Life This Week in South Korea: March 4-10, 2024

Monday, March 4

Started the week off with a tutoring session bright and early…followed by a cafe meetup with a young woman from my class this term. Very nice person with a warm, outgoing vibe. After the cafe we came back to campus here and sat by the lake for a pretty long time. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve been able to just sit outside for any length of time. It was so nice! Spring is on its way!

For at least a month I’ve been seeing “cherry blossom bloom date” calendars all over social media – the expected dates of early, mid, and late blooms depnding where you are in the country. March 23 seems to be about peak bloom here in Seoul and I can’t wait to get out and get some pictures.

I think I’m going to bite the bullet and buy a pocket wi-fi so my phone can stay connected to internet no matter where I am. I’ve continued to be limited in where I go because my connectivity poops out on me just when I need it most (furthest from home, need to find transportation). So, even after 6 months here, I still ONLY go places with other people, or places close to home that I am familiar with and can find my way home without internet assistance.

Tuesday, March 5

Okay, LET THE ANXIETY BEGIN. I was actually already feeling it yesterday, but now it’s mounting to never before seen heights. So many new things coming up this week…

This evening I met with a new (additional) language exchange partner. Another friend-of-a-friend (“chingoo-eh-chingoo”) of my tutor’s. Not getting rid of Hyungeun, but since he was upgraded to friend/drinking buddy, I still need a LANGUAGE PARTNER, ha ha.

New guy was very nice. A little soft-spoken (ie, hard for me to hear), but polite, friendly, if maybe a little shy. Which means I need to lead the conversation more. Which is fine, but…it’s nice when it’s a little more equitable and both people keep the conversation going in more equal amounts. YKWIM.

I had written up a list of about 15 “getting to know you” questions in Korean…but we went through them pretty quickly, ha ha. The problem is still that I can ASK the questions in Korea, but I still don’t entirely understand the answers, nor can I immediately put together follow-up questions in Korean…so I run out of Korean very quickly and then we have to go to English. So it ends up being like 20% Korean/80% English…unless we really just want to talk about the pencil case on the desk. Is it yours? Is it next to the computer? Ha. It’s unfortunate that the class texts use such…impractical vocabulary. NO ONE cares about the pencil case. Or the electronic dictionary, ha ha. Another favorite. No one even HAS one of those any more, and it’s a really awkward word to remember and say. And why? I will NEVER say that word outside of class.

Anyway. We’ll meet again next week.

Tomorrow is my first day of the new class – Korean 101 v3. I’m SO nervous/anxious.

Wednesday, March 6

I went to breakfast with building friend, thinking the distraction might be good. I could barely lift food to my mouth for my trembling hands. Ugh. Hyperventilating, heart pounding, shortness of breath. UGH. Seriously, what the heck??

In the end, the class was fine. Of course. I did have that awkward (10-minute) moment of not being able to fit into the attached chair-desk situation and having to wait for the teacher and then when I said in Korean, “I can’t sit,” she was like, yes, please sit and I had to be like, no, I LITERALLY cannot fit to sit. Ugh.

Not. Awkward. At. All.

So she gave me HER chair and then SHE had to stand for 4 hours.

NAAA.

Anyway, I liked her very much. She’s EXTREMELY thorough. Upbeat. Charming. My classmates all seem smiley and like we’re more or less on the same level Korean-wise. A little more diversity this time – Mongolian, Nepalese, Chinese, always…but this time also a Japanese girl, a French girl, two people from Vietnam, a girl from Cypress (Greece), Belgium, and Germany. And me. Always the only American in my class. But at least this time more people speak English, so that’s good. And the teacher spoke more English than past ones have.

After class I had a little break then it was time to head to Hyunguen’s house as he had invited us over for drinks and “anjou,” which are drinking snacks. It was me, my friend Arie from the first term, and my tutor, Jun. Hyungeun was a charming host and made cabbage jeon, which is basically a cabbage leaf pancake, but it was so LIGHT, I’ve never had jeon like that before. With a nice soy scallion dipping sauce. With that course we had makgeolli, which is a fermented rice wine, not really my favorite…but then he made a banana one and I liked that better.

Then he disappeared for a bit to go pick up a pizza from the restaurant where he bartends on Friday nights, and he brought back really more of a flatbread with sauce and pepperoni. It was also very nice. With that we had beer + soju (somek). He tried a couple different like…I don’t even know how to describe it – serving tricks? Ha ha. Like, different ways to knock the soju glass into the beer glass? It was highly entertaining.

Then there were kwaja, which are like chippy snacks, but not chips…dried squid sticks and something else, I forget. Little crunchy things. And a variation on somek with a cola chaser in the glass. And some kind of blackberry liquer?

By now it was like 1am and he started making a lovely light soup with clams, I was like, what kind of battery are you running on?? And we had shots of some kind of liquer (in the prettiest pottery decanter) that tasted like cinnamon whiskey. Not spicy cinnamon like Fireball, but like if you ate cinnamon powder out of the jar. And really vapory alcohol. Wow.

And then it was 2am and we were like WE SHOULD GO even though I could have stayed but…didn’t want to overstay our welcome. And Jun had a morning class.

Oh, and his cat Songhi and Jun’s dog Kudoo were very entertaining together, so I got a little bit of cat holding time, which I have missed.

I really want a kitten…but not knowing where I am going to be living in the future…that’s really not an option.

Anyway, it was a lovely evening with nice people, good friends, a charming host, good food, and adorable animals 🙂

Thursday, March 7

Second day of class and I met the Tue/Thur teacher who is also very nice, but as usual, I like the “main” (Mon-Wed-Fri) teacher better. I don’t really know why that do it that way, but…

After class I met Hyungeun at the train to go just a few stops to his favorite place for shabushabu (“hot pot” in the states), and then to a billiards hall (we both agreed that there’d been enough drinking the night before!).

Can I play pool? Well, I have two hands to hold a cue stick, and sometimes I can manage to make the end of the cue stick come into contact with a ball, but I would not say I “play billiards.” Ha ha. I ENJOY it, but I am not GOOD at it.

When I was a teenager, my father’s work had a trailer in Vermont, it was like a company timeshare before there were timeshares…and we got it a couple years in a row on Thanksgiving week. There was a clubhouse at the campground with a pool table, and I spent hours in there just playing by myself. Then at my LAST job (before the one I just left), my friend from there (Hi Diana!) and I for some reason started playing pool sometimes after work and it was fun. I probably haven’t played since then. But this was a lot of fun.

It’s hard to find people you’re well-matched with for “competition.” Like, I just like playing the game. Yes, I want to do well, but I don’t really care if I win or lose, I just enjoy doing the thing. With The Right Person. Sometimes people get so competitive and strategic and are so like…icky mean when they beat you or get the shot or whatever. I’m so not comfortable in that sort of situation. It’s just not fun.

But this was nice. We could cheer for one another when we made a good shot and “awwww” when we missed.

Another nice Thursday 🙂

Friday, March 8

HOWEVER, I woke up this morning CRIPPLED. Clothes, books, etc, strewn everywhere. When I got home last night my body was just like STOP. ENOUGH. NO MORE. I pulled my clothes off and fell into bed. Spasming foot pain (wth is happening to me) woke me up throughout the night so it was not a restful sleep. The walk to class was slow and very uncomfortable.

I’m making an executive decision that I WILL take an uber to class every Friday. The cumulative effects of walking to school all week PLUS Thursday night fun (which always involves a lot of walking and subway stairs), leaves me just…with nothing left to give on Friday.

Walking home after class, down the %*(^#@! hill, something snapped/popped/tore/committed harikari in the back of my knee, the already injured knee…and I about went down. We avoid going down at all costs. The two young girls walking right behind me were like LET US HELP YOU but seriously, short of carrying me home (an impossible task for probably anyone, let alone two young petite girls), I just shooed them away so I could stand there and try not to cry from pain.

Then I hobbled home really really really REALLY slowly. By the time I got home, the immediate, sharp pain had subsided somewhat, but…

I don’t want to leave this room til Sunday. The past week has been fun, but there has not been enough rest/recovery for me and this is what happens.

Saturday, March 8

I stayed inside today. Even when my friend was like “but we had plans for today,” I was like I CANNOT. I HAVE to give my leg a day off. It should really have a WEEK off, but I don’t know how that will ever happen here. I worked on my daily Korean sentences, I lay in bed (which is the best, when my leg can be straight out) and read…I started watching a new drama….I just RELAXED.

Which I really needed after this week. Between leg/foot pain, high anxiety, and doing All The Things, I was shot. It’s hard to keep up with The Young People, ha ha. And next week is already starting to fill up with stuff…but at least there shouldn’t be the exhausting anxiety of last week.

Sunday, March 9

Relaxed in the morning, did a load of laundry and for once everything worked right, yay. Chatted a lot with New York friends…worked on blog posts.

Met “returning/visiting” friend to go to the piercing place. I’ve wanted to fix my ear piercings for ages. When I got my ears pierced when I was 14, they did them at the wrong angle, so hoops never hang right on me. And I love hoops! So I was hoping that by not wearing earrings for a long time, the holes would close up enough that they could repierce them at the correct angle (paralell to my head) and all would be good with the world. Then NEXT time I can get an additional hole on one ear…and then we’ll see from there 😉

So I just got some gold posts today…it hurt a LOT less than I remember it hurting back whenn I got them pierced in 1974 at the mall. They used a gun then and it was PAIN. FUL. Tonight she just used a needle and it barely felt like anything. I meant to have my friend take a picture but I forgot. #old.

We walked around a bit, got coffee, and I was home and in my nightgown by 9pm.

Another week ends…and tomorrow another begins…how many weeks are left?? Maybe 1,000?? Whoa. I’m tired just thinking about that.