korean name to Japanese.

Fortunately some brave Koreans formed like secret societies to try and save the books and recreate the entire Korean dictionary to save for future generations. And many people lost their lives trying to save their native Korean language. And this is the Korean that is spoken today, and the Hangeul alphabet that they honor every October 9 – the original date (in 1446) of declaring Hangeul their official alphabet.

And for this – I got to go grocery shopping on a weekday instead of going to class 🙂

TUESDAY, OCT 10

This morning I had a 10am appointment for finger printing for my ARC. Hopefully this is a good sign – I wouldn’t think they’d bother doing the fingerprinting if they were going to reject your application. Fingers crossed.

After that I had several hours to fill before class, which begins at 1:40pm. Oh. Yeah. Remember my 9-1pm schedule, and then I’d be free for the rest of the day? Nope. They had so many new students this term they had to add afternoon classes to accomodate them all. So my class is 1:40-5:30 every day. Which, basically, sucks. Hopefully as I (IF I) get to higher level classes they’ll be in the morning. Anyway, there’s a nice seating area outside the language building. It’s mostly shady with benches and picnic tables and drink vending machines (not that I can get these to work but) and people hang out there…and SMOKE.

There is a LOT of smoking in Korea. I don’t think I’ve seen this many people smoking cigarettes since I was in high school in the 70s. I don’t mind it, being around the smoke, it’s just surprising. I feel like I so rarely see anyone smoke in the states.

I killed some time studying and going over vocabulary. In addition to homework each night, there’s like 20-30 new vocabulary words we’ll need to know for the next class. That’s a lot of new words! I’m finding myself unable to keep up.

Tuesday, along with Thursday, is a better class day. We have two teachers: one on M-W-F and the other is T-Th. They’re both very nice, BUT…MWF speaks SO FAST and speaks ONLY Korean…and I literally cannot understand a word she says. So it’s very hard for me to follow the class, understand the new grammar rules, etc. It makes it VERY stressful for me. T-Th speaks a little more slowly, and when she sees us all staring at her like deer caught in the headlights, she’ll explain a bit in English.

Today was a mid-term review test. SURPRISE! As I’ve gotten older I’ve developed test anxiety, and the minute there’s a test paper in front of me, my brain leaks out of my head and I remember NOTHING. It’s a little horrifying. And makes me do poorly on tests.

WEDNESDAY, OCT 11

Day One of a 3-day midterm. Today was a reading, to check, well, reading…and pronunciation. We were given three short paragraphs to practice and then when it was our turn we drew a straw (well, it was a spoon, but) to see which paragraph we read out loud. Reading/pronunciation are my strongest Korean skills, so this went well.

I went with a friend to the school cafeteria that has decent food for reasonable prices…but it’s down the steps from hell…which aren’t bad when you’re descending…but when you’re done eating and want to go home…and you’re full and it’s the end of the day and you’re lugging you 20lb bookbag…THEN they turn into the steps from hell.

Pretty soon it’s going to be dark as we walk home from class.

THURSDAY, OCT 12

Day Two of 3-day midterm. Today is the PAINFUL day. Dictation, listening, writing – the whole written part of the exam. Three parts of 40 minutes each. I believe it is the first time in my entire LIFE that I was unable to finish an exam in the alloted time. There were so many reading comprehension paragraphs with multiple choice questions…and that combination is slow-going for me. She when she said “yeol-shi'” (ten minutes) I was like OH CRAP and just started circling answers willy-nilly. Always better to answer SOMETHING than to leave anything blank.

Oh, because we’re time-line flip-flopping til I get caught up with blog posts, you don’t know yet just how poorly I’m doing in my class. I’ll clue you in. I’m doing REALLY poorly. Ha ha. It stressed me out for weeks…but probably last week I came to peace with the fact that I will most likely fail the class (please don’t say “oh, it’s probably not as bad as you think,” or “there’s still hope,” cuz…no). But that’s really fine, because I can just repeat it next term…and it will be better the second time cuz I’ll already know stuff from THIS time. Plus I’ll have the tutor from Day One.

Oh, I have a tutor. A Korean tutor. I found him on CraigsList and he’s wonderful. My sessions with him are easy to understand, he’s patient and clear…and I always finish up feeling full of confidence that I CAN DO THIS.

And then I go to the next class and I’m cut down at the knees.

Anyway, I digress. At this point I’d almost RATHER fail, as then I can repeat and actually improve…vs. squeaking by and getting into the next class and continuing to struggle cuz I can just barely keep up. That’s just too stressful and exhausting.

FRIDAY, OCT 13

Oh. I’m just now noticing that it was Friday the 13th. Well, regardless, it was a super nice day. It was the third and last day of the mid-term…and it was a verbal dialogue with the teacher. She would prompt us with questions like “what is your name, what country are you from, what did you last weekend, why did you come to Korea, etc.” Five minutes, one-on-one. We each had a 5-minute time slot and just had to show up for that time, and then we were allowed to leave right after.

On Wednesday the teacher had given us the list of 10 questions, so I spent quite a bit of time writing my “script” answers and memorizing them. And then she only asked two of those questions in the actual dialogue!!! Guh.

BUT, by 2:15 I was free. My friend and I went to a drink shop on campus…one thing they have a lot of in Korea, and I LOVE, is grapefruit drinks. Grapefruit and honey tea, grapefruit-ade (they’re big on “-ades,” not so much plain iced tea). This particular shop has a FANTASTIC grapefruit & honey iced tea, and a large is $2.50. Most things are REALLY inexpensive here.

Anyway, it was a sunny, mild day, so we sat with our drinks on “my veranda,” which is really the little patio on the front of the convenience store next to my building. It has little cafe tables and chairs, and a couple adirondack chairs, it’s in the shade of some Japanese maples, and it’s facing the lake (you’ll get a “tour” of the school soon), so there are all the people constantly going past: students, delivery guys, people from the neighborhood come to walk around the lake.

My friends back home know my favorite situation is a an adirondack chair, in the shade, with a view of some sort of activity. And here I have it right next door to me. That alone is worth the price of admission to me.

When we got hungry we walked off campus through the neighborhood behind my building, to a ton-kas-eu (pork cutlet) shop I’d seen a few weeks ago. YUM. So much food, so few dollars. This whole meal was $6.60.

We sat at a little playground for awhile…looked in some shops…and then parted ways for a bit before meeting later (8pm) at a Starbucks to meet with the tutor. That was my first time meeting him in person, we usually do our sessions online cuz it’s just more time efficient without all the travel time. He’s really sweet and such a good teacher.

It was 10pm before we finally headed home. She doesn’t live on campus, but she’s not too far away.

It was a simple day, but so very nice. Just peaceful and nice.

It was a 3-mile day. I walk A LOT here. It’s just over a mile to my class and back, like 1.2 miles. My average for the past month is 1.9 miles a day!!! Who even AM I right now??? My hips HATE me. Every day they’re like ENOUGH ALREADY! JUST STAY HOME ONE DAY!!! I’ve lost 20lbs since I left Florida, not even intentionally, between walking…and how hard it was to get food in the beginning. Ha. You’ll hear that story soon.

SATURDAY, OCT 14

I was pretty exhausted from the week – the stress of the exam, the hours spent studying, all the walking yesterday…so I let myself have a bit of a piddly day. You remember how I loved a good piddly day back home…just doing a little of this and a little of that, having pretty low expectations for myself…I haven’t done that much here. 1) I feel like I could be here for a limited time and I don’t want to waste it, and 2) living in such a small space (we’ll get to that in an upcoming post), I do feel the need to get out for a bit every day.

So, for most of the day I watched k-dramas, followed up with some emails to family and friends, re-organized some things…and then made a plan to meet a friend at 5:00 for a Daiso (kind of like Dollar Tree meets Target, but more on the Dollar Tree side) run, then walk around Kondae to find something for dinner.

Kondae is the area around the school – Konkuk University. It’s not an ACTUAL place, like you wouldn’t address mail to Kondae, it’s a made-up term for the very dense shopping and eating area right next to the school. It’s a take on Hongdae, which IS an actual place, and is a VERY active “young person” bar/club/street performer/shopping area. So, Kon for Konkuk University, and  dae for Hongdae – oh, I wonder if “dae” means something, like town or area…BRB…eh, the closest I can come is 대 which is pronounced “deh” and means big. So maybe that’s nothing. I’m always trying to pick apart the syllables of words thinking knowing each part will help me remember it. Sometimes it does.

Anyway. We went there, ha ha. If you remember when I used to be obsessed with watching the YouTube videos of people walking in different districts in Seoul, I watched a TON of “walking in Kondae” videos. It’s also the area immediately behind the apartment building I wanted to live in (more on that in a later post).

We walked, we shopped, and just before I was about to drop, we stopped to eat somewhere that had THE best steak I have perhaps ever had. It like just melted in my mouth. And there was a lovely little bowl of pumpkin soup. It was very nice. And all that for the low, low price of $8.25.

And then I dragged myself home. Pooped. That was just a 2 mile day, but I started out feeling tired.

SUNDAY, OCT 15

No piddling today! I had a plan to meet a friend at 1 to go to Olympic Park (home of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul) to see the pink Muhly grass. This is a grass that blooms right about now, early fall, and looks so lovely in photos. For this, I finally broke out my camera, even though I still had no way to download pictures to the computer (Katie shipped me a package on October 7, expensive 3-5 day shipping…and it is still not here on the 15th). I know there was a Sunday and a bank holiday in there (Indigenous Peoples Day in the US), but still. I want my comforter! I want my Lipton tea bags! I want my card reader! Anyway.

When we met up, she was in a really pretty flowy dress in tones of sort of rusty browns and I thought I could take beautiful pictures of her in the pink grass.

However…the universe had other plans for us. After a leisurely lunch in a nearby bakery, we headed into the park…and proceeded to walk 7.2 MILLION miles over the course of 4 hours (in reality it was a 3.5 mile day) …and NEVER found the pink Muhly grass 🙁 We did see other things, and we had fun talking and laughing, but by 6pm it was getting dark and all four of our feet (and two of our hips) were just DONE.

We came back to our area, had Mexican food for dinner…then called it a (looonnnnggg) day.

And tomorrow it’s back to class! It felt almost like a 3-day weekend cuz we got out so early on Friday and had so much daylight time that day.

I’m so glad to be back posting again! And I’m doing my best to get all caught up!