MONDAY, OCT 23

My Alien Registration Card is here! My Alien Registration Card is here (sung to the tune of The New Phone Books Are Here! The New Phone Books Are Here – a la the Steve Martin movie The Jerk)! Actually, it’s now called the Residence Card as there were grumblings about people being called “alien.” So I am now officially a RESIDENT (not a citizen…and not an alien) of The Republic of Korea (ROK), aka South Korea.

FYI: North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Anyway. Typical day: tutoring from 11-12, lunch, class from 1:40-5:30, grabbed some fried chicken for dinner, watched a 50-minute kdrama episode while I ate, did my tutoring homework, went over the new vocabulary for tomorrow’s class, then started on the exercises in the book that we’ll get to to tomorrow. I TRY to stay one step ahead so at least I have some familiarity with the material before the teacher confuses me in class.

Not a very interesting day. Maintenance workers were cutting back some overgrown foliage around the lake and planting new trees and hydrangea. I think they’re sprucing up for a University festival this week…but boy do I hate seeing a man with any sort of tree pruning/trimming/cutting tools in his hand. I prefer wild and free to manicured…so it all looks a little sad out there right now.
TUESDAY, OCT 24
Typical day. Class. Got dinner with my friend at the convenience store next to my building. Did homework. Studied.
The studying and homework are really getting in the way of my fun Korean adventure!!!
WEDNESDAY, OCT 25
Back to the hospital first thing in the morning, to see the doctor for a follow-up to last week’s tests. This time was a little less stressful because I knew how to do the self-check-in and get myself to urology. I had to wait a bit for the translator to go into the doctor’s office with me, but in the end it was good news. The spot he saw on the xray was not on the ct-scan, so…it  was a non-issue. I go back in 6 months to follow-up on the stone I DO have…
And then it was back to campus for the fall festival. No classes, but students were manning different booths for a short stint. I took money at a photobooth. Then we were able to walk around to look at the different vendors – I WISH I’d had a hangeul calligraphy saying done, they were doing custom ones and they were lovely. There were food trucks and games and a kpop contest. It was a nice day, but exhausting. A lot of walking.
THURSDAY, OCT 26
Back to the regular schedule – study, class, dinner with friend, more studying. I got a hair straightener! I tried to buy a leaf blower last night with my shiny new ARC # and I STILL COULDN’T ORDER ONLINE BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE A KOREAN PHONE PLAN!!!
WHY DON’T YOU WANT MY MONEY, KOREA?!? I’M TRYING MY HARDEST TO GIVE IT TO YOU AND YOU JUST WON’T TAKE IT!!!
FRIDAY, OCT 27
Okay, now it’s just getting embarrassing. I KNEW I would fail the exam (I’m not being negative, this i fact), but 32?? That’s the worst so far. Since the midterm two weeks ago things have really ramped up in class. We’re moving on to more complex sentence endings and grammar points, and THESE things are being built on things we covered weeks ago that I still do not have firmly embedded in my brain. And I am just not keeping up. I’ve said it all before, I won’t keep beating that dead horse, but…it’s frustrating…and I actually feel sorry to my teachers – like, do they think I’m just not trying?? Do they feel like THEY are doing a bad job if I’m not getting it?? Ugh. The other students all seem to be keeping up. I’m like WHAT ARE YOUR SECRETS? But it’s hard to have that conversation because for some of them their english is so limited. And then I can’t even understand what people are saying to me in ENGLISH and I’m just like STOP LET ME OFF.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sticking it out til the bitter end. I’m not giving up til they say you can’t do this any more. But it’s frustrating and exhausting and draining never knowing what’s going on and always feeling like a failure.
The assignment for Monday (along with learning the vocabulary for the next chapter) is to write a 300-word essay (in Korean) on where Ive traveled, that’s not my home country or Korea, using all the new fancy, formal sentence endings we learned this week. Right off the bat I’m like NOWHERE. I’ve never traveled out of the US except to come to Korea! Well, like 4 days in Aruba at my sister’s timeshare right before Katie was born, but it was like STAY INSIDE THE RESORT and really not much to write about…or the time I drove to Mexico with my childhood friend and we got ourselves into all sorts of trouble (I feel like I was JUST talking about this! was it here?), and that one’s maybe not really appropriate for class, ha ha. Or a weekend in Puerto Rico once with the ex but I have literally no memories from that. Anyway, we hand in the written portion of the essay on Monday, teacher will return it to us, corrected, by Wednesday, then we create a powerpoint with pictures and very little text because by Friday we need to memorize it to present in front of the class.
THREE HOURS LATER….
To get past the disappointment of my dismal failure, my friend and I went to Itaewon to a fried chicken speakeasy type of restaurant. And because this is Seoul, the taxi driver dropped us off at an unrecognizable location and just sort of waved or pointed and said “yogiyo” (here you are) and we were like uhm, okay, and got out of the car and were like WHERE we are??
There were so signs of the restaurant…it’s a very crowded area and you sort of get swept along with the crowd…we ended up walking down a bunch of little side streets (and by side streets I mean ski slopes) looking for the restaurant…neither of our cell phones were working well, so we couldn’t access the map apps…and I was getting exhausted and woozy from hunger+exertion…we wound up back where we started and she noticed a sign behind a makeshift parking lot that said THIS IS WHERE YOU WERE LOOKING FOR, DUMMIES and…yeah. The driver HAD dropped us at the right place, we just didn’t know it.
I LOVE YOU, SEOUL, WHY CAN’T YOU LOVE ME BACK.
Story of my life.
ANYWAY, the restaurant was really cool. VERY “hidden” all in black with low-key signage…you pulled a giant traditional calligraphy ink brush to make the entrance door slide open then you were escorted into a very high-class looking bar, around a steaming pool (that I was SO sure I would fall into by night’s end), and to our table. I got
SATURDAY, OCT 26
I wasn’t allowed out to play today so I could REST and work on my essay for school…and REST…I had several invitations out and it was SO HARD and I came THIS CLOSE to breaking down and going out just to get something to eat, but I know how these things go. When you add together the “where are we going to go slash how are we going to get there” time + the actual travel time + the getting lost and wandering around aimlessly time + actual eating time + getting back home + recovering from the sweaty adventure…it’s been at least 3-4 hours and the day is shot. So I stuck to my guns and DIDN’T LEAVE THE BUILDING.
Go me.
I DID go look at another room in this same building that has become available…SLIGHTLY larger, but with double the storage cuz it’s really a 2-person room + little bigger window with no metal band across it that I can actually walk up to and see out. I was like hmmm…and THEN she told me about ANOTHER unit that’s coming available towards the end of November, an actual apartment (well, it’s called a “one-room” here) as opposed to a goshiwon like I am in now – meaning, a) it has kitchenette and washing machine, b) more space, c) a 1-year lease. So, like the situation of “my apartment” that I wanted (desparately), but in this same building that I’m so comfortable in. I’m waiting to here the deposit and monthly rent and I haven’t even seen it yet, but…if the cost is manageable I will probably take that just for the kitchen and washing machine! And if I don’t end up with that, I will definitely take the slightly larger goshiwon room.
So one way or another, I will be moving. AGAIN. making my what, sixth move in Korea, and I’ve only been here 2 months. Ha ha. Yeah, sounds about right.
SUNDAY, OCT 27
Today we took a day trip to Nami Island, which is a small island in the Han River about an hour north of Seoul by high-speed train. Frothe m pictures it looks so picturesque and I was so looking forward to taking beautiful fall foliage pictures.
We left early…as early as I felt comfortable asking a new friend to get up and leave the city. *I* will leave at whatever time is needed to get the pretty light (and no crowds) but I try to not torture people with my annoying ways. Sometimes. Ha ha.
We got a taxi to the train station…then discovered I had purchased the tickets online for 8 PEE-EM not AY-EM. Oh here go. Life with Bettye. We were still able to purchase tickets at station, fortunately, so no harm done. The train ride was nice…it’s the ITX Train, which is the second fastest “bullet” train system in South Korea, with average speeds of up to 150km/hour, which is just under 100mph. It’s a comfy train and it was nice to see different scenery out the windows. It was cool, foggy morning and the fog moving across the nearby mountains was really lovely. Most of what we passed was small farms…they really use every inch of space to grow things.
We got to Gapyeong, and from there were to take a bus to the ferry to the island. I’d expected to be on the island by 10am before the crowds and I was very excited about the prospect of shooting the pretty fall colors in the fog!
Sigh. Even leaving home at 7am, given the popularity of Nami Island, ESPECIALLY this time of year, and it being KOREA where EVERYONE does ALL THE THINGS…there was SO MUCH TRAFFIC, that the bus ride that probably should have been 15ish minutes…was FOR. EVER. We got off after more than an hour had passed…and we STILL had to walk a ways to the ferry port. Along with the nine bajillion other people. Then we stood in a long line for immigration because the island is actually its own republic…and then we go on ANOTHER *very* long line to get onto the ferry.
By this time it was past noon, the fog had all burned off, the sun was directly overhead (the worst for taking pictures) and the entirety of South Korea was in the same place we were. Wow.
We weren’t even on the island yet and my hips were already going, uhhh…maybe we could stop now?? Sigh.
We finally made it onto the island with the rest of humanity and tried to pick our way between people…to find some spots for taking pictures…and for just not being bumped into.
I love Korea, but these people will KNOCK YOU DOWN if you’re in their way. I’m not saying Just Koreans…it just seems to be in the water. Someone had told me about this when I was still in the US and I was like oh come on how bad could it be??
😐
So. We walked around. We saw some things. There WERE a lot of great photo-opps, but…I might have talked about this when we went to Olympic Park a few weeks ago. It is a VERY photo-centric culture…at least nowadays. EVERYONE is a blogger or instagrammer and they’re all trying to get the perfect shot. I GET IT. I’m trying to do it, too! But I won’t do it to the extent that I’m preventing others from also doing it. There are literal LINES in front of anything scenic or pretty or interesting. Ooh, an old phone booth in the middle of the forest? There’s a line of 10 people all waiting their turn to pick up the phone and have their friend/boyfriend/tripod+timer take their picture. I can’t.
Even when there weren’t LINES, there were just So Many People everywhere…it was hard to get a nice shot of anything particularly nice, cuz if it was nice, there were people walking through, taking pictures, admiring the scenery. I GET IT.
Making beautiful pictures is so much a part of my enjoyment of going places like this…that when I *can’t* it just loses some of the joy for me.
All that said, it *was* a lovely place, and I would go back again, ON A WEEKDAY.
Then coming BACK, it was not AS bad, but it still took a LONG TIME for the bust to get to us to take us back to the train. Then we found there were no seats left, standing room only. And I already had my “been standing too long” mystery pain I get under my right rib cage, so this was not good 🙁 Fortunately it was a triple decker train  (TO HOLD ALL THE PEOPLE) and I found a spot on the little spiral staircase leading to the bottom level. The last 10 minutes, someone got off at another stop and motioned for me to take the seat he was leaving. THANK YOU STRANGER.
It was while perched on the mini staircase that I saw the news about Matthew Perry. What a shock. A sad, sad shock 🙁  Watching Friends every Thursday night was something Katie and I did every week, even though she was young and missed the innuendos, she still enjoyed it, maybe just because all the characters were pretty and fun and lively. So I have wonderful memories of the show and the characters…and I cannot pass by a rerun or clip of Friends without stopping to watch it in its entirety…and it always makes me laughcry. I know Chandler Bing is not all he was, but I was first introduced to Matthew Perry as that character.
Could I BE more sad??
RIP, Friend xoxo
ps: forgive thre annoying spacing, or rather, the lack thereof, the computer is fighting me on all fronts these days.